#73: Gemini Dream by the Moody Blues
Peak Month: July-August 1981
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube.com: “Gemini Dream”
Lyrics: “Gemini Dream”
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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#74: Mull Of Kintyre by Wings
A-side: “Mull Of Kintyre”
Peak Month: January 1978
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Mull Of Kintyre”
Lyrics: “Mull Of Kintyre”
B-side: “Girl’s School”
Peak Month: January 1978
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #33
YouTube.com: “Girl’s School”
Lyrics: “Girl’s School”
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio.
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#74: King Creole by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: August 1958
8 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson Teen Canteen Survey
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Singles ~ #20
YouTube.com: “King Creole”
Lyrics: “King Creole”
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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#75: Midnight Blue by Louise Tucker
Peak Month: June 1983
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
2 weeks CKLG Top 20 Extras
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
YouTube.com link: “Midnight Blue”
“Midnight Blue” lyrics
Louise Tucker was born in 1956 in Bristol, UK. She was trained in opera at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She has performed opera with the Ax-en-Province Festival, the Dublin Grand Opera, the Holland Park Festival, the Kent Opera and the Orleans Opera. She is an acclaimed opera star and has wowed music critics and fans alike with her renditions of Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Verdi’s Requiem and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. She has also sung numerous times in Handel’s Messiah.
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#76: She’s Always A Woman by Billy Joel
Peak Month: November 1978
17 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “She’s Always A Woman”
Lyrics: “She’s Always A Woman”
William Martin Joel was born in 1949 in The Bronx. His father, Helmut “Howard” Joel, was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and sold his textile business at a fraction of its value to be able to move to Switzerland. From there his father traveled to Cuba and was able to enter the United States from the Caribbean. Billy Joel’s mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in Brooklyn, also to Jewish parents. Young William was coerced by his mother to take piano lessons at the age of four. He kept taking piano lessons until he was sixteen. His parents divorced when he was eight, and in his later years in high school Billy Joel played at a piano bar to make some extra income to support his single mother, his sister and himself. Though his parents were Jewish, Billy Joel did not identify as Jewish and began to attend a Roman Catholic parish at age eleven.
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#77: Money Honey by the Bay City Rollers
Peak Month: February 1976
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #9
Billboard Year-End chart 1976: #92
YouTube.com: “Money Honey”
Lyrics: “Money Honey”
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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#78: Dancing Shoes by Cliff Richard
Peak Month: October-November 1963
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Dancing Shoes”
Lyrics: “Dancing Shoes”
Cliff Richard was born Harry Roger Webb on October 14, 1940, in the city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1940 Lucknow was part of the British Raj, as India was not yet an independent country. Webb’s father worked on as a catering manager for the Indian Railways. His mother raised Harry and his three sisters. In 1948, when India had become independent, the Webb family took a boat to Essex, England, and began a new chapter. At the age of 16 Harry Webb was given a guitar by his father. Harry then formed a vocal group called the Quintones. Webb was interested in skiffle music, a type of jug band music, popularized by “The King of Skiffle,” Scottish singer Lonnie Donegan who had an international hit in 1955 called “Rock Island Line”.
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#79: Under My Thumb by Streetheart
Peak Month: January 1980
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #2 ~ CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Under My Thumb”
Lyrics: “Under My Thumb”
Kenny Shields was from Nokomis, Saskatchewan in 1947. When he was six years old he won an amateur talent contest. Once he graduated from high school he pursued music and in 1967 formed a band in Saskatoon named Witness Inc. The band had several Top Ten hits in local radio markets in the Canadian Prairies and in Ontario. These include “I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow”, “Jezebel” and “Harlem Lady”. In 1969 Sheilds had a near fatal car accident and had to undergo therapy and rehab for a number of years. This meant he had to quit the band. In 1975 Shields was back with Witness Inc. and by that time he was the only original member in the band. But the pseudo-psychedlic sound that Witness Inc. was known for was no longer in vogue. The band changed its name to Streetheart and with it got a newer rock ‘n roll sound. Bass player Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve and keyboard player, Daryl Gutheil, made the transition from Witness Inc. As Streetheart, they were joined by Paul Dean and Matt Frenette who both moved on to form Loverboy.
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#80: It’s Raining Again by Supertramp
Peak Month: December 1982
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #11
YouTube.com: “It’s Raining Again”
Lyrics: “It’s Raining Again”
Richard “Rick” Davies was born in 1944 in Swindon, England. By the age of eight, it was clear his only real interest in school was music. At the age of 12 he became a snare drummer with the British Railways Staff Association Brass and Silver Jubilee Band. Davies recalls, “As a kid, I used to hear the drums marching along the street in England, in my home town, when there was some kind of parade, and it was the most fantastic sound to me. Then, eventually, I got some drums and I took lessons. I was serious about it… I figured if I could do that – I mean a real drummer, read music and play with big bands, rock bands, classical, Latin, and know what I was going to do – I would be in demand and my life was set… Eventually, I started fiddling with the keyboards, and that seemed to go over better than my drumming, for some reason. So you’ve gotta go with what people react to.”
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#81: Into The Groove by Madonna
Peak Month: July 1985
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Into The Groove”
Lyrics: “Into The Groove”
Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan, in 1958. Raised in the Pontiac, Michigan, Madonna’s mother died of cancer in 1963. While she was attending a Catholic middle school Madonna, as reported in Madonna: An Intimate Biography, would perform cartwheels and handstands in the hallways between classes, dangle by her knees from the monkey bars during recess, and pull up her skirt during class—all so that the boys could see her underwear. Madonna later told Vanity Fair that she saw herself in her youth as a “lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn’t rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn’t shave my underarms and I didn’t wear make-up like normal girls do.” After high school, she got a dance scholarship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
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