#8: Rosie Lee by the Tunedrops
City: Dauphin, MB
Radio Station: CKDM
Peak Month: June 1957
Peak Position in Dauphin ~ #4
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Rosie Lee”
Lyrics: “Rosie Lee”
Malcolm Dodds was born in Brooklyn, and studied classical music at NYU. In the early 50s, he was living in Brooklyn in and was busy working as a musical/vocal instructor and as always was involved with choral groups in Schools, YMCAs and churches. He was using his birth name, Malcolm Williams. It was during this period that he was approached by arranger Fred Norman, to sing in a group. Consequently, the Normanaires were formed, comprised of Malcolm Dodds, Dorice Brown, Bill Glover and Sam Dillworth.
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#2: Humpty Dumpty Heart by LaVern Baker
City: Dauphin, MB
Radio Station: CKDM
Peak Month: September 1957
Peak Position in Dauphin ~ #3
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #71
YouTube: “Humpty Dumpty Heart”
Delores Evans was born in 1929 in Chicago. Baker began singing in Chicago clubs such as the African-American Club De Lisa in 1946. She was often billed as Little Miss Sharecropper, and first recorded under that name in 1949. This led to a recording deal with that title for National Records in 1951, shortly before the label folded. She changed her name briefly to Bea Baker when recording for Okeh Records in 1951. She switched to Delores Baker, and then was billed as LaVern Baker when she sang with Todd Rhodes and his band in 1952. In 1953, she signed with Atlantic Records as a solo artist, her first release being “Soul on Fire”. In May 1953, LaVern Baker appeared at her first Alan Freed show, at the Cleveland Arena, along with the Drifters, the Spaniels, Faye Adams, and Roy Hamilton. Later that year she went on a 19-week tour of Europe. In September 1954, she performed at The Elbow Room in Windsor, Ontario. Her first hit came in early 1955, with the Latin-tempo “Tweedle Dee”, which reached number 4 on the R&B chart and #14 on the Billboard pop chart. It sold over one million copies.
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#3: Lucky Lips by Ruth Brown
City: Dauphin, MB
Radio Station: CKDM
Peak Month: March 1957
Peak Position in Dauphin ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Lucky Lips”
Lyrics: “Lucky Lips”
Ruth Brown (nee Weston) was born in 1928 in Portsmouth, Virginia. She was the eldest of seven siblings. In 1945, aged 17, Brown ran away from her home in Portsmouth along with the trumpeter Jimmy Brown, whom she soon married, to sing in bars and clubs. Jimmy Brown was an 18 year old Navy vet who played trumpet and sang in an acrobatic crowd-pleasing style, sort of Jackie Wilson before Jackie Wilson. The two formed a show they called Brown and Brown and their ensuing popularity up and down the Eastern seaboard put them on the track to something akin to stardom for non-recording singers. When they were about to head to her home state to perform they decided to get married to stave off questions from her friends and family about the show’s name and the impropriety of their relationship. The union didn’t last long but the name “Brown” did. Ruth Brown next spent a month with Lucky Millinder’s orchestra. But he fired her for bringing sodas to the bandmates after the concert was over. Millinder complained that he hadn’t hired her to be a waitress. She also was a vocalist with Duke Ellington. Brown was also singer at the popular Crystal Caverns night club in Washington DC.
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#1: I Love You, Baby by Paul Anka
City: Dauphin, MB
Radio Station: CKDM
Peak Month: December 1957
Peak Position in Dauphin ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #97
Peak Position on UK Singles chart ~ #3
YouTube: “I Love You, Baby”
Lyrics: “I Love You, Baby”
Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1941. His father was Syrian-American and his mother was Canadian-Lebanese. While growing up in Ottawa he was part of a vocal trio at Fisher Park High School called the Bobby Soxers. In the fall of 1956, Anka signed with the RPM label and released his first single, “Blau-Wile-Deveest-Fontaine”. It made the Top Ten in Smith Falls (ON). He had a #1 hit in 1957 titled “Diana”, and performed in concert at the Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver on October 23, 1957. Others on stage were Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Buddy Knox, Eddie Cochran, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
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#2: Shiny Happy People by R.E.M.
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: October 1991
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
YouTube: “Shiny Happy People”
Lyrics: “Shiny Happy People”
R.E.M. is a band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980. Drummer William “Bill” Berry was born in Duluth (MN) in 1958. His family spent some years variously in Wisconsin and then Ohio, before moving to Macon (GA) in 1972. In high school he met guitar player Mike Mills. Born in Orange County (CA), Mills moved with his family to Georgia when he was six months old. Mills and Berry formed a band called Shadowfax, which later became The Back Door Band. Lead vocalist, Michael Stipe, was born in Decatur (GA) in 1960. Like Mike Mills, he was raised in a military family. When Stipe was in university, he met store clerk and guitar player Peter Buck. The pair formed a band and were later joined by Berry and Mills. Peter Buck was born in 1956 in Berkeley (CA). His family moved to Georgia where he attended public school.
