#665: Der Kommissar by Falco
Peak Month: January 1983
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox Top Singles ~ #74
YouTube.com: “Der Kommissar”
Lyrics: “Der Kommissar”
Johann “Hans” Hölzel was born in 1957 in Vienna, Austria. He was raised by his mother. Showing musical genius at a young age, his mother bought him a baby grand piano at the age of four. He was conscripted for military service in the mid-70’s. In the late ’70’s he experimented with performance art, striptease, music and political satire. He performed under a number of pseudonyms, one which was John DiFalco. His military service influenced his choice to keep his hair short, making him stand out from the shabbier underground musicians in the Vienna music scene. In the late ’70s’, he was a member of Dradhiwaberl, a shock rock band. He signed as a solo artists with a recording company in 1981 after his independent release of “Ganz Wein” in 1981.
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#666: Run Samson Run by Neil Sedaka
Peak Month: September 1960
8 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube.com: “Run Samson Run”
Lyrics: “Run Samson Run”
In 1939 Neil Sedaka was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Brighton Beach beside Coney Island. His paternal grandparents immigrated to America from Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, in 1910. His fathers side of the family there were Sephardi Jews and his mother’s side Ashkenazi Jews from Russian and Polish background. Sedaka is a cousin of the late singer Eydie Gorme. When Neil was eight years old he listened to a show on the radio called The Make-Believe Ballroom that opened his world to appreciation for music. Within a year Neil had began learning classical piano at the age of nine at the Julliard School of Music. His progress was impressive and Arthur Rubinstein voted Neil as one of the best New York High School pianists after he turned 16 years old.
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#684: Twisting By The Pool by Dire Straits
Peak Month: April-May 1983
11 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Twisting By The Pool”
Lyrics: “Twisting By The Pool”
Dire Straits is a band that formed in 1977 comprised of Mark and David Knopfler, John Illsley and Pick Withers. Mark Freuder Knopfler was born in 1949 in Glasgow, Scotland. His Jewish-Hungarian father fled Hungary in 1939 before the outbreak of World War II. He learned to play guitar when he was a child and appeared on a local TV station in 1965 as part of a duo. Mark was influenced by Django Reinhardt, Hank Marvin of The Shadows, B.B. King, Chet Atkins and others. He studied journalism and kept his hand in music playing in the Duolian String Pickers and the Café Racers. Younger brother, David, was born in 1952. He was playing guitar, drum and piano by age eleven. At the age of 14 David Knopfler was playing in folk clubs. He went into social work and was living in London in the mid-70’s and sharing a flat with a promising guitarist named John Illsley. John Edward Illsley was born in Leister, England, in 1949. By the 1970’s Illsley was involved with a timber firm, studying sociology and opening a record shop. David Knopfler was impressed with Illsley’s talent and introduced him to Mark. Mark, David and John began jamming together, and Mark invited Illsley to join his band the Café Racers.
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#694: Friends/Honey Roll by Elton John
Peak Month: May 1971
Friends:
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN’s chart
Friends Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #34
Honey Roll:
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Honey Roll Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Friends”
Lyrics: “Friends”
YouTube.com link: “Honey Roll”
Lyrics: “Honey Roll”
Reginald Kenneth Dwight was born in 1947. When he was three years old he astounded his family when he was able to play The Skater’s Waltz by Émile Waldteufel by ear at the piano. When he was eleven years old he won a scholarship as a Junior Exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Music. Between the ages of 11 and 15 he attended the Academy on Saturday mornings. In 1962, by the age of 15, he was performing with his group, The Corvettes, at the Northwood Hills Hotel (now the Northwood Hills Public House) in a northern borough of London. While he was playing with a band called Bluesology in the mid-60s he adopted the stage name Elton John. His stage name, which became his legal name in 1967, was taken from Bluesology saxophonist Elton Dean, and their lead singer, Long John Baldry.
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#347: Believe Me by Royal Teens
Peak Month: November 1959
6 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube.com: “Believe Me”
Lyrics: “Believe Me”
Drummer Tom Austin was a founding member of The Royals in 1956 when he was 17 years old. He had been playing the drum since he was a child growing up in Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey. Pianist Bob Gaudio was 14 years old when he became the group’s co-founder. Gaudio had been playing piano since he turned eight in 1950. Gaudio was born in November 1942 in Bergenfield, New Jersey. The two other members of the band were 14-year-old saxophonist, Billy Crandall, from Dumont, New Jersey, and 16-year-old Billy Dalton from Fort Lee. The Royals opened for a local New Jersey doo-wop group named The Three Friends who had a hit in New York and Baltimore in the winter of 1956-57 titled “Blanche”. After the Fort Lee concert, The Three Friends invited The Royals to come to New York to be the session musicians for their upcoming recording date in the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway. It was there The Royals met The Three Friends manager, Leo Rogers. On the strength of their musical skills, Rogers invited The Royals to be session musicians for numerous recording artists in the building. Rogers promised them that they’d have a shot at recording a record sometime later in 1957.
