#54: Pass The Dutchie by Musical Youth
Peak Month: February 1983
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
Billboard Top 100 for 1983 ~ #91
YouTube.com: “Pass The Dutchie”
Lyrics: “Pass The Dutchie”
Dennis Michael Seaton was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1967. Kelvin Grant was born in 1971 in Birmingham. Michael Grant was born in Birmingham in 1969. Patrick Waite was born in Birmingham in 1969. Junior Waite was born in Birmingham in 1967. The Waites’ father, Frederick Waite Sr., had been a member of the Jamaican reggae group the Techniques. At the start of Musical Youth’s career, he sang lead with Junior. It was decided that it was more fitting that the lead singer be a similar age to the rest of the bandmates. An audition was held and Dennis Seaton was the only person who responded to the ad.
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#55: Roll On Down The Highway by Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Peak Month: March 1975
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Roll On Down The Highway”
Lyrics: “Roll On Down The Highway”
Randolph Charles Bachman was born in 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When he was just three years old he entered the King of the Saddle singing contest on CKY radio, Manitoba’s first radio station that began in 1923. Bachman won the contest. When he turned five years he began to study the violin through the Royal Toronto Conservatory. Though he couldn’t read music, he was able to play anything once he heard it. He dropped out of high school and subsequently a business administration program in college. He co-founded a Winnipeg band called The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960. In 1962 the band became Chad Allan and the Expressions, and was renamed The Guess Who? in 1965 with their first big hit, “Shakin’ All Over”. The Guess Who dropped the question mark in their title a few years later.
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#57: Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox
Peak Month: November 1992
19 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Walking On Broken Glass”
Lyrics: “Walking On Broken Glass”
Ann Lennox was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1954. Lennox recalls, “When I was very young, we had a salmon pink Dansette record player. Someone gave me birthday money and the first record I think I bought was Mary Poppins followed by Procul Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale“. Both records are magical and transporting. I used to visit my grandparents in the countryside and would always go into the recesses of a cupboard to pull out a box full of old 78 rpm records which I’d play over and over again, especially the Vilja song from The Merry Widow, which I was obsessed with. My dad blew my mind when I was six years old because he built his own Gramophone. He had the albums for every Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and he switched his homebuilt record player on and you heard this crackling sound and then ‘Boom!’ I remember walking to school singing “I Enjoy Being A Girl”. To buy a vinyl album, you had to record player and you have to have speakers, and this is a great thing because that means people are going to listen to your music not on a cell phone, but they’re going to listen to it out of a sound system, which is what we all did when we were growing up. The important thing about vinyl releases is that people buy them and actually put them on the turntable and listen to a side, because we chose the tracks to be played in a particular order, and that was really important.”
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#72: Earache My Eye by Cheech & Chong
Peak Month: October 1974
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #9
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Singles chart ~ #4
YouTube.com: “Earache My Eye”
Lyrics: “Earache My Eye”
Spoken word skit: “Earache My Eye”
Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin was born in 1946 in Los Angeles. His nickname “Cheech” is short for chicharron (which is a dish generally featuring fried pork belly, or fried pork rind). In a 2017 NPR interview, Marin attributed the nickname to his uncle: “I came home from the hospital, I was like a couple of days old or something, my uncle came over and he looked in the crib and he said [in Spanish], ‘Ay, parece un chicharrón.’ Looks like a little chicharrón, you know?” Cheech moved to Vancouver, BC, in September 1967, to avoid being drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Thomas B. Kin Chong was born in 1938 in Edmonton, Alberta. Growing up in Calgary, Chong stated in an interview, “when I was 16 but probably just before they were going to throw me out anyway.” He played guitar to make money. “I discovered that music could get you laid, even if you were a scrawny, long-haired, geeky-looking guy like me.”
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#71: One Tin Soldier by the Original Caste
Peak Month: December 1969/August 1973
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #34
YouTube.com: “One Tin Soldier”
Lyrics: “One Tin Soldier”
The Original Caste were a band from Calgary, Alberta, that formed in 1966. The band’s leader was Bruce Innes. He was born in Calgary (AB) in 1943. He was playing professionally at the age of eleven, supported by his musical father who had lots of connections in the city. At the University of Montana, in Missoula (MT), Innes sang with the Big Sky Singers. After college, he accompanied civil rights activist, blues and folk singer Josh White on a tour that ended in New York City. Josh White had a promising career and had toured with Eleanor Roosevelt to Europe in 1950. But he returned home from the tour to be interrogated as a suspected communist, having made it on a “Red” list of subversives during the McCarthy hysteria. White was blacklisted and his career suffered. But by 1963-64, a new wind was blowing across America, and Bruce Innes was grateful to be able to accompany Josh White on guitar. They toured all the way to New York City.
