#966: Drive In Show by Eddie Cochran
Peak Month: July 1957
4 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #82
YouTube.com: “Drive In Show”
Lyrics: “Drive In Show”
Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in 1938. His family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1951 where Eddie attended Bell Gardens Junior High. While there he became friends with Connie ‘Guybo’ Smith. Smith was already a promising musical talent who played bass, steel guitar and mandolin. Eddie and Connie began to jam together and gave a concert at their junior high school. Connie “Guybo” Smith went on to become Cochran’s bass player and was one of the musicians heard on most records during Eddie’s brief professional career. In 1953, while still in junior high school, Eddie met another musician named Chuck Foreman. The two experimented with Foreman’s two-track tape recorder. The pair made recordings of a number of songs including “Stardust,” “The Poor People Of Paris,” “Hearts of Stone” and the “Cannonball Rag.” Cochran graduated from Bell Gardens Junior High in 1954.
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#967: Ten Little Indians by The Yardbirds
Peak Month: November 1967
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Hitbound on CKLG
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #96
YouTube.com: “Ten Little Indians”
Lyrics: “Ten Little Indians”
The Yardbirds are an English rock band that had a string of hits in the mid-1960s, including “For Your Love,” “Shapes Of Things” and “Heart Full Of Soul.” The group is notable for having started the careers of three of rock’s most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. During their brief five years, from 1963 to 1968, they set the pace for a lot of the innovations to come in rock ‘n roll into the 1970’s. The Yardbirds experimental explorations also provided the crucial link between British R&B, Psychedelic Rock, and Heavy Metal, while pioneering the use of innovations like fuzz tone, feedback and distortion. With this fusion, and harmonica riffs, they inspired the musical styles of contemporary American bands like The Count Five who had a #1 hit in Vancouver in 1966 called “Psychotic Reaction.” When Jimmy Page left The Yardbirds to form the New Yardbirds, that band was quickly renamed Led Zeppelin.
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#968: Don’t Knock The Rock by Bill Haley And His Comets
Peak Month: January 1957
4 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Don’t Knock The Rock”
Lyrics: “Don’t Knock The Rock”
Bill Haley was born in Michigan in 1925. His dad played the mandolin and banjo while his mom played the piano. In a story Haley would relate years later in a biography, he recalled as a child when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. Sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album, Rock Around The Clock, describe Bill Haley’s early life and emerging career: “Bill got his first professional job at the age of 13, playing and entertaining at an auction for the fee of $1 a night. Very soon after this he formed a group of equally enthusiastic youngsters and managed to get quite a few local bookings for his band.”
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#969: Only With You by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: March 1965
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Only With You”
Lyrics: “Only With You”
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas in 1936. When he turned six his dad gave him a guitar. Both his dad, Orbie Lee, and uncle Charlie Orbison, taught him how to play. Though his family moved to Forth Worth for work at a munitions factory, Roy was sent to live with his grandmother due to a polio outbreak in 1944. That year he wrote his first song “A Vow of Love.” The next year he won a contest on Vernon radio station KVWC and was offered his own radio show on Saturdays. After the war his family reunited and moved to Wink, Texas, where Roy formed his first band, in 1949, called The Wink Westerners.
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#970: Red Red Wine by Neil Diamond
Peak Month: May 1968
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
1 week Hitbound on CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #62
YouTube.com: “Red Red Wine”
Lyrics: “Red Red Wine”
Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn in 1941. His parents were Russian and Polish immigrants and both Jewish. His dad was a dry-goods merchant. When he was in high school he met Barbra Streisand in a Freshman Chorus and Choral Club. Years later they would become friends. When he was sixteen Diamond was sent to a Jewish summer camp called Surprise Lake Camp in upstate New York. While there he heard folk singer, Pete Seeger, perform in concert. That year Diamond got a guitar and, influenced by Pete Seeger, began to write poems and song lyrics. While he was in his Senior year in high school, Sunbeam Music Publishing gave Neil Diamond an initial four month contract composing songs for $50 a week (US $413 in 2017 dollars). and he dropped out of college to accept it.
