#1261: Igmoo by Stonewall Jackson

Peak Month: October 1959
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 #95
YouTube.com: “Igmoo (The Pride of South Central High)”
Lyrics: “Igmoo (The Pride of South Central High)”

In 1959 country and western singer, Stonewall Jackson, had a Top Ten hit in the spring of that year called “Waterloo” that spent 13 weeks on the record survey on CKWX peaking at #4. Jackson was born in Tabor City, North Carolina, about 35 miles northwest of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on the border dividing the Carolinas. After serving for four years in the US Navy, Stonewall Jackson moved to Nashville and in time he got an audition with the Grand Ole Opry. He got a break when he recorded a song written by George Jones called “Life To Go”. The song Stonewall Jackson sung was from the perspective of a murderer who has been in jail for eighteen years and will remain for life. It peaked in 1958 at #2 on the Billboard Country chart.
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Peak Month: April 1974
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “I Am What I Am”
Lyrics: “I Am What I Am”

In the early sixties Lois Fletcher appeared on a Canadian variety show. This led to some performances at coffee houses in Greenwich Village in New York City. After Randy Sparks of the New Christy Minstrels saw her, she was invited to join his other folk troupe, The Back Porch Majority. Sparks had co-written “Green Green” for the New Christy Minstrels with Barry McGuire. The Back Porch Majority were meant to be a kind of junior league folk group whose stars might get the nod to join the New Christy Minstrels. But the Back Porch Majority outdid themselves releasing six albums and seven singles between 1964 and 1966.

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#1266: Mustang/Meadowlands by The Chessmen

Peak Month: December 1964
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Mustang”
YouTube.com: “Meadowlands”

In 1959 Guy Sobell became a member of a Vancouver band called The Ken Clark Trio. They drew inspiration from The Shadows, The Beatles and Sweden’s instrumental group the Spotnicks. For the first few years the trio subsisted by playing at frat parties at the University of British Columbia. In 1962 Sobell decided to form a new band. Among the musicians responding to an ad was Terry Jacks, who was 17 years old and studying architecture and a member of a band called The Sand Dwellers. Jacks band had released a single called “Build Your Castle Higher”. Written along with bandmade John Crowe, it was Jacks’ first recording. It was covered by Jerry Cole and His Spacemen as a track on their debut album, Outer Limits. The track was retitled “Midnight Surfer” and Jerry Cole went on to be part of Phil Spector’s group of now legendary session musicians called the Wrecking Crew who played on over 40 #1 hits in the USA. Prior to His Spacemen band, Jerry Cole was a member of the instrumental group The Champs who had a #1 hit in 1958 called “Tequila”. I don’t know if The Sand Dwellers got any royalties from Jerry Cole and His Spacemen.

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#1268: Keep Your Love Locked by Paul Petersen

Peak Month: June 1962
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
Peak Position on Cashbox ~ #95
YouTube.com link: “Keep Your Love Locked”
Lyrics: “Keep Your Love Locked”

Paul William Petersen was born in Glendale, California, in 1945. He  started his career at the age of eight and began appearing on the Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. From there he was cast as Jeff Stone on the Donna Reed Show where he starred in that role from 1958 to 1966. When he first started playing Jeff Stone, Paul was just 4’3″ tall, which is one reason he got the job. Donna herself was a petite 5’4″. Paul got this part the day after he turned thirteen. While appearing on the Donna Reed Show both he and his sister, Mary Stone, sang songs that would become hit singles. The actress playing Mary Stone was child actor Shelley Fabares who had a number one hit in 1962 called “Johnny Angel.” Paul Petersen also sang songs in the Donna Reed Show including “She Can’t Find Her Keys”, “My Dad” and “Keep Your Love Locked”.

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#1269: Wash Your Face in My Sink by Dream Warriors

Peak Month: November 1990
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Wash Your Face in My Sink”
Lyrics: “Wash Your Face in My Sink”

The Dream Warriors were a duo who joined together in 1988. The duo were Louie Robinson and Frank Allert who lived in the Jane and Finch and Willowdale neighborhoods in Greater Toronto. Louie Robinson had recorded a single that year when he was featured on Michie Mee and L.A. Luv’s single “Victory Is Calling.” The dancehall reggae tune with Jamaican funk, rap and hip-hop got the attention of others in the Toronto recording scene. By 1991 their debut album had received critical acclaim across Europe and Canada winning awards and music magazine rankings among the top albums of the year. Robinson went by the moniker of King Lou and Frank Allert was known as Capital Q. By late 1990 they had a studio album ready for release, And Now the Legacy Begins. The album went on to sell over 800,000 copies. It was listed in the Top 25 albums of the year by industry music magazines in the UK, Germany, Canada and Spain. The monthly Spanish music magazine rockdelux ranked And Now the Legacy Begins as the number 3 album of 1991. Though the album and several singles from the album sold well in Canada and in Europe, the Dream Warriors were mostly given a pass by American record buyers. The album received a Juno Award in Canada for the Rap Record of the Year in 1992.Continue reading →

#1272: Dead End Street by The Kinks

Peak Month: December 1966
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 #73
YouTube.com: “Dead End Street”
Lyrics: “Dead End Street”