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#667: Loving You by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: June 1957
4 weeks on Red Robinson’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube.com: “Loving You”
Lyrics: “Loving You”
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 #1248 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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#668: Moonshine by John Kay
Peak Month: June-July 1973
8 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #105
YouTube.com: “Moonshine (Friend of Mine)”
Lyrics: “Moonshine (Friend of Mine)”
Joachim Fritz Krauledat was born in Tilsit, East Prussia, Germany, in 1944. His father, Fritz, was killed in the war the month before his birth. In 1945, Soviet troops advanced across what became East Germany. His mother fled with him in what the child recalled as “a daring nighttime escape” into what became the British occupied zone to Hanover, West Germany. Young Joachim was influenced by British newsreels of the People’s Uprising in 1953 in East Germany. The uprising took place three months after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, on June 16-17, 1953. It involved over a million people going on strike across 700 towns and cities. The uprising was crushed by 20,000 Soviet soldiers and 8,000 East German police. Joachim was also stirred by the Hungarian Revolution of October 23 to November 10, 1956. Joachim Krauledat moved to Canada in 1958.
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#669: The Return Of The Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen
Peak Month: March 1967
6 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube.com: “Return Of The Red Baron”
Lyrics: “Return Of The Red Baron”
The Posmen were a band from Ocala, Florida. They were all students at Lake Weir High School. With the British Invasion, they decided to change their name to the Royal Guardsmen, giving themselves a British sounding name. When their debut single, “Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron,” became a hit single late in 1966, they began touring. The band consisted of Billy Taylor on organ, Tom Richards and Barry Winslow on guitar, drummer John Burdett, bass player Bill Balough and singer Chris Nunley. Their first single, “Baby, Let’s Wait,” climbed to #11 in Sarasota, Florida in the fall of 1966. They recorded “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” which became a #2 hit in the US and a #1 hit in Vancouver. Initially, the Royal Guardsmen got into legal trouble with their records about Snoopy since they hadn’t got permission from Peanuts cartoonist, Charles Schultz, to use Snoopy and the Red Baron in their songs.
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#670: You’re My Love by Della Reese
Peak Month: February 1960
6 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “You’re My Love”
Delloreese Patricia Early was born in the Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit in 1931. The neighborhood got its name from French colonial settlers impressed by the regions fertile soil. She told The Times in 1997, “Everything was a bill in our house. There was a grocery bill. Rent was a bill and the cleaning was a bill.” Her father would take what money was left and gamble. “Sometimes he’d win and it’d be good times, and if he didn’t win, it wouldn’t be such a good time.” By the age of six Delloreese was singing gospel in a local church. When she was twelve one of her cousins were killed in the Detroit Riots. When she was thirteen she was paid to sing in Mahalia Jackson’s gospel choir. After graduating from high school at the age of 15, her mother died. When her father started a new dating relationship and had his new girlfriend move into the house, Delloreese moved out and got work as a dental receptionist, elevator operator and truck driver. She also performed in clubs and changed her name on the billing from Delloreese Early to Della Reese.
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#671: Shindig by The Shadows
Peak Month: December 1963
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Shindig”
Brian Robson Rankin was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1941. He learned how to play the banjo and the piano in his childhood. But when he heard Buddy Holly, Rankin decided to learn the guitar. He had several buddies named Brian and so he got the nickname, “Hank”, to distinguish him from his namesakes. He liked the rockabilly singer, Marvin Rainwater, and his 1957 hit “Gonna Find Me A Bluebird”. Subsequently, Brian Rankin took the stage name Hank Marvin. Marvin and his boyhood chum, Bruce Welch, formed a band named The Railroaders in 1956. In early 1958 they released a song titled “Jean Dorothy” credited to The Five Chestnuts. Bruce and Hank moved to London later that year and briefly performed as The Geordie Boys. At the age of seventeen, Hank Marvin got a lucky break and was selected as guitarist in Cliff Richard’s backing band, The Drifters, as they were known in 1958. Fellow guitarist, Bruce Welch, also joined The Drifters.
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