#1180: Fading Away by Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers

Peak Month: May 1968
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Fading Away”
Lyrics: “Fading Away”

Born in 1934, Robert Edward Taylor was born and grew up in Washington D.C. From the age of three he began to sing. Taylor told the South China Morning Post in a 2011 interview that he could sing Gregorian chant and still knew it by heart in 2011. His mother was friends with Billie Holiday. The musical connection led the young Bobby Taylor to meet Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Miles Davis, among others, while he was a boy. He graduated from high school at the age of 14. The Ku Klux Klan had weekly meetings on the steps of the Capitol buildings in D.C. This frightened young Bobby Taylor and he enlisted to join the U.S. Army in the Korean War where he thought he’d be safer. Taylor was signed up to be a cook in the Korean War. However, he was assigned to an all-black unit that fought in the war. His commanding officer had told Bobby Taylor, “They’re not going to be able to see you.” At the age of 17 Taylor was discharged by the end of 1951. He relocated to New York City in the early 50s and sang in street corner doo-wop groups. Among the singers he sang with included future members of  Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers and Little Anthony and the Imperials.

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Peak Month: September 1961
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #68
CFUN Twin Pick ~ August 19, 1961
YouTube.com link: “Summer Souvenirs”

Karl Hammel, Jr. was born and raised in New Rochelle, New York. He was a contestant winner on the Original Amateur Hour hosted by Ted Mack. This CBS show was actually a half hour show, except for the 1956-57 season. The format was almost always the same. At the beginning of the show, the talent’s order of appearance was determined by spinning a wheel. As the wheel spun, the words “Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows” were always intoned. Various acts: singers, musicians, jugglers, tap dancers, baton twirlers, and the like, would perform, with the audience being asked to vote for their favorites by postcard or telephone. The telephone number JUdson 6-7000 was on a banner at the bottom of the screen for viewers to call.

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#1181: Let the Song Last Forever by Dan Hill

Peak Month: July 1978
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #91
YouTube.com: “Let The Song Last Forever”
Lyrics: “Let The Song Last Forever”

Daniel Grafton Hill IV was born in 1954 in Toronto. He father, Daniel Hill, was a social scientist. Hill’s parents moved to Canada before he was born to live in a less racially charged setting where their interracial marriage would not be met with intolerance. Hill would later write about his parents exit from the USA in his song “McCarthy’s Day.” While young Dan was in his teens he learned the guitar and started to compose songs. When he was just 18 years old he got a songwriting contract with RCA Records. In 1975 Hill released his first album, but it would be his third album, Longer Fuse, that got the attention of deejays and record buyers. His #1 hit single from the album, “Sometimes When We Touch“, was co-written with Barry Mann, of Manhattan’s Brill Building’s songwriting fame. With the song came multiple Junos Awards: Composer, Male Vocalist, and Single of the Year. Hill also was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1978 for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, losing out to Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana“.

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#1184: Smashed Blocked by John’s Children

Peak Month: January 1967
8 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #102
YouTube.com: “Smashed Blocked”
Lyrics: “Smashed Blocked”

Chris Townson was born in 1947 and spent his childhood in foster care homes. The Independent reported in an obituary for Townson in 2007, that “in 1958, he was sent by London County Council to Stoatley Rough School in Haslemere, Surrey, and spent two years there.” Around 1960, Townson met Andy Ellison at a mixed Boarding School near Box Hill, Surrey.  Ellison recalls, “this was an outward bound school, that means, only lessons in the morning, and then expedition training in the afternoons and other strange activities to enhance one’s… self. Here it was that we both learnt how to be even naughtier than we already were, and it was also here one night, in our sparse dormitory, that we wrote our first song… on a banjo… titled, “Hey Little Anaconda, Won’t You Play With Me”! After their Boarding School years, Chris and Andy reconnected in Letherhead, 45 minutes southwest of London. Chris was jamming with a band that met in the basement of his art teacher’s home. Geoff McClelland was played guitar and Chris learned to play drums since they didn’t need another guitar player.

