#944: Chattanooga Choo Choo by Floyd Cramer
Peak Month: February 1962
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
CKWX Top of the Hot Prospects ~ January 13, 1962
YouTube.com: “Chattanooga Choo Choo”
Lyrics: “Chattanooga Choo Choo”
In 1933 Floyd Cramer was born outside of Shreveport, Louisiana. He grew up in Huttig, Arkansas. At the age of five he taught himself to play piano after his parents bought him the keyboard. Before he started grade school, young Floyd was performing in front of audiences in public. After high school he moved back to Shreveport and got a gig with KWKH radio and the Louisiana Hayride. Country stars like Webb Pierce and Red Sovine would appear on the show. Cramer on piano, and guitar players, Faron Young and Jimmy Day, were a trio that backed up ‘Hayride performers. In the early 50’s Cramer toured with Hank Williams and next with Elvis Presley. Cramer released his first single record in 1953.
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#983: Goody Goody by Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald:
Peak Month: September 1957
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Goody Goody”
Lyrics: “Goody Goody”
Ella Fitzgerald first came to national attention with her #1 hit in 1938, “A Tisket, A Tasket.” Before Billboard Magazine began in the 1940’s the song was listed at #1 on the Record Buying Guide and the weekly radio broadcasts of Your Hit Parade, a radio a radio institution on NBC, started in 1935, that billed itself as “an accurate, authentic tabulation of America’s taste in popular music.” She was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917. Ella’s mother Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald and a second lover, Joseph Da Silva, moved to Yonkers, New York, in 1920. Joe dug ditches and was a part-time chauffeur, while Tempie worked at a laundromat. At age 15 both her mother and Joe died in quick succession, her mom from complications arising from an automobile accident and Joe from a heart attack. In 1934, Ella won a draw to complete in an amateur contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Originally planning a dance routine, a troupe that performed ahead of her were so spectacular she spontaneously decided to sing instead. Her performance brought the crowd to its feet and she did an encore.
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#953: Kathaleen by Sonny James
Peak Month: March 1958
4 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson’s Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Kathaleen”
James Hugh Loden was born on a farm outside of Hackleburg, Alabama, in 1928. Sonny remembers from the age of three how people would gather in each others’ homes to play music amid the bronze glow of Aladdin and coal-oil lamps. He recalls “That’s when Pop decided, ‘Well, I’ll give him something that he can at least play around on.’ That’s when he cut the molasses bucket in half and used the bottom of it and put a neck on it and then reversed it. It became the top of a little banjo, but it was tuned like a mandolin- So then I graduated to a mandolin and long about that time -I must have been about three or something – I began singing.” Now that he could play the mandolin and sing James was given the nickname “Sonny boy”. In 1933, with his parents and a sister, Sonny began to appear regularly on Saturday nights on a WMSD radio in Muscle Shoals in northwestern Alabama. Soon the family was billed as Sonny Loden and the Southerners. An adopted daughter also joined the family to make them a singing group of five. In 1946 the family moved to anchor a program with radio station WPTF in Raleigh, North Carolina. James, now 18, roomed with two musicians who were in a band called Johnny and Jack’s Tennessee Mountain Boys, Chet Atkins and fiddler Paul Warren. “We’d just pick up a storm” James recalled.
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#955: Memphis by Donnie Brooks
Peak Month: March 1961
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #90
CFUN Twin Pick February 18, 1961
YouTube.com: “Memphis”
Lyrics: “Memphis”
In 1936 John Dee Abohosh was born in Dallas, Texas. His family moved to Ventura, California when he was in his youth. In his teens he was adopted by his stepfather, John D. Fairecloth, who supported young John in developing his voice. John Dee Abohosh was than given the surname Fairecloth. While growing up in southern California, he studied under the same vocal coach who previously instructed Eddie Fisher. In high school John Dee Fairecloth made his professional debut on a classical music showcase broadcast by Ventura-based station KBCC. After graduating from high school, Fairecloth earned his living singing at local clubs, fairs, and weddings, embracing rock & roll and in 1957 signing to local indie Fable Records to cut his debut single, “You Gotta Walk the Line”, credited to Johnny Faire. He was twenty-one years old.
