#1100: Too Many Rules by Connie Francis
Peak Month: July 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube.com: “Too Many Rules”
Lyrics: “Too Many Rules”
Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero was born on December 12, 1938. Francis was born in the Italian Down Neck neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. She spent her firsts years as an infant and toddler in Brooklyn before the family moved back to New Jersey during her childhood. From the age of three, George Franconero recognized his daughter’s promising talent and insisted she start taking accordion lessons. However, her musical ingenuity wasn’t advanced by playing the accordion. An impoverished roofer, her father convinced Concetta to appear on stage at the age of four at the Olympic Amusement Park in Irvington, New Jersey. She played her accordion and then sang Anchors Aweigh in English and O Solo Mio in Italian. When she was ten years old she won third place The Ted Mack Amateur Hour radio for singing St. Louis Blues at the Mosque Theatre in Newark. Growing up in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which would lead her to later record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.
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#1101: Little Lover by Joel Hill & The Strangers
Peak Month: November 1960
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Little Lover”
Joel Scott Hill played a mean electric guitar. A native of Naples, in eastern Texas, he moved to the Linda Vista district of San Diego, California, when he was eight. He picked up his first guitar a few years later and had a band by 1956 while still in high school. His cousin, Jeanette Hicks, had been working steadily as a country singer, recording for Okeh Records and performing throughout the south where she scored one hit, “Yearning“, a duet with George Jones on the Starday label in 1957. On a summer visit back home, Joel headed to Shreveport, 90 miles east of Naples. He had sharpened his six-string expertise well enough that Jeanette put him to work playing lead guitar during one of her appearances on the syndicated radio and TV show The Louisiana Hayride. It was an exciting professional debut for the teenager. Johnny Cash and Johnny Horton were also featured performers that night.
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#1105: You’re A Very Lovely Woman by the Merry-Go-Round
Peak Month: October 1967
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #94
YouTube.com: “You’re A Very Lovely Woman”
Lyrics: “You’re A Very Lovely Woman”
In early 1967 a pop band called The Merry-Go-Round were formed in Los Angeles. It featured singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes, drummer Joel Larson, lead guitarist Gary Kato and Bill Rinehart on bass. The band released just one album in the spring of ’67 called The Merry-Go-Round. Their debut release was a single called “Live“. It charted well in a number of radio markets in California including San Bernardino (#3), Oxnard (#2), Indio (#3), San Diego (#5), Los Angeles (#3), Redding (#2), Fresno (#3), Modesto (#3) and San Francisco (#6). The song also went Top Ten in radio markets in Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Massachusetts and Arizona. Though their debut single didn’t crack the Top 30 in Seattle, it climbed to #1 in Vancouver in may of ’67. The Merry-Go-Round performed at the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in 1967 on both days of the music festival. They closed the show on Saturday June 10 and were the second to the show closer on Sunday June 11. This music festival was a template for another festival later that month, the Monterey Pop Festival.
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#1106: Come Back to Me My Love by Mark Dinning
Peak Month: September 1960
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Come Back To Me My Love”
Lyrics: “Come Back To Me My Love”
In 1933 Max Edward Dinning was born in the town of Manchester, Oklahoma, a hamlet of about 275 people some 70 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas. After he became the youngest of nine children in the Dinning family, they moved to a farm near Nashville, Tennessee. His family was musical and three of his older sisters became country music trio billed as the Dinning Sisters. They performed from the early 40’s through the 1950’s. In 1950 Mark Dinning learned to play the electric guitar and pursued a career recording and performing country music on stage. He sang songs like “Streets of Laredo” which got him a recording contract in 1957. Wesley Rose, an MGM producer, got Dinning a regional hit in Tennessee in January 1959 called “The Black Eyed Gypsy” which peaked at #3 in Memphis.
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#1107: Animal Crackers (In Cellophane Boxes) by Gene Pitney
Peak Month: April 1967
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #106
YouTube.com: “Animal Crackers”
Lyrics: “Animal Crackers”
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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#1141: Cherry Pie by Tri-Lads
Peak Month: March 1958
4 weeks on Red Robinson Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Cherry Pie”
Lyrics: “Cherry Pie”
In 1938, Billy Reynolds Eustis was born in Harden City, Oklahoma. This is a town nearly two hours southeast of Oklahoma City. He was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Eustis graduated Tulsa Central High School same year as Oklahoma City native, J. J. Cale. In 1957, during his senior year in Tulsa High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Billy Eustis (pictured on the right in the photo below) teamed up with Jim Scott, Mary Hazelton and Dan Smith to perform in the teen vocal group The Countabulies.
