#92: Automatic Reaction by Nino & The Ebb Tides
Peak Month: October 1964
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Automatic Reaction”
Nino & The Ebb Tides formed in 1956, initially billed as The Ebb Tides. They were from the Bronx, one of the boroughs of New York City. The members of the classic lineup of this doo-wop group were lead singer Antonio “Nino Aiello, bass singer Vinnie Drago, baritone Tony Imbimbo, and second tenor Ralph Bracco. Nino and Vinnie were schoolmates, and initially recruited Tony Delesio and another singer remembered only as Rudy. They met talent scout Murray Jacobs, who cut two sides with them in 1957: “Franny Franny”. The song was written by Nino, Vinnie and Tony. By the fall of 1957 the quartet was billed as Nino and the Ebb Tides. They got a record deal with Bill Miller’s West 44th Street Acme label. “Franny Franny” was getting some solid rotation from New York jocks like Alan Fredericks and Alan Freed and the group was performing at Sock hops along with other New York groups. Tony wanted the group to shift their sound to a light jazz in the vein of the Hi-Los. But, Tony was drafted into the United States Army. He was replaced by Ralph Bracco. Meanwhile, Rudy left the group and was replaced by Tony Imbimbo.
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#93: Joey by Concrete Blonde
Peak Month: September 1990
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #19
YouTube.com: “Joey”
Lyrics: “Joey”
Concrete Blonde is a band co-founded in 1986 by Johnette Napolitano and James Mankey. Napolitano was born in Los Angeles in 1957. She was a gifted child in an arts program from a young age. In 1982, she and Mankey began to perform together in Dream 6. Mankey was born in Washington State in 1952. He moved to Los Angeles and was a member of a band called Sparks. Mankey was featured on Sparks first two studio albums in 1971 and 1973. In 1986, Dream 6 signed with I.R.S. Records and it was suggested they change their name to Concrete Blonde. The name was intended to signal both their contrasting hard rock songs with their introspective lyrics. Napolitano played bass guitar, Mankey played guitar and the pair were joined on drums by Chicago born Harry Rushakoff (b 1958). In 1979, Rushakoff was part of the glam-punk band Special Affects who released the album Mood Music.
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#94: Here Comes The Night by Nick Gilder
Peak Month: December 1978
18 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Survey
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube.com: “Here Comes The Night”
Lyrics: “Here Comes The Night”
In 1951 Nick Gilder was born in London, England. In his childhood he moved to Canada and grew up in Vancouver. In the summer of 1973, when he was 22 years old, vocalist Gilder and fellow former high school classmate and guitarist, Jim McCulloch, founded a band called Rasputin. John Booth on drums, Bud Marr on bass and Dan Gaudin on keyboards rounded our the band. Shortly afterward they took the name Sweeney Todd. Their name was inspired by the 1846-47 Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance credited to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. The main antagonist of the story is Sweeney Todd, “the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. Todd is a barber who murders his customers and turns their bodies over to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies and sells them at her pie shop. A Sweeney Todd stage play by Stephen Sondheim appeared on Broadway in 1979.
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#95: Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room) by Paul Lekakis
Peak Month: April 1987
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube.com: “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)”
Lyrics: “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To My Room)”
Paul Lekakis was born in 1966 in New York City. He grew up in Tarrytown, New York – home to Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, and big band leader Cab Calloway. Lekalis was in the boys choir. He came out at the age of 15 in 1981. At 16, Paul Lekakis got a job waiting tables at Zippers, a gay club in nearby New Rochelle. He dropped out of high school and at the age of 17 he moved to New York City and began studying to become a dancer. “I did some dance industrials,” he recalls, “and auditioned for music videos — but I never got cast. I got the stuff that was like the model/fashion show/dance kinda thing.”
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#96: His Girl by the Guess Who?
Peak Month: August 1967
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “His Girl”
Lyrics: “His Girl”
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 Al & The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960.