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#959: One Track Mind by The Knickerbockers
Peak Month: April 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
YouTube.com: “One Track Mind”
Lyrics: “One Track Mind”
The Knickerbockers were a pop/rock group, best remembered for their 1966 Beatles sound-alike hit single, “Lies,” which peaked at #20 in the USA and #6 in Vancouver. Buddy Randell’s lead vocal sounded similar to John Lennon, as well as the vocal whoops, before Beau Charles guitar solo. Charles guitar also reminded radio listeners to Paul McCartney’s guitar playing. The Knickerbockers was a band that formed in 1962 in Bergenfield, New Jersey. The band consisted of vocalist and guitar player, Beau Charles, his brother John Charles on bass and vocals and, by 1964 they had a permanent vocalist and saxophone player named William “Buddy” Randell. The Charles brothers birth names were Robert (born 1944) and John Carlos Cecchino. Buddy Randell had earlier been a member of the Rockin’ Saints and the Royal Teens. The later group had enjoyed a hit in 1958 titled “Short Shorts.” Jimmy Walker was the bands’ drummer. The bandmates took their name from Knickerbocker Road, which ran through the town next to Bergenfield, two miles to the east. Knickerbocker Road stretched six miles between Englewood, NJ, and Closter, NJ, west of the Hudson River and across from the Bronx and Yonkers.
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#963: Judy by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: July 1961
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9 ~ LP Cut
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #78 (in 1967)
YouTube.com: “Judy”
Lyrics: “Judy”
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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#966: Drive In Show by Eddie Cochran
Peak Month: July 1957
4 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #82
YouTube.com: “Drive In Show”
Lyrics: “Drive In Show”
Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in 1938. His family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1951 where Eddie attended Bell Gardens Junior High. While there he became friends with Connie ‘Guybo’ Smith. Smith was already a promising musical talent who played bass, steel guitar and mandolin. Eddie and Connie began to jam together and gave a concert at their junior high school. Connie “Guybo” Smith went on to become Cochran’s bass player and was one of the musicians heard on most records during Eddie’s brief professional career. In 1953, while still in junior high school, Eddie met another musician named Chuck Foreman. The two experimented with Foreman’s two-track tape recorder. The pair made recordings of a number of songs including “Stardust,” “The Poor People Of Paris,” “Hearts of Stone” and the “Cannonball Rag.” Cochran graduated from Bell Gardens Junior High in 1954.
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#968: Don’t Knock The Rock by Bill Haley And His Comets
Peak Month: January 1957
4 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Don’t Knock The Rock”
Lyrics: “Don’t Knock The Rock”
Bill Haley was born in Michigan in 1925. His dad played the mandolin and banjo while his mom played the piano. In a story Haley would relate years later in a biography, he recalled as a child when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. Sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album, Rock Around The Clock, describe Bill Haley’s early life and emerging career: “Bill got his first professional job at the age of 13, playing and entertaining at an auction for the fee of $1 a night. Very soon after this he formed a group of equally enthusiastic youngsters and managed to get quite a few local bookings for his band.”
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#969: Only With You by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: March 1965
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Only With You”
Lyrics: “Only With 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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#970: Red Red Wine by Neil Diamond
Peak Month: May 1968
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
1 week Hitbound on CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #62
YouTube.com: “Red Red Wine”
Lyrics: “Red Red Wine”
Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn in 1941. His parents were Russian and Polish immigrants and both Jewish. His dad was a dry-goods merchant. When he was in high school he met Barbra Streisand in a Freshman Chorus and Choral Club. Years later they would become friends. When he was sixteen Diamond was sent to a Jewish summer camp called Surprise Lake Camp in upstate New York. While there he heard folk singer, Pete Seeger, perform in concert. That year Diamond got a guitar and, influenced by Pete Seeger, began to write poems and song lyrics. While he was in his Senior year in high school, Sunbeam Music Publishing gave Neil Diamond an initial four month contract composing songs for $50 a week (US $413 in 2017 dollars). and he dropped out of college to accept it.
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