The Kinks were an English rock band formed in 1963 in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and Dave Davies and Pete Quaife. Categorized in the United States as a British Invasion band, the Kinks are recognized as one of the most important and influential rock groups of the era. The Kinks first came to prominence in 1964 with their third single, “You Really Got Me”, written by Ray Davies. It became an international hit peaking at #1 in the UK, #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 in Vancouver on CKLG. Extremely influential on the American garage rock scene, You Really Got Me has been described as “a blueprint song in the hard rock and heavy metal arsenal. In 1965 the Kinks toured internationally headlining with other groups including Manfred Mann, The Honeycombs and The Yardbirds.
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#1274: Abdul’s Party by Larry Verne

Peak Month: April 1961
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #113 (Bubbling under the Hot 100)
YouTube.com: “Abdul’s Party”

In 1936 Larry Vern Erickson was born February 8, 1936 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The worked as a Hollywood stuntman. At some point he changed his name to Larry Verne. While in Hollywood Verne got introduced to songwriters Al DeLory, Fred Darian and Joseph Van Winkle, who worked across the hallway in the studio where Verne was employed. They’d just composed a song called “Mr. Custer,” and asked Larry Verne to make a recording. Verne debuted on the pop charts and “Mr. Custer” soon became a number one hit in October 1960. The song was about a guy at the back of the 7th Calvary in the US Army who didn’t want to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn, June 25-26, 1876, against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians. To try and settle his nerves the infantryman makes some bad jokes about “wild injuns.” The song went to #1 for two weeks on CKWX in September 1960.

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#1275: Some Sing Some Dance by Pagliaro

Peak Month: November 1972
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Some Sing Some Dance”
Lyrics: “Some Sing Some Dance”

Montreal’s Michel Pagliaro was born in 1948. He picked up guitar when he was eleven years old. At the age of 15 he was in a band les Stringmen. They morphed into les Bluebirds and finally les Merseys. Pagliaro got a break at the age of 18 when he was asked to join the Quebec band les Chanceliers. He was lead vocalist for the group which had a succession of singles and a self-titled album in the mid-60s. Their catalogue included “La generation d’aujourd’hui” (Today’s Generation), “Toi jeune fille”, a French version of “White Christmas”, and “Le p’tit popy” (The Little Poppy). In 1968, at the age of twenty, Pagliaro released some singles as a solo artist. His “Comme d’habitude” became a #1 hit in Quebec. Some of the lyrics in French “Tu the deshabillera come d’habitude” meant in English “you’ll take your clothes off as usual.” Nonetheless, the tune was adapted by Canadian pop singer Paul Anka and became the classic “My Way” popularized by Frank Sinatra.  It was followed with another number one hit for Pagliaro in French Canada in 1968 called “Avec la Tete, Avec la Coeur”.Continue reading →

#1278: Never Said I Love You by Payola$ with Carol Pope

Peak Month: October 1983
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #15 ~ CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Never Said I Love You”
Lyrics: “Never Said I Love You”

In 1978 a band was formed in Vancouver by Paul Hyde and Bob Rock called the Payola$. Hyde was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1955, and came to Vancouver in his teens. Bob Rock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1954, and moved to Victoria, British Columbia, with his family in his later childhood. Rock learned to play guitar. Meeting in the Victoria suburb of Langford, the band settled on a name recalling the American music industry scandal investigated by the US Congress starting in 1959 called Payola. This was an illegal act where record companies paid deejays and radio stations a bribe for playing a single the record company wanted to get promoted. While it was legal for a record company to receive money in exchange for playing it on the radio, such a transaction had to be disclosed and not counted as regular airplay. While the Payola scandal did not spread into the Canadian radio market, as local legendary Vancouver Deejay Red Robinson attests in Robin Brunet’s book Red Robinson: The Last Deejay, Payola still had a bad name in the industry in America into the 80s. Consequently, although the Payola$ sold well in Canada, they met with stiff resistance south of the border.

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#1280: Sometimes We’re Up by The Collectors

Peak Month: April 1970
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Sometimes We’re Up” (at 29:56 of link)

Here is another song by Vancouver rock band The Collectors on the Countdown, the second in three days. Their forerunner was The Classics who were a Vancouver group led by Howie Vickers in the mid-60s. The Classics were part of the regular line-up on Let’s Go, a show on CBC TV. Though the Classics released several singles the group needed room to grow and reformed as The Collectors. They would become one of the most innovative of Vancouver’s recording acts through the rest 60s. In the spring of 1967, Vickers was asked to put together a house band at the Torch Cabaret in Vancouver. Along with Claire Lawrence on horns, they recruited guitarist Terry Frewer, drummer Ross Turney and Brian Newcombe on bass. Within a couple of months, fellow Classics member Glenn Miller replaced Newcombe on bass and Bill Henderson, a student at UBC, replaced Frewer on guitars. With Vickers now handling vocals, their sound changed from doing covers of R&B tunes to psychedelic rock. This led them to gigs along the Canadian and US west coast. Their best reception south of the 49th parallel was in California. There audiences welcomed their complex arrangements mixed with harmonies and extended solos and musical ad-libs.

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