#1262: 9 LB. Hammer by Sanford Clark

Peak Month: February 1957
3 weeks on Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “9 LB. Hammer”
Lyrics: “9 LB. Hammer”

Sanford Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1935. In his early childhood his family moved to Phoenix. Sanford got his first guitar when he was 12 years old. He played around Phoenix until 1953, then he was enlisted at the age of 18 into the U.S. Air Force for four years. He then moved to Johnston Island in the Pacific where he played music when he was off-duty. The Air Force assigned back home in Phoenix where returned to playing clubs again. Local guitar player, Al Casey, had been a friend of Sanford Clark’s since school days told local disc jockey Lee Hazlewood to go listen to Sanford. Hazlewood was impressed with Sanford’s voice. He was looking for somebody to record a song he had just written. About a week later he took Sanford into Floyd Ramsey’s studio with Al Casey and recorded “The Fool”. Hazlewood gave his wife, Naomi Ford, the songwriting credit for “The Fool.” At the time it was not allowed for a producer or manager to also be a writer of the songs that were being recorded in the studio. Sanford stated that he felt they were a mix between Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and just trying to get something a little different with there sound. People often wonder how the “drum sound” was made on the recording. They found a piece of split bamboo and beat it on the guitar case, then Casey insisted that the drummer use a drumstick.Continue reading →

#1433: Freight Train by The Canadian Sweethearts

Peak Month: August 1963
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #17
CFUN Twin Pick August 3, 1963
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Freight Train”
Lyrics: “Freight Train” (Paul James, Fred Williams, Christian Albertine)
Lyrics: Freight Train” (Elizabeth Cotten)

The Canadian Sweethearts were Bob Regan and Lucille Starr. Regan was born in 1931 and baptized as Robert Frederickson in the village of Rolla, twenty miles north of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. In his childhood he learned to play the harmonica, guitar, mandolin and fiddle. In 1938, Lucille Marie Raymonde Savoie was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba. In 1958, Regan had been performing in his brother’s band The Peace Rangers and had recorded an instrumental called “Teenage Boogie” Starr, now twenty, had performed in the French band Les Hirondelles and later as a solo singer. That year Starr and Regan met at a wedding and began playing together in concert. They soon married and started playing and recording under the billing “Bob and Lucille.” They released two singles on the Ditto label recorded in Hollywood, California, in 1958. The first recording was “Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Moe”, followed up with “The Big Kiss”.

Continue reading →

#1095: Sun Goes By by Doctor Music

Peak Month: August 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Sun Goes By”
Lyrics: “Sun Goes By”

Instrumental in bringing jazz to the pop world, Dr Music was the brainchild of Toronto native and Doug Riley, who first took piano lessons as a child as a means of coping through polio. Born in Toronto in 1945, he took lessons in classical piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto beginning at the age of four. In 1969, Doug Riley became the music director for the television show “The Ray Stevens Show”. He was asked to put together a group of musicians to play for the 1969-1970 season of the show when Ray Stevens was continuing his string of hits including “Mr. Businessman”, “Guitarzan” and “Everything Is Beautiful”. Riley’s 16-piece vocal and instrumental band became known as Dr. Music.

Continue reading →

#1097: Stephanie Knows Who by Love

Peak Month: November 1966
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Stephanie Knows Who”
Lyrics: “Stephanie Knows Who”

Arthur Lee was born in 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee. His dad was a local jazz cornet player Chester Taylor. In 1950 his parents separated and he moved with his mom to Los Angeles when he was five. His mother remarried to Clinton Lee and Arthur, as was the custom, also took on a new surname. In 1963 he began recording with his bands the LAG’s and Lee’s American Four. In 1964 Lee wrote a minor hit called “My Diary” for Rosa Lee Brooks. The tune featured Jimi Hendrix on guitar. When Lee attended a concert given by the Byrds, he made up his mind to form a group that joined the newly minted folk-rock sound of the Byrds to his primarily rhythm and blues style. His new band was initially called The Grass Roots. However, the band changed their name to Love when they discovered another group of called The Grass Roots appeared on Top 40 radio in the spring of 1966. The name was chosen by a live audience at a club one night over other suggestions including Poetic Justice and Asylum Choir and Dr. Strangelove. Other members of Love included Singer and guitarist Bryan MacLean, Lee’s elementary school chum and lead guitarist Johnny Echols, Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer on drums and organ, Ken Forssi on bass, Tjay Contrelli on sax and flute and Michael Stuart on drums and percussion.

