#484: Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard by Paul Simon
Peak Month: May 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN
1 week Preview
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube.com: “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard”
Lyrics: “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard”
Paul Frederic Simon was born in 1941 in Newark, New Jersey, to Hungarian-Jewish parents. His dad was a bandleader who went by the name Lou Sims. When he was eleven years old he met Art Garfunkel and were both part of a sixth grade drama production of Alice In Wonderland. By 1954 Paul and Art were singing at school dances. In 1957, in their mid-teens, they recorded the song “Hey, Schoolgirl” under the name “Tom & Jerry”, a name that was given to them by their label Big Records. The single reached No. 49 on the pop charts.
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#489: Puppy Love by Barbara Lewis
Peak Month: April 1964
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #38
YouTube.com: “Puppy Love”
Lyrics: “Puppy Love”
Barbara Ann Lewis was born in 1943 in Salem, Michigan, 31 miles west of Detroit. She began to write songs at the age of nine. As well she had learned to play harmonica, piano and guitar. Her bandleader father played the trumpet and her mother played the saxophone. And her cousin, Shelton Brooks, had written “Some Of These Days”, a hit for Sophie Tucker in 1911. Brooks also composed the “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” for The Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. Despite the musical focus of her extended family, young Barbara Lewis only thought about nursing as a future career. However, in her teens she began to collaborate with Ann Arbor DJ Ollie McLaughlin. The DJ had “discovered” her after McLaughlin asked her father to have Barbara audition for him. Ollie McLaughlin had a radio show on WHRV in Ann Arbor called Ollie’s Caravan. It had a fan base of over 10,000. He also had a small record label called Karen, named after one of his daughters. Her first single on Karen was one she wrote titled “My Heart Went Do Dat Da”. It was recorded at the Chess Record studio in Chicago. It became a break-out hit in the Detroit area, and was picked up for national distribution on Atlantic. The song made the Top 20 subsequently in Colorado Springs (CO).
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#490: On The Road Again by Canned Heat
Peak Month: September 1968
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube.com: “On The Road Again”
Lyrics: “On The Road Again”
Robert Ernest Hite was born in 1943 in Torrence, California. He took an interest in blues, rhythm & blues and rock ‘n roll by the early 50s. His record collection of 78 RPMs grew to over 15,000, which he liked to sing along with. Plump into his twenties, Hite was nicknamed “The Bear.” Alan Christie Wilson was also born in 1943, in Arlington, Massachusetts. He was part of a high school jazz ensemble and played trombone. But in 1959, at the age of sixteen, Wilson turned his attention to the blues after he heard The Best of Muddy Waters album. Inspired by Little Walter (“My Babe”), Wilson began to play the harmonica. In 1964, blues legend Mississippi John Hurt performed at Cafe Yana in Cambridge (MA). Alan Wilson was invited to come on stage and accompany Hurt. At the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Alan Wilson was able to interact with bluesman Skip James. It was from James he learned high-pitched blues singing which he later employed while singing “On The Road Again” and “Going Up The Country”.
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#490: Isn’t She Lovely by Stevie Wonder
Peak Month: January 1977
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG
Peak Position #7
LP Cut – BONUS
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Isn’t She Lovely”
Lyrics: “Isn’t She Lovely”
Stevland Hardaway Judkins was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950. He was born six weeks premature and confined to a hospital incubator. After birth he developed resulted in retinopathy of prematurity – a condition of some premature babies – in which the growth of the eyes is aborted and causes the retinas to detach. Soon after his birth he became blind. As an adult he remarked “people who see often choose the book by the cover…. Maybe a person is also beautiful inwardly and that’s the side I’ll know first.” When he was four his mother divorced his father and remarried. The boy took his new father’s legal name, Morris, after they moved to Detroit. He remembers that in the winter of 1954 “my mother, brothers and I went to this dry dock where there was coal and steal some to keep warm. To a poor person, that’s not stealing, that’s not a crime. That’s a necessity.” As he could not see, he spent a lot of time in his family home listening to the radio. His favorite recording acts were Johnny Ace, Hank Ballard & The Midnighters, and later Del Shannon. An uncle gave him a harmonica. After he mastered the instrument, he was given a drum kit one Christmas. And a neighbor gave her piano to Stevie where she moved from the neighborhood. He formed a singing partnership with his friend John Glover. They billed themselves as Stevie and John, playing on street corners, parties and dances.
