#1384: Come Dance With Me by Eddie Quinteros

Peak Month June 1960
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #101
YouTube.com: “Come Dance With Me”
Lyrics: “Come Dance With Me”

Eddie Quinteros was born in San Francisco, California, in 1943. He started his musical career at the age of 13. At the time he was not a member of the musicians union. He was playing in a Bay area union house and got busted. After that he joined the musicians union. In 1956 he had a rock n’ roll band that did a stint in San Francisco on KPIX radio. The manager for Bobby Freeman, a singer who had the 1958 hit “Do You Wanna Dance” saw Quinteros perform shortly after Freeman’s song was starting to climb the charts. Eddie Quinteros was asked if he wanted to play guitar with them. Freeman was going to tour in Hawaii. His manager needed a guitar player who could read music. Eddie auditioned and got the job at the age of 15.

Continue reading →

#1388: Hully Gully Cha Cha Cha by Skip and Flip

Peak Month August 1960
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #109
YouTube.com: “Hully Gully Cha Cha Cha”

Gary Sanford Paxton was born Larry Wayne Stevens on May 18, 1939, to an unmarried teenage couple in Coffeyville, Kansas. Raised by foster parents, he learned the story of his birth only at 17, when his mother introduced herself while he was dining at a restaurant. In his biography, Paxton said he was molested by a neighbor when he was seven, and began writing songs at age ten. When he was eleven, he contracted spinal meningitis, and was crippled for three years. He began performing with an electric Stratocaster guitar after moving to Tucson with his family as a teenager. Paxton dropped out of high school and married 14-year-old Betty Jean Brown when he was seventeen. This was his first of several marriages.

Continue reading →

#1389: Comfy ‘N Cozy by Conway Twitty

Peak Month: May 1962
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Music Vendor ~ #120
YouTube.com: “Comfy ‘N Cozy”
Lyrics: “Comfy N Cozy”

Conway Twitty was an American Country and Western singer with three crossover pop hits on the US charts and five crossover hits on the pop charts in Vancouver. He went on to chart 58 songs in the Canadian Country charts between 1968 and 1990 (61 songs on US Country & Western charts). Born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, in 1957 he decided his real name didn’t have the right stuff for the music business and becoming a star. He looked on a map and finding Conway, Arkansas and Twitty, Texas, he put the two towns names together and became Conway Twitty. From his initial #1 hit in 1958, “It’s Only Make Believe,” 25 year old Conway Twitty became known for his blend of country, rockabilly and rock n’ roll.
Continue reading →

#1450: Little Saint Nick by the Beach Boys

Peak Month: December 1963
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox Magazine ~ #69
CFUN Twin Pick of the week ~ December 7, 1963
YouTube.com: “Little Saint Nick”
Lyrics: “Little Saint Nick”

On this first Christmas Day since the Countdown began on October 3, 2016, here is a song that was a hit in Vancouver called “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys. It was the CFUN Twin Pick of the week for December 7, 1963. As it only spent three weeks on the C-FUNTASTIC FIFTY, it did not chart as well as other songs on this Countdown. But it was a hit single here in Vancouver. As a song that made it onto record surveys in the USA it did well in a few radio markets in California (#9 in Los Angeles, #3 in San Bernardino and #1 in Sacramento), Seattle (#9) Salt Lake City (#5) and Boston (#10). Otherwise, the song got little airplay across the USA. For the most part, “Little Saint Nick” was a hit in December 1963 from the California coast up to Vancouver. The song was judged too cheery a tune to play on the radio in late November 1963, and December 1963, while Americans were still mourning the death of President John F. Kennedy.
Continue reading →