Continue reading →

#1099: Kiss And Run by Tommy Roe

Peak Month: August 1963
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Kiss And Run”

In Atlanta, Georgia, Thomas David “Tommy” Roe was born in 1942. At the age of 17, while he was still in high school, Roe was part of a trio with Bob West and Mike Clark called The Satins. Roe wrote a song called “Caveman” in 1959, backed with “I Got A Girl”  and the trio was billed as Tommy Roe and The Satins released their first single on Judd Records. When he finished high school Tommy got work a soldering wires at a General Electric plant. In 1960 the single was re-issued on the Trumpet label. This time “I Got A Girl” climbed into the #10 spot on WAKE 1340 AM in Atlanta. The trio released a song in 1960 called “Sheila”, complete with Buddy Holly-esque vocal effects. But it failed to chart. Two years later Roe signed a contract with ABC-Paramount Records. Though he was just twenty years old, Roe found himself on the top of the national charts in America and Australia in October 1962 with a new version of “Sheila”. When “Sheila” became a hit, ABC-Paramount Records asked Tommy Roe to go on tour to promote the hit. Roe was hesitant to leave his steady paycheck at GE until ABC-Paramount changed his mind when they advanced him $5,000.

Continue reading →

Peak Month: February 1958
3 weeks on Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Cash Box Magazine #58 | Music Vendor Magazine #77
YouTube.com: “Young Dove’s Calling”

The Couplings were a four-part harmony doo-wop group possibly from Ohio. They released only two songs on one 45 RPM single in early 1958. The B-side was “I Can See” which showed off their bass singer. The A-side was “Young Dove’s Calling”. That song was featured on a February 20, 1958, episode of American Bandstand where the group performed. Soon after “Young Dove’s Calling” spent two weeks on the Cash Box magazine singles chart, peaking at #58. It also made it onto a third national music industry magazine called Music Vendor where it peaked at #77. However, the single failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. In North America the song got onto Cash Box and Music Vendor chart lists based on the Top 40 chart performances on a number of local radio markets where it made the Top 40. The Couplings charted “Young Dove’s Calling” as high as #23 in Albany, NY, #16 in Detroit, #19 in Houston, #37 in Toronto and #22 in Buffalo. Its best chart performance was in Vancouver where it made it into the Top Ten peaking at #7.

Continue reading →

#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.

Continue reading →

#1156: With Your Love by Jack Scott

Peak Month: January 1958
3 weeks on Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube.com: “With Your Love”
Lyrics: “With Your Love”

Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr. was born in 1936 in Windsor, Ontario, and spent some of his years growing up in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, Michigan. In 1954 he formed a band called the Southern Drifters. In 1957 he got a record deal with ABC-Paramount. He scored four Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and two more in the Top 30 in the USA. In Vancouver Jack Scott was a teen idol with his good looks and classic rock ‘n roll. He enjoyed eight Top Ten hits on the Vancouver charts including “What In The World’s Come Over You” and his most successful hit in town, “Goodbye Baby” that peaked at #2 and spent 17 weeks on the CKWX charts in 1958. At the time, Scott had more US singles in the Billboard Hot 100 (19), in a shorter period of time (41 months), than any other recording artist – with the exception of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Connie Francis. Scott charted twenty songs on the local record surveys in Vancouver between July 1958 and November 1962.

Continue reading →

#1431: Hurry Up And Tell Me by Paul Anka

Peak Month: October 1963
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Hurry Up And Tell Me”

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.

Continue reading →

#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.

Continue reading →