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#97: Gonna Find Me A Bluebird by Joyce Hahn
Peak Month: August 1957
24 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #84
YouTube.com: “Gonna Find Me A Bluebird”
Lyrics: “Gonna Find Me A Bluebird”
Joyce Hahn was born in 1929 in Eatonia, Saskatchewan. As a child, Hahn performed from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s with The Harmony Kids, a family troupe formed by her father, Harvey. The Harmony Kids also included her brothers Bob and Lloyd and sister Kay. headed eastward across Canada from frontier Saskatchewan to the bright lights of Broadway during the Great Depression. Their resourceful father Harvey had schooled them all in music and had built a customized trailer to transport the family across the country making pass-the-hat appearances along the way at clubs, barns and radio stations, where a youthful but enterprising Robert Hahn would often offer to write them a station ID for a small fee. The Harmony Kids ended up in New York, where they appeared on the popular radio network show, We the People. As their popularity grew, the war interceded and they headed back to Canada.
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#98: I Only Want To Be With You by the Bay City Rollers
Peak Month: October 1976
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube.com: “I Only Want To Be With You”
Lyrics: “I Only Want To Be With You”
Alan Longmuir was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1948. The family was poor and lived in tenement housing with no bath or bathroom. Alan recalls in his memoir, “to have a proper wash we used the Dalry Public Baths in Caledonian Crescent… I remember the Baths had a Brylcreem dispensing machine at a penny squirt.” In 1958 Alan went to the Scotia movie cinema to see Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley. He learned to play acoustic guitar. He had been hanging out with a rough crowd and was known by the teachers at school as a truant. He worked at a dairy, cleaning stables and delivering milk on a horse and cart before he left school in 1963 at the age of 15. He also sang in the Tynecastle School Choir before he quit school. Alan’s father worked as an undertaker, going to work in a top hat and long coat. There was often a hearse outside the Longmuir home. Alan recalls that his father “used to come along the street with the hearse and people would wonder who died, but it was just him coming home for his lunch.”
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#99: A Mess Of Blues by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: August 1960
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube.com: “A Mess Of Blues”
Lyrics: “A Mess Of Blues”
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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#100: How Much Love by Leo Sayer
Peak Month: September 1977
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “How Much Love”
Lyrics: “How Much Love”
Gerard Hugh “Leo” Sayer was born in 1948 in Sussex, England. He left school in 1964 and went to an art college. Sayer also learned to play the harmonica and joined several bands. He moved to London and worked as an illustrator for several magazines and designed record covers. In 1970, he was still known to his friends as Gerry. Sayer was brought to the attention of former English pop star Adam Faith, who by the 70’s was a manager in the music business. He cowrote “Giving It All Away”, which became at Top 5 UK hit for Roger Daltrey in 1973. The song was credited to Leo Sayer. In late 1973, Leo Sayer appeared on stage dressed in a Pierrot costume – recalling the sad clown of 17th century Comédie-Italienne. Such was the reaction to his performance, the entire UK music business noted that a new star was born. Leo went on a British and European tour supporting Roxy Music, now appearing on stage dressed as the Pierrot. The following year, his song “The Show Must Go On”, climbed to #2 in the UK, #3 in Ireland, #10 in Australia and #11 in South Africa. “The Show Must Go On” was successfully covered by Three Dog Night, peaking in the Top Ten in Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the USA. His second Top Ten hit in the UK and Ireland, “One Man Band”, was also a Top 20 hit in South Africa and West Germany. A third international Top Ten hit for Sayer was “Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)”. The song was covered by the Canadian band Shooter. And in 1975, Leo Sayer had another international hit with “Moonlighting” which peaked at #1 in Ireland, #2 in the UK, #3 in Rhodesia, #6 in Norway, #7 in Sweden, and Top 20 in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Leo Sayer toured across the USA as an opening act for Hall & Oates.
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#101: Make My Life A Little Bit Brighter by Chester
Peak Month: November 1973
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Make My Life A Little Bit Brighter”
Lyrics: “Make My Life A Little Bit Brighter”
Chester was a band from Toronto that formed in the early 70’s. They were comprised of Glenn Morrow on keyboard, guitar and vocals; Jim Mancel on lead vocals; Mike Argue on lead guitar and vocals, and Glen “Wedge” Monroe on drums, piano, and guitar. Morrow was born in 1946. An obituary with the City of Toronto states Morrow “started playing in bands around Toronto in his early teen years. Hammond B-3 organ and piano were his favorite instruments to perform on. An extremely talented keyboardist-arranger, he played with the Bluenotes, T.K’s., Tarot” and played organ with Canadian Rock Theatre in 1972. Jim Mancel released a single in 1970 titled “I Could Give You The World”.
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