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#494: She’s Looking Good by Rodger Collins
Peak Month: April 1967
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “She’s Looking Good”
Lyrics: “She’s Looking Good”
Rogers Collins Jr. was born in Santa Anna, Texas, in 1940. His family moved to California and while still in high school won a talent contest in Oakland, which included doing an Elvis impersonation. He was mentored by early rock era R&B singer Brook Benton, who encouraged Collins to sing his own material. Rodger studied drama in San Francisco at the Actor’s Laboratory. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and hoped to become a star in either film or television. But instead he ended up washing Rock Hudson’s silver Chrysler Imperial. and by 1963 got a contract as a recording artist. His first release in 1963 was a jazz-infused, blues-tinged single titled “The World Can’t Do Me No Harm”. It resembled a late 50s sound of Ray Charles. His B-side, “Working Girl”, was a Collins composition copying the sound of Chuck Berry. And in 1964 released “Give The Kids A Chance”. These two singles were both commercial flops.
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#495: Confidential by Sonny Knight
Peak Month: December 1956
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CJOR ~ Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “Confidential”
Lyrics: “Confidential”
Joseph Coleman Smith was born in 1934, in the western Chicago suburb of Maywood. His family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950’s. In 1953 Joseph Smith signed with Aladdin Records and recorded a novelty tune he wrote titled “But Officer”. The song was a humorous response to police stopping young African-Americans back in the early 50’s. Do things ever change? Joseph C. Smith chose to record “But Officer” under the pseudonym Sonny Knight. Aladdin was interested in him after he penned “Vicious, Vicious Vodka”. The tune was one Amos Milburn went on to record in 1954. Sonny Knight went on to record a few records on the Specialty label in 1955.
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#497: The Actress by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: April 1962
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Actress”
Lyrics: “The Actress”
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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#498: Sunshine Girl by The Parade
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
2 weeks Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com: “Sunshine Girl”
Lyrics: “Sunshine Girl”
Jerry Riopelle was born in Detroit in 1941, and raised in Tampa, Florida. He moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from high school. And he played drums for the Hollywood Argyles. He became a staff writer for Screen Gems. He was subsequently hired by Phil Spector as both a staff writer and producer. A number of the songs he wrote, and others he produced, made the Billboard Hot 100. He wrote songs that were recorded by Herb Alpert, the American Breed, Joan Baez, Brewer & Shipley, Rita Coolidge, Kenny Loggins, Meat Loaf, Leon Russell, Shango, John Travolta and the We Five. Riopelle also composed songs for both film and television. He produced a record titled “Home Of The Brave” for Bonnie & The Treasures in 1965 which peaked at #77 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was also recorded by Jody Miller whose version was a Top Ten hit in Vancouver (BC). In 1966 he also produced a Top 40 hit for April Stevens and Nino Tempo titled “All Strung Out”.
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#504: Too Late To Worry by Babs Tino
Peak Month: July 1962
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Too Late To Worry”
There is next to nothing online to be found about Babs Tino. She was from Philadelphia and composed her debut single, on Cameo Records, titled “My Honeybun” in 1957. One of the few narrative threads is found in the liner notes from the 1997 Ace Records album, Early Girls Vol. 2. The liner notes reveal: “Babs Tino had the looks and the talent but failed to get the breaks and therefore barely qualifies as a footnote to a footnote in the history books. Having made a solitary single for Cameo Records in 1957, it seems she did not record again until 1961 when she signed with Kapp Records and had six singles released between then and 1963. Owner Dave Kapp was a pillar of New York’s musical establishment, a man with strongly held views on the linear alignment of musical notes in relation to pitch and tempo, and no-one got through the door at Kapp unless they could count bars and sing in tune. The best arrangers/songwriters (including Bacharach and Leiber & Stoller) were assigned to Tino’s sessions but only her third single, ‘Forgive me’, made any sort of impression ‘bubbling’ under the Hot 100 for one week in 1962 and gaining a UK release.”
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#505: Pledge Of Love by Mitchell Torok
Peak Month: May 1957
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Pledge Of Love”
Lyrics: “Pledge Of Love”
In 1929 Mitchell Torok was born in Houston, Texas. His parents were immigrants from Hungary. Torok learned the guitar at the end of elementary school. A natural athlete, Mitch went to university in Nacogdoches, Texas, on a football and baseball scholarship. While at university he was hired to write a song to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Cononco Oil Company. He also cut his first record in the late 40s while hosting a radio show in Lufkin, two hours northeast of Houston, and another radio show in the Houston suburb of Rosenberg.
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