#1249: That’s When Your Heartaches Begin by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: April 1957
3 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
YouTube.com: “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”
Lyrics: “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”
On July 18, 1953, Elvis Presley recorded “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin” at a Sun Records session in Memphis, Tennessee. He paid $3.98 ($35.26 in 2017 dollars) for studio time to allow recording of a double-sided single. The demo he recorded at the time he was 18 years old. On the A-side, he recorded “My Happiness”, later made famous by Connie Francis in 1958. He would later revisit the song on at least two occasions. The first was as the 38th of 47 songs recorded on December 4, 1956, during the Million Dollar Quartet sessions on December 4, 1956. In these sessions Elvis is one of four musicians playing along with Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. His final version of the song was recorded at the Radio Recorders Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles on January 13, 1957. It was the B-side to “All Shook Up”.Continue reading →
#1257: Pink Chiffon by Mitchell Torok
Peak Month: July 1960
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 #60
YouTube.com: “Pink Chiffon”
Lyrics: “Pink Chiffon”
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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#1258: The Mansion You Stole by Johnny Horton
Peak Month: December 1960
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #8 CFUN
Peak Position #7 CKWX
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Mansion You Stole”
Lyrics: “The Mansion You Stole”
John LeGale Horton was born on April 30, 1925, in Los Angeles, born to migrant fruit pickers. He spent most of his life growing up in East Texas when the family wasn’t back in California picking fruit. A great athlete, twenty-six colleges offered him basketball scholarships after his graduation from high school. Horton chose to study geology for a while in Seattle. Then in 1948 he went north to Alaska to pan for gold. While there he began to write songs. Back in the lower forty-eight, Horton was a winner at a talent contest in Henderson, Texas. This prompted him to move back to California and seek a career in music. He was a guest on Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree on KXLA-TV in Pasadena. This spawned The Singing Fisherman, Horton’s own half-hour show. He got married to a girl he met in Hollywood named Donna Cook. In high demand to perform on the Louisiana Hayride, they relocated to Shreveport, Louisiana. Touring was hard on the newlyweds and Horton got divorced.
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#1261: Igmoo by Stonewall Jackson
Peak Month: October 1959
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 #95
YouTube.com: “Igmoo (The Pride of South Central High)”
Lyrics: “Igmoo (The Pride of South Central High)”
In 1959 country and western singer, Stonewall Jackson, had a Top Ten hit in the spring of that year called “Waterloo” that spent 13 weeks on the record survey on CKWX peaking at #4. Jackson was born in Tabor City, North Carolina, about 35 miles northwest of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on the border dividing the Carolinas. After serving for four years in the US Navy, Stonewall Jackson moved to Nashville and in time he got an audition with the Grand Ole Opry. He got a break when he recorded a song written by George Jones called “Life To Go”. The song Stonewall Jackson sung was from the perspective of a murderer who has been in jail for eighteen years and will remain for life. It peaked in 1958 at #2 on the Billboard Country chart.
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#1268: Keep Your Love Locked by Paul Petersen
Peak Month: June 1962
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
Peak Position on Cashbox ~ #95
YouTube.com link: “Keep Your Love Locked”
Lyrics: “Keep Your Love Locked”
Paul William Petersen was born in Glendale, California, in 1945. He started his career at the age of eight and began appearing on the Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. From there he was cast as Jeff Stone on the Donna Reed Show where he starred in that role from 1958 to 1966. When he first started playing Jeff Stone, Paul was just 4’3″ tall, which is one reason he got the job. Donna herself was a petite 5’4″. Paul got this part the day after he turned thirteen. While appearing on the Donna Reed Show both he and his sister, Mary Stone, sang songs that would become hit singles. The actress playing Mary Stone was child actor Shelley Fabares who had a number one hit in 1962 called “Johnny Angel.” Paul Petersen also sang songs in the Donna Reed Show including “She Can’t Find Her Keys”, “My Dad” and “Keep Your Love Locked”.
