#830: Wait For Me by The Playmates

Peak Month: October 1960
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #37
“YouTube.com: “Wait For Me”
Lyrics: “Wait For Me”

The Nitwits were a vocal group that began performing in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1952. They were a trio consisting of Chic Hetti (born Carl Cicchetti) on piano and lead vocals, drummer and vocalist Donny Conn (born Donald Clapps), and Morey Carr (born Morey Cohen) on vocals and bass. All three were born in the Waterbury area. Each had attended the University of Connecticut in the early 50’s and decided to form a comedy group that also sang songs. They toured lounges in the USA and Canada. Their routine and material resembled another vocal group from the mid-50’s into the early 60’s named the Four Preps. Over five years of touring, the Nitwits shifted their focus from comedy skits with songs to being primarily a  vocal group with comedic banter between tunes. In the spring of 1957, the Nitwits got a contract with Roulette Records, becoming the labels first vocal group. They changed their name from the Nitwits to the Playmates. In the middle of the calypso craze, they released an album titled Playmates Visit the West Indies. In 1958 they had a #4 novelty hit called “Beep, Beep”. The group appeared on the Milton Berle Show in December. The single was their third Top 30 record. Since the song mentioned the Nash Rambler in the lyrics, it created a bump in sales for that model. “Beep Beep” sold a million records and got The Playmates many invitations to tour around the USA and Canada. From 1958 to 1962 they charted ten songs on the Billboard Hot 100.

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#1447: Tall Men by Johnny Cash

Peak Month: November 1961
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Tall Men”
Lyrics: “Tall Men”

John R. “Johnny” Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, in 1932. At the age of five he started working with his sharecropping parents and siblings in the cotton fields. During his childhood his family home was flooded twice. He began singing and playing guitar by the age of 12. He moved to Detroit in his late teens for work. He was drafted and served in the U.S. Air Force as a Morse Code Intercept Operator for Soviet Army transmissions at a base in Germany from 1950 to 1954. When he was discharged from the military he and his new wife, Liberto, moved to Memphis. Cash worked as an appliance salesman while trying to get a break in the music industry. Cash got to audition with Sun Records in 1954. He had his first charting single on the Billboard Country charts in 1955 titled “Cry! Cry! Cry!” Subsequently single releases, “So Doggone Lonesome” and “I Walk The Line” climbed to #4 and #1 on the Country charts. The latter hit also was his first debut on the Billboard pop charts where it made it to #17 in 1956.
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#831: A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

Peak Month: February 1965
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #31
YouTube.com “A Change Is Gonna Come”
Lyrics: “A Change Is Gonna Come”

Samuel Cook was born in 1931 Clarksdale, Mississippi. His father was a Baptist pastor. After the family moved to Chicago, Cook joined a children’s choir called The Singing Children at the age of nine. At the age of 17 Cook joined an established gospel group formed in 1926 called the Soul Stirrers. He also added an “e” to his surname, becoming Sam Cooke. He honed his vocal abilities further and was signed to Los Angeles based Keen Records in 1957. It was there he recorded his biggest hit, “You Send Me.” It climbed to #1 in November 1957. Cooke got national exposure on the Guy Mitchell Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.

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#834: Summer Wine by Nancy Sinatra

Peak Month: January 1967
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #49
YouTube.com link: “Summer Wine”
Lyrics: “Summer Wine”

Nancy Sinatra is the daughter of crooner Frank Sinatra and was born in New Jersey in 1940. When she was 5 years old he recorded a song about her titled “Nancy, With the Laughing Face”. At the age of twenty she began her career appearing on The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis. This was a television special on the occasion of Elvis Presley’s discharge from the U.S. Army after being drafted to into the services in 1958. Nancy was sent by her father to meet Elvis at the airport in front of a pack of photographers. In 1960, she also got married to singer and actor, Tommy Sands.
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#836: The Warmth of the Sun by The Beach Boys

Peak Month: January 1965
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “The Warmth Of The Sun”
Lyrics: “The Warmth Of The Sun”

Brian Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, in 1942. In biographer Peter Ames Carlin’s book, Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, he relates that when Brian Wilson first heard George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” it had a huge emotional impact on him. As a youngster, Wilson learned to play a toy accordion and sang in children’s choirs. In his teens he started a group with his cousin, Mike Love and his brother, Carl. His named the group Carl and the Passions in order to convince his brother to join. They had a performance at Hawthorne High School, where they attended. Among the people in the audience was Al Jardine, another classmate. Jardine was so impressed with the performance that he let the group know. Jardine would later be enlisted, along with Dennis Wilson to form the Pendletones in 1961.

