#17: Bobby’s Birthday by Kensington Market
City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKLC
Peak Month: December 1967
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Bobby’s Birthday”
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Keith McKie was born in St. Albans, England, in 1947. He moved with his family to Canada in 1953. After high school, he formed a band called The Shades. This later morphed into the Vendettas. After that band dissolved, McKie was sought out by former Paupers manager Bernie Finkelstein who suggested he form a new group. To join McKie, they got former Bobby Kris & the Imperials guitarist and pianist Gene Martynec to sign. Martynec was born in 1947 in Coburg, West Germany. Former Vendettas bandmate, Alex Darou, was added to the emerging band. Darou, who played bass guitar, was born in Sault Ste. Marie (ON) in 1943. The oldest member of the band, he had already been part of a jazz trio. They also added drummer Jimmy Watson, who was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1950.
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#18: Shutters And Boards by Jerry Wallace
City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKWS
Peak Month: January 1963
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #24
YouTube: “Shutters And Boards”
Lyrics: “Shutters And Boards”
Jerry Wallace was born in 1928 in Guilford, Missouri. He loved to sing and on June 1, 1952, he was one of the performers at the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. Among the other performers was Roy Brown, who by that time had charted over a dozen Top Ten hits on the Billboard R&B chart. Child star Toni Harper, who recorded with Oscar Peterson, Harry James and Dizzy Gillespie in the ’50’s. And Louis Jordan who had 54 Top Ten hits on the Billboard R&B chart, eighteen of which climbed to #1, including “Caldonia”. Also, jump blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon was there to sing his 1949 #1 hit “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”, which stayed on the chart for 34 weeks. (It was first popularized in 1922 by Bessie Smith and also Alberta Hunter). Wallace’s presence made the bill inter-racial that night.
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#20: The First Night Of The Full Moon by Jack Jones
City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKWS
Peak Month: August 1964
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #59
YouTube: “The First Night Of The Full Moon”
Lyrics: “The First Night Of The Full Moon”
Jack Jones was born in 1938 in Hollywood. In 1957, he released his first single “Good Luck Good Buddy” on Capitol Records. Two four singles on Capitol in the late 50s failed to chart. Meanwhile, in 1959 Jones debuted in his first film getting top billing in the Columbia Pictures musical Juke Box Rhythm. In 1961, Jones was hired to perform at Facks nightclub in San Francisco after the owner heard Jones song “This Could Be The Start Of Something Big”. At Facks nightclub, Jones was heard by Pete King, a producer and artist for Kapp Records, who quickly signed him to the label. Jack Jones was still working at his ‘day job’ as a gas station attendant when his first album on Kapp was released. While washing a customer’s windshield, Jones was surprised to hear one of his cuts playing on the car radio. He could now legitimately hope that his work as a gas station attendant would soon be over.
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#34: Mr. Lucky by Henry Mancini
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: June 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #21
YouTube: “Mr. Lucky”
Enrico Nicola Mancini was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, in 1924. Both his parents were Italian immigrants to the USA. At age eight Enrico learned to play the piccolo. He later studied at the Juilliard School of Music. When he turned 18 he enlisted in the United States Army he met Glenn Miller at basic training. Owing to a recommendation by Miller, Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945, he helped liberate the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. In 1946, he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra, led by ‘Everyman’ Tex Beneke. (Glenn Miller was declared missing in action after his plane disappeared over the English Channel in December 1944). In 1952, Henry Mancini joined Universal Studios’ Universal-International music department. In 1952 he scored music for The Raiders, and in 1953 for The Glenn Miller Story.
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#22: Dig A Hole by the Hans Staymer Band
City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKLC
Peak Month: July 1972
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #7
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Dig A Hole”
Hans Stamer was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1938. He discovered jazz, blues and the music of Django Reinhart in 1955, which inspired him to play guitar. In 1957, Stamer heard Louis Armstrong while on tour in Europe. He studied the craft of goldsmithing from 1957 to 1962, –a trade he still practices today—before moving to Edmonton. In 1964 he formed a blues band that eventually became The Famous Last Words. They toured the Canadian prairies until they split up in 1967. Stamer formed The Mighty Preachers in Edmonton later in 1967. He moved to British Columbia in 1968 and formed a jazz band called Django. As his name was often mispronounced, he added a “y” to his surname, becoming Hans Staymer.