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#1429: Ronnie by Marcy Joe
Peak Month: June 1961
7 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #81
YouTube.com link: “Ronnie”
In 1944, Marcy Rae Sockel was born in Pittsburgh. She grew up in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In her teens, each Saturday, for four consecutive years she took transit to the city center. At the Carlton House Hotel she’d take singing lessons from songwriter and co-owner of Robbee Records, Lennie Martin. The year before Martin had produced the Top 30 hit “Pennies From Heaven” by The Skyliners. When she turned seventeen, Marcy Joe wrote a song about her boyfriend Howard. She called it “Ronnie”. Martin was impressed with the song and quickly composed an arrangement for the tune. He produced a recording session of “Ronnie” at Pittsburgh’s United Recording Service studio and got local Robbee Record artists Lugee & the Lions to sing back up. Lugee & the Lions were comprised of Lou “Lugee” Sacco (later known as Lou Christie), Amy Sacco (Lou’s older sister), Kay Chick and Bill Fabec. In March 1961 the song was released.
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#1108: Oh Deed I Do by Elyse Weinberg
Peak Month: June 1969
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Record World ~ #101
YouTube.com: “Oh Deed I Do”
Lyrics: “Oh Deed I Do”
Elyse Weinberg was born in 1946. In the 1968, the Toronto born Weinberg, now living in California, released her self-titled debut to much success. The album, Elyse, hit #31 on the Billboard 200 album chart. She appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, in Newsweek and the L.A. Free Press, and at Shaffer Music Festival in New York City. Even Cher choose to use one of her song’s “Band of Thieves” on the soundtrack to Cher’s acting debut in the 1969 film Chastity. However, a string of bad luck — and the fact that Cher for some reason instead credited the song to Sonny instead — led Elyse to experience only minor success in the years that followed before she drifted into seclusion and changed her name to Cori Bishop.
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#1113: Walkin’ Proud by Pete Klint Quintet
Peak Month: October 1967
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Walkin’ Proud”
The Pete Klint Quintet, formed in 1965 and was managed by Tom Jolas of Mason City, Iowa. The original line up for the quintet included: Pete Klint on guitar, bass player Jamie Wornsom, drummer Bill “Mo” Morisky, keyboard player John Peterson and backing guitarist Mike Hesselink. Under the leadership of the dynamic Larry “Pete” Klint, these Iowa recording stars established themselves as one of the top concert attractions throughout the entire Central U.S.A. In 1965 the band members were all 17 years old. The group was named as Lake Okoboji’s Roof Garden Balfroom’s “Band Of The Year” in 1967. At that time, this was one of the most prestigious awards that a group could acquire. In addition, they received several national citations from the National Ballrooms Operators Association (NBOA) for their professionalism. If you were a top Iowa or Midwest ballroom, from the Roof Garden, to the Danceland, to the Laramar, to Matters Ballroom, the Pete Klint Quintet rocked them all. The quintet’s leader, Larry Klindt, used the stage name Pete Klint.
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#1114: The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix
Peak Month: August 1967
5 weeks on CKLG chart
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Wind Cries Mary”
Lyrics: “The Wind Cries Mary”
In 1942 Johnny Allen Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington. His grandparents, Nora and Ross Hendrix immigrated from America to Vancouver in 1911. There they raised Jimi’s father, James Allen Hendrix, who moved to Seattle in 1941 where he met Lucille Jeter, Jimi’s mother. In 1946, Johnny Allen Hendrix’s name was changed to James “Jimmy” Marshall Hendrix. As a child when he was asked to sweep the floor with a broom, his parents and grandparents would find him in his room strumming the broom like he was playing a guitar. He was given a guitar when he was 15 years old. Despite a limited mainstream exposure of four years while billed as Jimi Hendrix, he is widely considered one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century.
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