#520: One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show by Honey Cone
Peak Month: January 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube.com link: “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show”
Lyrics: “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show”
Edna Wright was born in Los Angeles in 1944. She grew up in the church and sang with the Church of God in Christ Singers. In 1965 she recorded under the pseudonym Sandy Wynns, and had a minor hit in Los Angeles with “A Touch Of Venus”. In 1969 she sang backing vocals on an album for the Righteous Brothers. In 1969, Honey Cone was formed by lead singer Edna Wright (sister of Darlene Love, who provided lead vocals for the Crystals “He’s A Rebel”) with Carolyn Willis and Shelley Clark. (Note: Clark’s first name is spelled differently by Wikipedia, Discogs and AllMusic as either Shelly, Shellie or Shelley). Willis was born in 1946 in Los Angeles. In 1966, Shelley Clark had been one of the trio backing singers with the Ikettes for Ike & Tina Turner at the time they recorded “River Deep – Mountain High”. Willis had been part of a girl group in 1964 named the Girlfriends. They scored a minor Top 50 hit that year with “My One And Only Jimmy Boy”. Willis and Wright also had recording and performing experience in Darlene Love’s girl group the Blossoms from 1962 to 1964. The Blossoms sang backing vocals on “Monster Mash” for Bobby “Boris” Pickett, “Johnny Angel” for Shelley Fabares, and “Be My Baby” for the Ronettes, and “He’s A Rebel” (credited to The Crystals and not the Blossoms who actually recorded the record for Phil Spector). Willis and Wright also provided backing vocals for Darlene Love’s “He’s Sure The Boy I Love”.
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#521: Blue Moon Of Kentucky by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: September 1956
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CJOR Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Blue Moon Of Kentucky”
Lyrics: “Blue Moon Of Kentucky”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis on July 19.
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#522: Rock-A-Hula Baby by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: January 1962
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube.com link: “Rock-A-Hula Baby”
Lyrics: “Rock-A-Hula Baby”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”, song #1196 on this Countdown. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.
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#526: Melting Pot by Booker T. & the M.G.’s
Peak Month: July 1971
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN’s chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #45
YouTube.com link: “Melting Pot”
Booker T. & the M.G.’s is a band founded in Memphis in the summer of 1962. That summer 17-year-old keyboardist Booker T. Jones, 20-year-old guitarist Steve Cropper, and two seasoned players, bassist Lewie Steinberg and drummer Al Jackson Jr. were in the Memphis studio to back the former Sun Records recording aritst Billy Lee Riley. During downtime, the four started playing around with a bluesy organ riff. The president of Stax Records, Jim Stewart, was in the control booth. He liked what he heard, and he recorded it. Cropper remembered a twelve-bar blues riff that Jones had come up with weeks earlier on a Hammond M3 organ. Before too long a second track was recorded. Stewart wanted to release the single with the first track, “Behave Yourself”, as the A-side and the second track as the B-side. And so “Green Onions” was released as the B-side. However, Cropper and radio DJs argued that “Green Onions” was the better A-side. Soon, Stax re-released Booker T. & the M.G.’s’ “Green Onions” as the A-side.
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#527: The Hucklebuck by Chubby Checker
Peak Month: December 1960
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “The Hucklebuck”
Lyrics: “The Hucklebuck”
Ernest Evans was born in 1941 in Spring Gulley, South Carolina. He grew up in South Philadelphia. As a child, his mother took him to a show performed by child piano prodigy Sugar Child Robinson. Also at the performance was the country singer Ernest Tubb. Ernest was so inspired, that he decided to become an entertainer when he grew up. At the age of eleven he formed a street corner doo-wop group. He took up piano and while attending South Philadelphia High School, one of his friends was Fabian Forte. After school he worked at Fresh Farm Poultry on 9th Street at the Produce Market. His boss decided to give a nickname to his portly employee and called him “Chubby.”
