#740: Johnny Willow by Fred Darian
Peak Month: August 1961
8 weeks on CKWX chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #96
YouTube.com: “Johnny Willow”
Lyrics: “Johnny Willow”
Fred Darian was born in Detroit in June 1927. After college he began to sing in nightclubs and on TV starting in 1951. “The corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street was the hub of the music industry, a gathering place where hopeful songwriters, music publishers, producers, musicians, singers, disc jockeys and show business executives gathered and congregated daily. Fred Darian entered onto the scene as an ambitious singer, working the graveyard shift, as a fry cook at Coffee Dan’s restaurant. He made the rounds during the days, by performing songs as demonstrations for songwriters to present to record companies and music publishers. His ability to quickly read and perform the songs, without mistakes, made him even more in demand. This was a time when records were cut directly onto acetate, before the advent of tape. More than one take on a song would prove costly to the songwriter. Fred earned a reputation for his ability to interpret a song accurately, with one take.
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#741: So Long Baby by Del Shannon
Peak Month: October 1961
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube.com link: “So Long Baby”
Lyrics: “So Long Baby”
Charles Weedon Westover was born on December 30, 1934. He was known professionally as Del Shannon. Westover was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He learned ukulele and guitar and listened to country music. He was drafted into the Army in 1954, and while in Germany played guitar in a band called The Cool Flames. When his service ended, he returned to Battle Creek, Michigan. There he worked as a carpet salesman and as a truck driver in a furniture factory. He found part-time work as a rhythm guitarist in singer Doug DeMott’s group called Moonlight Ramblers, working at the Hi-Lo Club. Ann Arbor deejay Ollie McLaughlin heard the band. In July 1960, Westover signed to become a recording artist and composer on the Bigtop label. Westover changed his name to Del Shannon. It was a combination of Shannon Kavanagh (a wannabe wrestler who patronized the Hi-Lo Club) with Del, derived from the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, which Westover’s carpet store boss drove.
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#744: I Can’t Stop Loving You by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: February 1962
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Can’t Stop Loving You” Roy Orbison
YouTube.com link: “I Can’t Stop Loving You” Ray Charles
Lyrics: “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
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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#745: Forgive Me by Babs Tino
Peak Month: August 1962
10 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #117
YouTube.com: “Forgive Me”
Lyrics: “Forgive Me”
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. Her fifth single, ‘Keep Away From Other Girls’, was successfully covered in the UK by Helen Shapiro.”
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#751: Simple Song Of Freedom by Tim Hardin
Peak Month: August-September 1969
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube.com: “Simple Song Of Freedom”
Lyrics: “Simple Song Of Freedom”
Tim Hardin was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1941. Before he was born, Hardin’s mother had previously been employed as a classical pianist. And his father had earned a living as a bass player. But it was his strict grandmother who spent much of the time raising him. Hardin considered his childhood an unhappy one. After he dropped out of high school in 1960, he joined the United States Marines. Like numbers of other soldiers, Tim Hardin developed a heroin addiction. Once he was discharged in 1961, Hardin got involved in the folk music scenes in Greenwich Village and in Boston in the early ‘60’s. He enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Art in Greenwich Village. However, he was expelled due to skipping too many classes. In 1964, Hardin got to audition with Columbia Records. However, he was still using heroin and his audition was a fiasco and he got no contract with the label. Fortunately, Tim Hardin found his way to Verve-Forecast Records by the end of 1965. He released his first single in February 1966 titled “How Can We Hang On To A Dream?” The single was his first from his Hardin debut album titled Tim Hardin 1. It was a hit in England and the Netherlands. One of the other tracks on the album was “Reason To Believe”, was a hit for Rod Stewart in the early 1970’s.
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#753: The Gypsy Rover by The Highwaymen
Peak Month: December 1961
7 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #42
YouTube.com: “The Gypsy Rover”
“The Gypsy Rover” lyrics
Dave Louis Fisher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1940. In high school, Fisher had been part of a doo-wop group named The Academics. In 1958, Fisher helped form The Clansmen as a collegiate folk quintet of four freshmen at Weslayan University in Middletown, Connecticut. According to Joseph Murrells in his book, The Book of Golden Discs, Dave Fisher was the quintet’s lead singer and arranger. The other original members of the group were tenor Bob Burnett (born in Providence, RI), bass Steve Butts (born in New York City), baritone Chan Daniels (born in Argentina) and guitarist Steve Trott (born in Glen Ridge, NJ). The name, The Clansmen, they reasoned, was suggestive of Irish and Scottish clans, reflecting the Celtic roots of the songs the folk group performed. However, in the Civil Rights era with growing awareness of the violent acts and images of the Ku Klux Klan (known as the Klansmen), The Clansmen was not going to be a wise choice for the folk group to bill themselves if they wanted to go far. When they signed with United Artists at the end of 1959, they were given a new name, The Highwaymen. The name was inspired by the lines from lines by British poet, Alfred Noyes, “A highwayman comes riding…riding…riding,” from his 1906 poem The Highwayman.