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#971: Who Do You Love by The Woolies
Peak Month: April 1967
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #95
YouTube.com: “Who Do You Love”
“Who Do You Love” lyrics by Bo Diddley
“Who Do You Love” original version by Bo Diddley
In 1943 Bob Baldori was born in Pennsylvania. His father, John Baldori, played the trumpet while his mother, Lucille, had sung in a big band John Baldori was a trumpeter in. After the war the family relocated to Dearborn, Michigan. John Baldori worked at Ford Motors, a side job at Detroit Tiger’s games and playing at jazz clubs in Detroit. At the age of three, Bob Baldori was introduced to the player piano at his grandfather’s home. By the age of five he started to learn piano. Bob’s youngest brother, Jeff (born 1951), also took piano lessons. Bob was influenced by Oscar Peterson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Duke Ellington.
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#972: Route 66 by Nelson Riddle
Peak Month: May 1962
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube.com: “Route 66”
Born in 1921, Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was born in Oradell, New Jersey. He learned the piano at eight and the trombone at age 14. By his late teens he was arranging for local dance bands. He began to play with the Charlie Spivak Orchestra. In 1943 he joined the Merchant Marine and in 1944 began to play in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in April 1945. He finished serving in the Army in June 1946 and move to Hollywood. Within a few years he had arranged his first Top Ten hit single, a tune sung by Doris Day titled “Again.” Riddle pursued his multiple talents as an arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator.
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#973: Flying by the Hometown Band
Peak Month: November 1976
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Flying”
Lyrics: “Flying”
Claire Lawrence was a member of local Vancouver group, The Collectors. That band morphed into Chilliwack. By late 1971 Lawrence left Chilliwack and founded Haida Records, with BC folk singer Valdy it’s marquee recording artist. Valdy’s music was featured in a 1972 Steve McQueen new film noir crime movie called The Getaway. Valdy appeared on a CBC TV show called The Beachcomber’s as the character Halibut Stu. Though he initially appeared on stage for the first few years by himself, Lawrence put together a touring back-up band for Valdy.
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#975: You Don’t Know What Love Is by Susan Jacks
Peak Month: March 1973
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #116
YouTube..com: “You Don’t Know What Love Is”
Lyrics: “You Don’t Know What Love Is”
Susan Pesklevits was born in 1948 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When she was seven years old she was a featured singer on a local radio station. At the age of eight her family moved to the Fraser Valley town of Haney, British Columbia. When she was 13 years old she had her own radio show. In a December 1966 issue of the Caribou newspaper, the Quesnel Observer noted that Susan Pesklevits had auditioned for Music Hop in the summer of 1963 when she was only 15 years old. She had her first public performance at the Fall Fair in Haney when she was just 14 years old. It was noted she liked to ride horseback, ride motorcycles and attend the dramatic shows. Asked about what she could tell the folks in Quesnel about trends in Vancouver, Pesklevits had this to report, “the latest things in Vancouver are the hipster mini-skirts, bright colored suit slacks, and the tailored look. The newest sound is the “Acid Sound,” derived from L.S.D…. it is “pshodelic” which means it has a lot of fuzz tones and feed back. As an example, she gave “Frustration” recorded by the Painted Ship” a local band from Vancouver. Pesklevits added that on the West Coast “the latest dance is the Philly Dog. It mainly consists of two rows, one of girls and one of boys. The idea is to take steps, move in unison, while doing jerking motions and using a lot of hand movement.” In the summer of 1966 Pesklevits formed a trio with Tom Northcott and Howie Vickers called The Eternal Triangle who released one single titled “It’s True.” Vickers went on to form The Collectors which later morphed into Chilliwack.
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#976: I’m A Boy by The Who
Peak Month: February 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Record World ~ #149
YouTube.com: “I’m A Boy”
Lyrics: “I’m A Boy”
The Who are an English band who emerged in 1964 with singer Roger Daltry, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. The band enjoyed popular singles, such as “I Can See For Miles,” “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. In Vancouver the band had eleven Top Ten hits, while in the UK they charted fourteen singles into the Top Ten, but in America they only charted one single, “I Can See For Miles”, into the Billboard Hot 100. The band were innovators of new genres in rock n’ roll with their rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia. The Who early on were known for outlandish antics on stage. At the Railway Hotel in Wealdstone, England, in June, 1964, Peter Townshend destroyed his guitar on stage and smashed it into other instruments. The Who stand alongside The Beatles and The Rollings Stones as among the most influential rock bands from Britain. They had their first Top Ten single in the UK and in Vancouver in 1965 titled “I Can’t Explain“, which peaked at #8 in the UK and #2 in Vancouver.
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