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#2: Stay Away From Bobby by the Sherry Sisters
City: Fort St. John, BC (and Peace River, AB)
Radio Station: CKNL/CKYL
Peak Month: April 1963
Peak Position in Fort St. John ~ #12
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Stay Away From Bobby”
The Sherry Sisters were a vocal pop duo from Brooklyn, New York. They were two sisters, Lois and Karen Klein. Karen Klein entered a talent contest at the age of 16 when she was a counselor at the Catskill Mountain resort of the famous Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, New York. Spotted by a booking agent, she and Lois represented the United States in the First International Song Festival in Bogata, Colombia. They released their debut single on the Okey label titled “Stay Away From Bobby”.
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#1: Knock Knock Who’s There by Mary Hopkin
City: Fort St. John, BC
Radio Station: CKNL
Peak Month: February 1973
Peak Position in Fort St. John: #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #92
YouTube: “Knock Knock Who’s There”
Lyrics: “Knock Knock Who’s There”
Mary Hopkin was born in May 1950 in Pontardawe, Wales. She took weekly singing lessons as a child and began her musical career as a folk singer with a local group called the Selby Set and Mary. She released an EP of Welsh-language songs for a local record label called Cambrian, based in her hometown, before signing to the Beatles’ Apple Records. The model Twiggy saw Hopkin winning the ITV television talent show Opportunity Knocks and recommended her to Paul McCartney. Her debut single, “Those Were the Days”, produced by McCartney, was released in the UK on August 30, 1968. Hopkin had competition from well-established star Sandie Shaw, whose own single version of the song was released that fall. But Shaw’s recording stalled at #51 on the UK chart. Meanwhile, Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days” became a number-one hit in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, USA, and West Germany. Hopkins smash hit also climbed to #2 in Argentina, Australia, Austria, and South Africa.
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#39: House Of Bamboo by Earl Grant
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: May 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #88
YouTube: “House Of Bamboo”
Lyrics: “House Of Bamboo”
Earl Grant was born in a small town in southeastern Oklahoma in 1931. Grant attended four music schools, eventually becoming a music teacher. He augmented his income by performing in clubs during his U.S. Army service, throughout which he was stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas. Grant signed with Decca Records in 1957. His first album was released in 1958 titled The Versatile Earl Grant. His first single “The End” reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 13, 1958. It would be his only Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. “The End” subsequently appeared in the motion pictures Iron Maze (1991), Days of Tomorrow (1993), and A Dirty Shame (2004), and the TV show Lovecraft Country (2019).
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#2: Paradise by Sammy Turner
City: Fort William, ON
Radio Station: CJLX
Peak Month: March 1960
Peak Position in Fort William ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #24
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
YouTube: “Paradise”
Lyrics: “Paradise”
Sammy Turner was born Samuel Black in Patterson, New Jersey, in 1932. When he was 18, he put his dream of being a singer on hold and joined the U.S. Air Force and fought in the Korean War as a paratrooper. After the war ended in 1953, Turner worked as an accounting clerk, and sang at nightclubs at night. He was spotted by a talent agent who got Sammy Turner a record deal with Bigtop. He was being compared to the Platters lead singer Tony Williams, and Tommy Edwards. In early 1959, Sammy Turner and the Twisters released “Sweet Laurie Anne” – based on an 18th century poem written by William Douglas. The single was a Top 30 hit in Winnipeg, and a Top 20 hit in Buffalo. Turner went solo after this, and the Twisters became the Rivingtons who had a hit in 1962 titled “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow”.
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#1: After The Goldrush by Prelude
City: Kelowna, BC
Radio Station: CKOV
Peak Month: December 1974
Peak Position in Kelowna ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “After The Goldrush”
Lyrics: “After The Goldrush”
Prelude are an English-based vocal harmony group, who in their most famous line-up consisted of singer and guitarist Brian Hume, his wife Irene Hume – on vocals, and guitarist and singer Ian Vardy. Vardy and Brian Hume had covered Simon & Garfunkel’s song “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine” in 1967, billed as The Carnival. They formed Trilogy in their native Gateshead in northeast England in 1970, adding Irene Hume. They changed their name soon after to Prelude. They backed Ralph McTell on his recording of “Streets Of London”, which was released as a single in the UK in 1974. Prelude released a non-charting single titled “Edge of the Sea” in 1972. The following year Prelude signed with the Dawn Record label. They went to the recording studio to work on their debut album, How Long is Forever? One of the tracks was “After The Goldrush”.
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