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#841: Love Me Two Times by The Doors

Peak Month: January 1968
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com link: “Love Me Two Times”
Lyrics: “Love Me Two Times”

The Doors were a psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles featuring Jim Morrison on vocals, Robbie Kreiger on guitar, Ray Manzarek on keyboards and drummer John Densmore. In 1965 Morrison and Manzarek were UCLA film students. They met each other for the first time on Venice Beach. Morrison had graduated and was living a vagabond life, sleeping on the beach, taking drugs and writing poetry. Morrison told Manzarek, “I was taking notes at a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll concert going on in my head.” Then he sang “Moonlight Drive” to Manzarek. Discovering their addition interest in music, the two decided to form a band. Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne (FL) in 1943. He was the oldest child and his father was a U.S. Naval officer. Morrison suggested the name of the band. It came from the novel by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Huxley’s novel, in turn, drew inspiration from poet William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” In that poem Blake writes: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” The Doors signed a record contract with Columbia Records in the winter of 1965-66.

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#844: And Suddenly by the Cherry People

Peak Month: September 1968
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #45
YouTube.com link: “And Suddenly”
Lyrics: “And Suddenly”

Harry Lookofsky was a trained violinist who ran a small recording studio in New York City. His son, Michael, had an aptitude for music and became his production assistant at the studio. Michael Lookofsky changed his name to Michael Brown. He gathered together some other musicians, including Bert Sommer and Estaban “Steve” Martin Caro. They created a Baroque Pop band featuring the harpsichord, and called themselves The Left Banke. Caro became the lead vocalist. The Left Banke’s first single was a Top Ten hit titled “Walk Away Renee”.  Their follow up single, “Pretty Ballerina”, climbed to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 in Vancouver. Michael Brown wanted to stay at home and write songs, like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. But the other members headed out on tours of college campuses and Brown released “Ivy Ivy”. The B-side was titled “And Suddenly.” Bert Sommer sang lead on both sides. Sommer went on to perform in the Broadway musical Hair. He was one of the performers on the opening night of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains. Bert Sommers wrote “We’re All Playing in the Same Band” while at Woodstock and later it was a minor hit single for him. Michael Brown left the band in 1967 and formed The Stories in 1970, but left just before their million seller, “Brother Louie”, was released in 1973.

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#846: Louisiana Mama by Gene Pitney

Peak Month: May 1961
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox ~ #100
YouTube.com link: “Louisiana Mama”
Lyrics: “Louisiana Mama”

Gene Pitney was born in 1940 in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a songwriter who became a pop singer, something rare at the time. Some of the songs he wrote for other recording artists include “Rubber Ball” for Bobby Vee, “He’s A Rebel” for The Crystals and “Hello Mary Lou” for Ricky Nelson. Pitney was more popular in Vancouver than in his native America. Over his career he charted 14 songs into the Top Ten in Vancouver, while he only charted four songs into the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100. Curiously, only two of these songs overlap: “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Vallance” and “I’m Gonna Be Strong”. Surprisingly “Only Love Can Break A Heart”, which peaked at #2 in the USA, stalled at #14 in Vancouver, and “It Hurts To Be In Love” stalled at #11 in Vancouver while it peaked at #7 south of the border.
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#847: I Got Burned by Ral Donner

Peak Month: March 1963
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Got Burned”

Ralph Stuart Emanuel Donner was born in Chicago in 1943. As early as age three young Ralph was performing Al Jolson songs in blackface. When he was three it was 1946, and The Jolson Story was a box office smash. At the age of eight, young Donner appeared before a Youth For Christ rally in Chicago in 1951 at Orchestra Hall. He sang a song on the radio that year by the Ink Spots titled “It’s No Secret (What God Can Do)”. When he was eleven years old he sang “The Old Rugged Cross” on WGN radio in Chicago. In his teens he entered a number of talent shows. In the fall of 1957, he formed a band called the Rockin’ Five. The group played with Sammy Davis Jr. on one occasion on a local TV station. At the age of 15, Donner was a guest at popular rock ‘n roll DJ Alan Freed’s Big Beat Rock N’ Roll Show. The show was held at the Civic Opera House in Chicago on April 26, 1958. Others on stage were Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Diamonds, Frankie Lymon, Danny & The Juniors and Chuck Berry. Prior to that concert, Ralph Donner appeared on “Time For Teens” on March 9th. He was mobbed by fans and had to be rescued by the police.

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Peak Month: November 1961
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #14
1 week Hot Prospects
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “A Thousand Feet Below”

Terry Tyler was a rockabilly singer born in Tennessee. He recorded “A Thousand Feet Below” for a small label in Philadelphia named Landa. This was a record company that mostly recorded R&B records. Landa had only one Top 40 hit among the 38 singles they released. Twenty-six of the record label’s releases occurred in 1961-62. The one hit record Landa recorded was “Get Out (And Let Me Cry)” by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes in 1965. “Get Out” peaked at #38 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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