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#1188: Hitchhiker by Bobby Curtola

Peak Month: January 1962
10 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Hitchhiker”

Bobby Curtola was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1943. (The town would become amalgamated into the city of Thunder Bay in 1970). His cousin Susan Andrusco remembers “”Bobby would always be singing at our family gatherings. The family loved him. And he loved being the centre of attention. He would sing Oh My Papa, and my grandpa would cry.” Oh My Papa was a number-one hit for Eddie Fisher in January 1954, when Bobby Curtola was still ten-years-old. In the fall of 1959, sixteen-year-old high school student Bobby Curtola went from pumping gas at his father’s garage in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the life of a teen idol. Within a year he went from playing in his basement band, Bobby and the Bobcats, to recording his first hit single in 1960, “Hand In Hand With You”, which charted in Ontario, but not in Vancouver. After performing on the Bob Hope Show in 1960, the charismatic teenager, with his handsome boy-next-door looks was quickly finding himself within a whirlwind called “Curtolamania.”

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#1190: Mind Excursion by The Trade Winds

Peak Month: September 1966
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #51
YouTube.com: “Mind Excursion”
Lyrics: “Mind Excursion”

Peter Andreoli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1941, and Vincent Ponica Jr. was born there one year later. At the age of five Peter was given a ukulele and by the age of nine began to play guitar and sing. Perhaps a natural aptitude passed down from his guitar playing mom and an aunt who played the accordion. Peter was comfortable performing on stage, along with his sister, Caroline at community, church and social functions. At the time he focused on Italian songs. But in 1954 Peter got introduced to Rhythm & Blues and never looked back. At Mount Pleasant High School in 1956, he became the lead singer of a doo-wop group called The Videls. “Vini” Poncia also joined The Videls, whose fan base steadily increased.

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#1191: Three Eyed Man by Buddy Knox

Peak Month: October 1961
7 weeks on CKWX chart
Peak Position #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Three Eyed Man”

Buddy Wayne Knox was born in 1933 Happy, Texas, a small farm town in the Texas Panhandle a half hour south of Amarillo. During his youth he learned to play the guitar. He was the first artist of the rock era to write and perform his own number one hit song, “Party Doll”. The song earned Knox a gold record in 1957 and was certified a million seller. Knox was one of the innovators of the southwestern style of rockabilly that became known as “Tex-Mex” music.

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#1210: Rice Is Nice by Lemon Pipers

Peak Month: April 1968
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
Youtube.com: “Rice Is Nice”
Lyrics: “Rice Is Nice”

The Lemon Pipers were an Oxford, Ohio, about 40 miles northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio, along the border with the state of Indiana. Their genre was sunshine psychedelic pop, and the group formed in 1966. Their sunshine pop sound gave them a number one hit called “Green Tambourine“. The band consisted of Ivan Browne on vocals and guitar, Bill Bartlett on vocals and guitar, Steve Walmsley on bass, R.G. Nave on keyboards and drummer Bill Albaugh.

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#1404: Make It Up To Me In Love By Paul Anka and Odia Coates

Peak Month: November 1976
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Record World ~ #104
YouTube: “Make It Up To Me In Love”

Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1941. His father was Syrian-American and his mother was Canadian-Lebanese. At the age of 14, in the spring of 1956 he traveled to Los Angeles to record his first single “I Confess”. He was 16 years old when he had a number one hit with “Diana” in August 1957, a song he wrote about a girl in the church he attended. (Diana Ayoub, who inspired Anka to pen the song, died in December 2022). Next, he recorded a duet with Micki Marlo titled “What You’ve Done To Me”. On October 23, 1957, Paul Anka appeared in concert at the Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver. Others performing on the bill included Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Buddy Knox, Eddie Cochran and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. In early 1958 Paul Anka was back in the Top Ten with “You Are My Destiny”.

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#1193: Daylight Katy by Gordon Lightfoot

Peak Month: July 1978
7 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Daylight Katy”
Lyrics: “Daylight Katy”

Gordon Lightfoot was born in Orillia, Ontario, on November 17, 1938. His parents, Jessica and Gordon Lightfoot Sr., ran a dry cleaning business. His mother noticed young Gordon had some musical talent and the boy soprano first performed in grade four at his elementary school. He sang the Irish lullaby “Too Ra Loo Rah Loo Rah” at a parents’ day. As a member of the St. Paul’s United Church choir in Orillia, Lightfoot gained skill and needed confidence in his vocal abilities under the choir director, Ray Williams. Lightfoot went on to perform at Toronto’s Massey Hall at the age of twelve when he won a competition for boys who were still boy sopranos. During his teen years Gordon Lightfoot learned to play piano, drums and guitar.

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