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#1274: Abdul’s Party by Larry Verne
Peak Month: April 1961
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #113 (Bubbling under the Hot 100)
YouTube.com: “Abdul’s Party”
In 1936 Larry Vern Erickson was born February 8, 1936 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The worked as a Hollywood stuntman. At some point he changed his name to Larry Verne. While in Hollywood Verne got introduced to songwriters Al DeLory, Fred Darian and Joseph Van Winkle, who worked across the hallway in the studio where Verne was employed. They’d just composed a song called “Mr. Custer,” and asked Larry Verne to make a recording. Verne debuted on the pop charts and “Mr. Custer” soon became a number one hit in October 1960. The song was about a guy at the back of the 7th Calvary in the US Army who didn’t want to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn, June 25-26, 1876, against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians. To try and settle his nerves the infantryman makes some bad jokes about “wild injuns.” The song went to #1 for two weeks on CKWX in September 1960.
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#1287: Put Your Arms Around Me Honey by Ray Smith
Peak Month: May 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #91
YouTube.com: “Put Your Arms Around Me Honey”
Lyrics: “Put Your Arms Around Me Honey”
Ray Smith was born in 1934 in the hamlet of Melber, Kentucky, thirteen miles from the town of Paducah where the Ohio River and the Tennessee River meet. Smith was the seventh son of a sharecropper who, in turn, was also the seventh son in Smith’s grandfather’s family. His dad later worked at the atomic bomb plant in Paducah. Smith left his home at the age of twelve. He worked as a gopher on a Coca-Cola Truck and then operated an oven at Kirchoff’s Bread plant in Paducah. As he grew up Ray Smith worked as a curb hop at Price’s Barbecue at 34th and Broadway where he would serve U.S. (KY) Senator Alben W. Barkley, who later became President Harry Truman’s Vice-President. Next he worked as a sole back tacker and tack machine operator at the International Shoe Company. Smith was in basic training in 1952 after joining the US Air Force at Sampson Air Force Base in Syracuse, New York. He sang the Hank Williams song “Lovesick Blues”, at his sergeant’s command, while in his shorts and shower clogs. His rendition got him entered in the army base’s talent show where he won first prize. From that day on he took an interest in music. He taught himself to play harmonica, guitar and piano.
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#1291: Hard Rock Mine by Dorsey Burnette
Peak Month: March 1961
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
WX DISC-overy of the Week ~ February 11, 1961
YouTube.com: “Hard Rock Mine”
Dorsey Burnette was born in 1932 in Memphis, Tennessee. He played bass in his younger brother Johnny Burnette’s rockabilly Rock ‘n Roll Trio. Dorsey became a solo artist and had a few minor hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His biggest hit was in 1960 with “Tall Oak Tree” that peaked in the Top 30 in the USA and #15 in Vancouver. Dorsey Burnette is best known for writing over 350 songs. His most well known songs were recorded by teen idol, Ricky Nelson. When he was six his dad bought him a Gene Autry guitar, along with one for his younger brother, Johnny. Dorsey had a temper and was on a path to becoming what was then called a juvenile delinquent. He put his temper to better use competing as a Golden Gloves boxer. He met another boxer when he was 17 years old at the 1949 championship named Paul Burlison. They discovered a mutual interest in music. However, Burlison was inducted into the US Army in 1951. Dorsey and his brother began appearing on Memphis radio stations and playing gigs for beer money, kicks and girls.
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#1296: Vickie Lee by The Untouchables
Peak Month: October 1960
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Vickie Lee”
Sheridan “Rip” Spencer was a student at Jordan High School in Los Angeles. His cousin, Brice Coefield, went to school at L.A. High. The cousins sang together and they chose to form a doo-wop group called the Sabers. In the fall of 1955 they had an audition with Cal-West Records. Rip was the second tenor, Brice was baritone and the bass singer was Walter Carter. Their recording, “Always Forever”, was a song Rip had written and it didn’t have a b-side. When they went home they got a classmate of Brice’s named Billy Hamlin Spicer to be the first tenor. The record failed to chart and the Sabers changed their name to the Chavelles.
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#1302: Circle Game by Buffy Sainte-Marie
Peak Month: October 1970
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Circle Game”
Lyrics: “Circle Game”
In 1941 Beverley Jean Santamaria was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Her father was Italian and her mother was English. The family changed their surname after WWII to “Sainte-Marie” due to anti-Italian sentiment stemming from the war. Buffy studied teaching and Asian philosophy at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in the late ’50s. From the 1963 she told the Vancouver Sun she was born on the Piapot Cree Reserve in southwestern Saskatchewan and was “a Cree Indian.” A CBC investigation in 2023 discovered she was not born in Canada.
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