#343: Make Believe by Wind
Peak Month: October 1969
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube: “Make Believe”
Lyrics: “Make Believe”
Michael Anthony “Tony” Orlando Cassavitis was born in 1944 in New York City. In 1959 Orlando formed a doo-wop group called The Five Gents when he was 15-years-old. The Five Gents recorded some demo tapes. In the following months music publisher and producer Don Kirshner hired Orlando to write songs in an office across from New York’s Brill Building. In 1959 Tony Orlando recorded a doo-wop single titled “Ding Dong” on the Milo label. In 1961 he recorded “Halfway To Paradise” which climbed to #13 in Vancouver (BC) and #39 on the Billboard Hot 100. His next single, “Bless You”, peaked at #11 in Vancouver in September ’61, and #15 on the Billboard Hot 100. He had a minor hit titled “Talkin’ About You” which made the Top 50 in Vancouver in January 1962, and cracked the Top 30 with “Chills” in the summer of ’62, and “Shirley” in early 1963.
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#344: I Live For The Sun by the Sunrays
Peak Month: September 1965
11 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #51
YouTube: “I Live For The Sun”
Lyrics: “I Live For The Sun”
Eddy Medora was born in Los Angeles in 1945. He writes about the backstory to the Sunrays. “We were called the Renegades. We were a garage band rehearsing in my parents home in Pacific Palisades. We were in 7th and 8th grade. I saw a band perform called the Riptides – they had a local hit called Machine Gun….After I saw the response from the crowd, I knew I wanted to start a band. We played all over West L.A. There were five of us – Marty, Darrol, Mike, Ricky, and myself. We were doing pretty well when Mike moved away. Darrol also left. In the first year of high school, I met Steve and Vince. These guys did not have a band. They were both good musicians. They asked if they could join our band. We auditioned them. After we heard them play, I knew they had all of our votes.”
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#914: Help Me Girl by the Animals
Peak Month: December 1966
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #29
YouTube: “Help Me Girl”
Lyrics: “Help Me Girl”
Eric Victor Burdon was born in 1941 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. He was born into a working class family. Due to the river pollution and humidity in Newcastle he suffered asthma attacks daily. During primary school, Burdon writes in his memoir, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, he was “stuck at the rear of the classroom of around 40 to 50 kids and received constant harassment from kids and teachers alike”. He goes on to say his primary school was “jammed between a slaughterhouse and a shipyard on the banks of the Tyne. Some teachers were sadistic…and sexual molestation and regular corporal punishment with a leather strap was the order of the day.” In his song “When I Was Young”, he states he met his first love at 13, who was very experienced while he was not. He also says he smoked his first cigarette at 10 years old and would skip school with his friends to drink.
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#345: Don’t Turn Me Away by 10cc
Peak Month: April 1982
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Don’t Turn Me Away”
Lyrics: “Don’t Turn Me Away”
Kevin Michael Godley was born in 1945 in a suburb of Manchester, England. Raised in a Jewish family, he formed a group named Group 17, along with four other members of the Jewish Lads Brigade. Godley studied Art and Design at Stoke On Trent College of Art from 1966-68. In the late ’60s, Kevin Godley met Lol Creme at a wedding. Laurence Neil “Lol” Creme was born in 1947 in the same suburb of Prestwich as Kevin Godley. Creme was also raised in a Jewish family. The pair co-founded a band in 1970 named Hotlegs, which included Graham Gouldman. Hotlegs had a #2 hit in the UK titled “Neanderthal Man”. The band split in 1970 and morphed into 10cc.
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#346: This Beat Goes On/Switching To Glide by the Kings
Peak Month: January 1981
12 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “This Beat Goes On/Switching To Glide”
Lyrics: “This Beat Goes On”
Lyrics: “Switching To Glide”
The Kings were a band from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Oakville, Ontario. consisting of bass guitarist and lead vocalist David Diamond, guitarist Mister Zero, keyboard player Sonny Keyes, and drummer Max Styles. In 1977 keyboardist Sonny Keyes met John Picard in Vancouver. Picard then recruited fellow Oakville Trafalgar High School students, Max Styles and David Diamond, and the band was established.
It took three years before they got a record contract, but they kept playing small venues and getting a word-of-mouth buzz.
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#348: Sinking Like A Sunset by Tom Cochrane
Peak Month: June 1992
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Sinking Like A Sunset”
Lyrics: “Sinking Like A Sunset”
Tom Cochrane was born in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, in 1953. When he was eleven he got his first guitar. In his late teens and early twenties, he performed in coffee houses across Canada in the early 70’s. His debut album, Hang On To Your Resistance, was released in 1974. Then Tom Cochrane made his way to Los Angeles. In 1975, Cochrane got work composing theme music for the movie My Pleasure Is My Business. This was a film about Xavier Hollander, the call girl and adult film star who authored her own memoir, The Happy Hooker, in 1971. Unable to get subsequent work in Hollywood, Cochrane returned to Canada for drive a taxi and work on a cruise line. At a concert at the El Mocambo for Red Rider in 1978, Tom Cochrane met the band. Soon after Cochrane was invited to join Red Rider.
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#1184: Sunny by Neil Sedaka
Peak Month: August 1964
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
CFUN Twin Pick Hit of the Week ~ June 20, 1964
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #86
YouTube: “Sunny”
Lyrics: “Sunny”
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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#349: San Francisco Girls by Fever Tree
Peak Month: July 1968
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
2 weeks Hit Bound
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #98
YouTube: “San Francisco Girls”
Lyrics: “San Francisco Girls”
Dennis Keller was the lead vocalist of the psychedelic-rock band Fever Tree. On bass guitar was E.E. “Bud” Wolfe, the bands percussionist was John Tuttle, on lead guitar was Michael Knust. While multi-instrumentalist Rob Landes played cello, clavinet, flute, harp, harpsichord, organ, piano and recorder. The genesis of Fever Tree was a Houston, Texas, cover band called the Bostwick Vines. Back in the fall of 1965, teenagers Keller and Knust had been working on developing a band with a new sound. Keller and Knust were both from Spring Branch, Texas, a small town half an hour north from San Antonio.
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#350: If I Fell by the Beatles
Peak Month: August 1964
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #53
YouTube: “If I Fell”
Lyrics: “If I Fell”
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.
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#351: Bigelow 6-200 by Brenda Lee
Peak Month: November 1956
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CJOR chart/Red Robinson’s Teen Canteen Survey
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Bigelow 6-200”
Lyrics: “Bigelow 6-200”
Brenda Mae Tarpley was born in 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were poor. During her childhood, young Brenda shared a sagging iron bed with her brother and sister in a series of three-room houses. They had no running water. Here parents went from job to job. After the stock market crash in 1929, Brenda’s mother would recall “you could hardly buy a job.” The region was devastated by an infestation of the boll weevil. Brenda started singing solos each Sunday at the Baptist church where her family attended. In her 2002 autobiography, she wrote “I grew up so poor, and it saddens me to see the poverty that is still there. A lot of my family have never done any better. Some of them are just exactly where they were when I was a kid. And in a way, there is still something inside of me that is a part of that, the part that doesn’t expect much. Little things make them happy, and that’s the same with me.”
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