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#754: Down At Lulu’s by The Ohio Express
Peak Month: August 1968
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #33
YouTube.com: “Down At Lulu’s”
Lyrics: “Down At Lulu’s”
The Ohio Express was a brand name for a group of studio musicians in New York City with lead vocals on the single releases from 1968 to 1969 by Joey Levine. At the same time the musicians who toured as the Ohio Express appearing live in concert were a different group altogether. In 1967, Super K Productions arranged a contract with a rock group from Mansfield, Ohio, called Sir Timothy and the Royals. With no group available to promote the debut singles by The Ohio Express (as they were anonymous studio musicians in New York City) Sir Timothy and the Royals became the touring band for Ohio Express concerts. The live and in concert version of The Ohio Express was made up of rhythm guitarist Doug Grassel, vocalist and lead guitar player Dale Powers, bass player Dean Kastran, keyboard player Jim Pfahler and drummer Tim Corwin. The Ohio Express’ debut single, “Beg, Borrow And Steal,” was actually a re-mix of the Rare Breed recording from 1966. Rare Breed were also a group of anonymous studio musicians in New York City and the Rare Breed name for the studio musicians became obsolete by 1967.
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#757: Skip A Rope by Henson Cargill
Peak Month: March 1968
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Skip A Rope”
Lyrics: “Skip A Rope”
Henson Cargill was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His grandfather was a liberal mayor elected several times in the 1920’s who was opposed to the Ku Klux Klan. Henson Cargill studied veterinary medicine at a state university in Fort Collins, Colorado. Returning to Oklahoma City, he eventually became a deputy sheriff. At that time he was invited to play with a group called The Kimberleys. In 1962 he became the host of a TV show called Country Hayride. This led to an opportunity to record some songs in Nashville in 1967. One of these songs had been passed over by other recording artists. The name of the song was “Skip A Rope”.
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#760: Bobby by Neil Scott
Peak Month: July 1961
7 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
YouTube.com: “Bobby”
Neil Scott was the pseudonym for Neil E. Bogart. He was born in 1943 in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. Born Neil Scott Bogatz was raised in Brooklyn. Neil’s mother, Ruth, had high expectations of her Neil and his baby sister, Bonnie. His dad, Al, worked for the United States Navy. When Al was stationed thousands of miles away, raising Neil as a toddler was stressful for his mother. When Al Bogartz returned from World War II, he began to work as a postman. The family listened to Neil’s parents records and when they got an RCA TV set. Neil would imitate what was going on during a variety show. If there was dancing on the TV screen, Neil tried to do the dance steps. If there were comical jokes, Neil committed them to memory. Then he would tell them to his sister so effectively it would make Bonnie laugh. The family moved into the Glenwood Projects once these six story apartment buildings were completed in 1950. With 2,700 residents from many different backgrounds living in 1,186 apartments, there were inevitably conflicts between neighbors.
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#763: Tonight’s The Night by The Shirelles
Peak Month: October 1960
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #39
YouTube.com: “Tonight’s The Night”
Lyrics: “Tonight’s The Night”
The Shirelles were a girl group that formed in 1957 in order to enter a talent show at their high school. The foursome were Shirley Owens, Beverly Lee, Addie “Micki” Harris and Doris Coley. Owens was born Shirley Alston Reeves in Henderson, North Carolina, in 1941. Harris was born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1940. Lee was also born in Passaic, in 1941. Coley was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1941. Their performance at that 1957 high school talent show led to a record contract with Decca Records. In 1958 they had a minor hit titled “I Met Him on a Sunday”. It was written by the foursome. The song concerned a girl who meets a guy on a Sunday. She misses him the next day, goes out on a date with him on Wednesday, kisses him on Thursday. And by Saturday she says “bye bye baby.” Such were the fates of some teens in the late 50’s checking out if there momentary crushes were solid enough to go steady.
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