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#26: Bridget the Midget by Ray Stevens
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CHED
Peak Month: February 1971
Peak Position in Edmonton ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube: “Bridget the Midget”
Lyrics: “Bridget the Midget”
Harold Ray Ragsdale was born in January 1939, in Clarkdale, Georgia. In high school he formed a group called The Barons. When he was 18, he was signed to Capitol Records on their Prep label. His debut single was “Five More Steps”. The single charted briefly on CKWX in Vancouver in February 1958. In the summer of 1960, Stevens “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” climbed to #22 in Vancouver. While in 1961, Stevens released a single about unscrupulous pharmaceutical products pitched to cure whatever ails you. “Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills” reached #8 in Vancouver, and also charted in the Top 50 in Winnipeg and Montreal. For several decades, Ray Stevens’ song was the longest song title to make the Billboard Hot 100.
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#10: Little Deuce Coupe by the Beach Boys
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: September 1963
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Little Deuce Coupe”
Lyrics: “Little Deuce Coupe”
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. Mike was born in Los Angeles in 1941 and Carl was born in 1946 in Hawthorne, California. Brian Wilson named the group Carl and the Passions in order to convince his brother to join. They had a performance in the fall of 1960 at Hawthorne High School, where they attended. Their set included some songs by Dion and the Belmonts. Among the people in the audience was Al Jardine, another classmate. Jardine was born in Hawthorne in 1942. He 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. Dennis was born in Inglewood in 1944.
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#12: Is She Really Going Out With Him by Joe Jackson
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: September 1979
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #21
YouTube:”Is She Really Going Out With Him”
Lyrics: “Is She Really Going Out With Him”
Joe Jackson was born David Ian Jackson in 1954 in Burton upon Trent, England. In his teens he learned to play violin and piano. In 1970 when he was 16-years-old, Jackson was playing piano in bars and pubs. Out of high school he attended London’s Royal Academy of Music. In the early 70s he formed a British band called Edward Bear (different from the Canadian band from Ontario), which soon changed its name to Arms and Legs. David Ian Jackson started getting the nickname “Joe” because some people thought he looked like the Charlie Brown character Snoopy in his “Joe Cool” persona.
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#14: Copperhead Road by Steve Earle
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: February 1989
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #21
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ no Hot 100
YouTube: “Copperhead Road”
Lyrics: “Copperhead Road”
Stephen Fain Earle was born in 1955 in Ft. Monroe, Virginia. His father was an air traffic controller and the family moved to San Antonio, Texas, when Earle was a child. Earle began learning the guitar at the age of 11 and entered a school talent contest at age 13. He ran away from home at age 14 to search for his idol, singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Earle was “rebellious” as a young man and dropped out of school at the age of 16. He moved to Houston with his 19-year-old uncle, also a musician. While in Houston Earle finally met Van Zandt. Earle was opposed to the Vietnam war as he recalled in 2012: “The anti-war movement was a very personal thing for me. I didn’t finish high school, so I wasn’t a candidate for a student deferment. I was fucking going.” The end of the Selective Service Act and the draft lottery in 1973 prevented him from being drafted, but several of his friends were drafted, which he credits as the origin of his politicization. Earle also noted that when he was a young man, his girlfriend was able to get an abortion despite the fact that abortion was illegal. Her father was a doctor at the local hospital in San Antonio while several other girls he knew at the time were not able to get abortions; they lacked access to those with the necessary power to arrange an abortion, which he credits as the origin of his pro-choice views.
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#524: I Believe In Music by Gallery
Peak Month: November 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “I Believe In Music”
Lyrics: “I Believe In Music”
Gallery was formed in Detroit in 1971 by Jim Gold, who was born in ‘the Motor City’ in 1947. In 1971, while he and a friend were playing at a Detroit club called the Poison Apple, he was discovered by Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore. Coffey learned to play guitar at the age of thirteen, in the Michigan Upper Peninsula town of Copper City. In 1955, as a fifteen-year-old sophomore at a Detroit high school, Dennis played his first record session, backing Vic Gallon in “I’m Gone”, on the Gondola Record label. In the early 1960s he joined The Royaltones who played sessions with other recording artists including Del Shannon and Bobby Rydell. By the late 1960s as a member of the Funk Brothers studio band, Coffey played on dozens of recordings for Motown Records, and introduced a hard rock guitar sound to Motown including distortion, Echoplex tape-loop delay, and wah-wah: most notably heard on “Cloud Nine”, “Ball of Confusion”, and “Psychedelic Shack” by The Temptations. He played on numerous other hit records of the era: Edwin Starr’s “War”, Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together”, and Freda Payne’s, “Band of Gold”.
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