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#1186: Piltdown Rides Again by Piltdown Men
Peak Month: December 1960
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Piltdown Rides Again”
Ed Cobb of the Four Preps co-founded the Piltdown Men with Lincoln Mayorga, who was an arranger with the Four Preps. Mayorga played on piano, Tommy Tedesco on six-string bass guitar, Bob Bain on guitar, Scott Gordon on saxophone, Alan Brenmanen on drums, and several other session musicians. The band released instrumentals. Edward “Ed” Cobb was born in 1938. In the Fall of 1954 Hollywood High School held an audition for their annual talent show. Thirty-five girls auditioned, but no boys. The next day the school bulletin pleaded for “any guys out there who can do anything.” Four boys in the school choir formed a quartet overnight and stepped into the crinoline void as The Four Preps. They included bass singer Ed Cobb. The Four Preps won the talent show hands down, after singing covers of songs by The Crew Cuts and The Four Lads. Signed with Capitol Records in 1956, the Four Preps connected with the record buying public in 1958 with two Top Ten hits: “26 Miles (Santa Catalina)” and “Big Man”.
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#534: Bumble Boogie by B. Bumble and the Stingers
Peak Month: March 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #21
YouTube.com: “Bumble Boogie”
Earl Palmer was born in 1924 in New Orleans. At the age of five he began to tap dance professionally. This was with his mother and an aunt in Ida Cox’s Darktown Scandals Review, touring on the Black Vaudeville Circuit. At the age of twelve “Little Earl Palmer” headlined a floor show at the Rhythm Club in New Orleans. When the United States entered World War II, Earl Palmer was recruited for the service. But he remembers “They didn’t want no niggers carrying guns,” so Earl loaded ammunition for white infantrymen. Returning home in 1945, Palmer attended the Gruenwald School of Music in New Orleans, where studied piano and percussion and learned to read music. He joined Dave Bartholomew and the Dew Droppers as a drummer for the big band.
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#1170: Communication Breakdown by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: December 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #60
YouTube.com: “Communication Breakdown”
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas in 1936. When he turned six his dad gave him a guitar. Both his dad, Orbie Lee, and uncle Charlie Orbison, taught him how to play. Though his family moved to Forth Worth for work at a munitions factory, Roy was sent to live with his grandmother due to a polio outbreak in 1944. That year he wrote his first song “A Vow of Love”. The next year he won a contest on Vernon radio station KVWC and was offered his own radio show on Saturdays. After the war his family reunited and moved to Wink, Texas, where Roy formed his first band, in 1949, called The Wink Westerners.
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#536: He’s A Rebel by Vikki Carr
Peak Month: October 1962
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #115
YouTube.com link: “He’s A Rebel” Vicki Carr
YouTube.com link: “He’s A Rebel” The Crystals
Lyrics: “He’s A Rebel”
Florencia Bisenta de Casillas-Martinez Cardona was born in 1941. Her parents were both from Mexico, and she was born in El Paso, Texas. Her parents moved to the San Gabriel Valley in California, where she grew up. She began performing at the age of four. In an interview many years later, she remembers “my father, being Mexican American, was very, very strict. He never allowed us to hear rock ‘n roll or anything on the radio. Anything that had to do with music was the Big Band era with the records they had and / or the ranchera Mexican American music and the Mexican artists.” By her late teens she was performing at Florence Cardona, because her birth name was too long for people to remember or fit on a marquee. She next went by the name of Carlita, a female version of her fathers’ name, Carlos. In 1959, Florencia Cardona turned eighteen. She decided to pursue a career as a singer in the music business.
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#537: Little Latin Lupe Lu by The Righteous Brothers
Peak Month: July 1963
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #49
YouTube.com: “Little Latin Lupe Lu”
Lyrics: “Little Latin Lupe Lu”
Robert Lee Hatfield was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in 1940. Growing up, he worked at his parents dry-cleaning store. He was very athletic and considered becoming a professional basketball player, but decided to pursue a career in music after graduating from high school in 1958. He moved to Long Beach where he entered university at California State. He was in a group named the variations when he met Bill Medley, a member of a quartet called the Paramours. Hatfield joined the vocal group in 1962. However, they decided to change change their name based on a response by an audience member at the end of a concert in Orange County. During a set by the Paramours, Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley stepped forward on stage to perform a duet dripping with emotion. As the song ended a black Marine stood up and yelled, “That’s righteous, brothers.”
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