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#58: Tears Are Not Enough by Northern Lights
Peak Month: April-May 1985
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Tears Are Not Enough”
Lyrics: “Tears Are Not Enough”
Northern Lights is the name given to the ensemble of Canadian pop music performers who recorded a charity single in 1985 to raise funds in response to the famine in Ethiopia. The single, “Tears Are Not Enough”, featured solo vocals by Gordon Lightfoot, Burton Cummings, Anne Murray, Joni Mitchell, Dan Hill, Neil Young, Bryan Adams, Corey Hart, Bruce Cockburn, lead singer with Rush – Geddy Lee, and lead singer with Loverboy – Mike Reno. In addition, the following recording artists appeared singing on the recording in duos or trios: Mike Reno and Liberty Silver; Carroll Baker with Ronnie Hawkins and Murray McLauchlan; Francophone singers Véronique Béliveau, Robert Charlebois and Claude Dubois; Alfie Zappacosta and Lisa Dal Bello; Carol Pope and Paul Hyde, Salome Bey with Platinum Blonde lead singer Mark Holmes and the Parachute Clubs’ Lorraine Segato.
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#59: The Voice by the Moody Blues
Peak Month: September 1981
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube.com: “The Voice”
Lyrics: “The Voice”
Born in 1941 in wartime England, Ray Thomas picked up harmonica at the age of nine. He was in the Birmingham Youth Choir and in October 1958 he joined a skiffle group called The Saints and Sinners. The band split up in June 1959. The Saints and Sinners helped Ray discover how well his vocals were received by audiences. Next, he formed El Riot and the Rebels, featuring Ray Thomas as El Riot dressed in a green satin Mexican toreador outfit. The band won a number of competitions in the Birmingham area. It was here that Ray became known for making an entrance onstage by sliding to center stage on his knees. On one occasion Thomas sent a row of potted tulips flying into the audience. El Riot and the Rebels appeared several times on a local variety show called Lunchbox. They made their debut on Lunchbox on November 14, 1962, and played “Guitar Tango” and “I Remember You”. Mike Pinder joined El Riot and the Rebels on keyboards. On April 15, 1963, El Riot and the Rebels performed at The Riverside Dancing Club in Tenbury Wells as the opening act for The Beatles. Pinder went off to serve in the British Army. When he returned, Thomas and Pinder left El Riot and the Rebels and formed a new band called the Krew Kats.
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#60: Paralyzed/When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again by Elvis Presley
A-side: “Paralyzed”
Peak Month: November 1956
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #59
YouTube.com: “Paralyzed”
Lyrics: “Paralyzed”
B-side: “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again”
Peak Month: November 1956
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #27
YouTube.com: “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again”
Lyrics: “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.
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#70: Ain’t Love A Bitch by Rod Stewart
Peak Month: June 1979
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube.com: “Ain’t Love A Bitch”
Lyrics: “Ain’t Love A Bitch”
Roderick David Stewart was born in London, England, in 1945. In 1956 he got introduced to rock ‘n roll when he saw Bill Haley and His Comets in concert, and heard Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It”. He was given a guitar by his dad in 1959, and he learned to play the Kingston Trio’s “A Worried Man”. He quit school at age 15 and worked as a newspaper boy. He auditioned with Joe Meek in 1961, but didn’t get a record deal. By 1963 he was part of an R&B band called The Dimensions. In 1965 he teamed up with Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger to form a blues band called Steampacket. This lasted another year. Eventually, Stewart became part of the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. When that band broke up in the fall of ’68, Rod Stewart got invited to join the reformed Small Faces, who were now just called Faces.
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#69: Mona Lisa by Carl Mann
Peak Month: August 1959
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX Chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Mona Lisa”
Lyrics: “Mona Lisa”
Carl Richard Mann was born in 1942 in Huntingdon, Tennessee. He was referred to as “The Last Son of Sun”, as he was one of the final artists introduced by Sam Phillips of Sun Records. A child musical prodigy, he learned to play the guitar by age eight, sang in church, and by the age of eleven also began to perform country songs for local talent shows in nearby Jackson, Tennessee. In 1957 at the age of 15, Mann released his first single on Jaxon Records, “Gonna Rock and Roll Tonight” b/w “Rockin’ Love”. After he released several more singles on Jaxon, Carl Perkins drummer – W.S. Holland – became the manager for Carl Mann.
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