Every RPM Canadian Content #1 single discussion thread 1964-2000

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bunglejerry, Aug 17, 2020.

  1. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    At #18 on April 4, Montreal's Bartholomew Plus Three (Corky Laing) with "Cause I'm Alone". However, neither side is on youtube.

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    It would also be released in Australia and New Zealand.

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    They then changed their name to the B+3 and recorded two singles in New York with Hutch Davie, "Taboo" b/w "Why Oh Why" and "My Babe Before" b/w "Delila" (which is just "Beautiful Delilah" with Corky Laing claiming the songwriting credit). Both were released on the Canadian-American label and were released in the U.S.
    They would change their name back to Bartholomew Plus Three in 1967 and their final single would make the CanCon chart.

     
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  2. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    On April 11, peaking at #14 are the Reefers (from Hamilton) with "Treat Me Alright" b/w "Sinner Man". It would be released on the short-lived Mark III label (in Kitchener). According to RPM, the only other release would be "It Takes One To Know One" by the Peace Corps. The record would only chart on Kitchener's CHYM (but reach #72 on the Top 100). In the group on guitar would be Jerry "Mama Let Him Play" Doucette, supposedly 13 or 14 years old at the time (though I'd like to see the long form birth certificate). Here's the B-side, because I like it more:



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  3. bunglejerry

    bunglejerry Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    Man, "Sinner Man" is a CanCon classic and we didn't know! The Reefers pretend that it's a (P. Owens) composition, Terry Black pretended it was a (Holt-Baxter) composition.
     
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  4. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Is this the first mention of that label (Canadian-American) in the thread? It had occurred to me that it might mean something in the search for Canadiana.

    IIRC when I was a kid I inherited an older brother s 45s, and Santo and Johnny's Sleepwalk was on that label.
     
  5. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Some Punk Rock group should have called themselves The No-Counts :)
     
  6. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    That's a great cover of a superb song. Makes me wonder if Jackie Shane's Any Other Way would be making an appearance here?
     
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  7. Paul C

    Paul C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    "Any Other Way" was a huge hit in Canada in early 1963. In the U.S., it 'bubbled under' the Hot 100 at #124.

    For those who may not know, Jackie Shane was a transgender woman who passed away last year. There are a couple of threads about Jackie on this board:

    Searching for Jackie Shane - Globe and Mail article

    Jackie Shane - RIP
     
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  8. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Might as well let those who haven't heard ANY OTHER WAY easy access to this gem



    I was an avid listener in early 1963, in PEI, but I don't think I ever heard this until it appeared on the Stardust series of cds that focussed on songs popular in Canada that may not have had such a big impact in USA.
     
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  9. bunglejerry

    bunglejerry Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    28. HEY GIRL GO IT ALONE
    by BIG TOWN BOYS
    #1 for 1 week: April 18, 1966




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    When you're a girl singer from Essex County... and when a backup band has been created just for you... and when that band is named after your first hit... and when that band goes on to record their own singles with their own lead singer... and that band with that lead singer records a song titled "Hey Girl Go It Alone"... well, it's enough to make a girl paranoid.

    Not to say that the title of the Big Town Boys' sole RPM CanCon number one is actually a dig at Shirley Matthews - though there's really nothing in the lyrics that can't be interpreted that way. In any case, it wasn't their first single released with Tommy Graham as lead singer; it was their fourth. Though it didn't manage to top the CanCon chart, 1965's "It Was I" actually charted higher on the main RPM chart - number five to this current song's number seven. The band would release only one more single on Capitol before changing their name to the much odder "BTB-4" and putting out two final singles on Yorkville Records.

    This particular track is a lovely midtempo original (composed by Graham under his birth name of Tommy Goodings together with drummer Peter Collins) with tricky guitar lines and a complex arrangement.

    In addition to working as the Big Town Boys' lead singer, it seems Tommy Graham was also their manager. He would also manage Mick Jagger's favourite Canadian band the Ugly Ducklings, who we get to talk about in due course. Tommy Graham seems to have had a pretty colourful life, having spent time (according to perhaps the worst Wikipedia page I've ever read in India, Afghanistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Ecuador and elsewhere. He would also, in 1972, cover Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush", and apparently play on Anne Murray's "Snowbird" as well.

    SUR LES PALMARÈS DU QUÉBEC: It's been a long time since we've checked in on the Palmarès reconstitués de la chanson au Québec to see what would have been top of the charts in Québec had a reliable pan-Québec francophone pop chart existed at the time (one didn't). The week that "Hey Girl Go It Alone" was at number one among the anglophones, there were apparently two songs at number one on the French-language charts that allow for a bit of a giggle when their titles are considered together: one is called "Monsieur Cannibale", and the other is called "Tu n'as pas de cœur". As the intriguing former is by Frenchman Sacha Distel, it doesn't interest us. The latter, however, is one of a remarkable 81 singles released between 1962 and 1986 by Montréal's Pierre Lalonde (that figure comes from his fr.wikipedia.org page). It's a proficient and faithful translation of Bobby Goldsboro's "If You've Got a Heart" with, seemingly, more or less the same arrangement as the original.

    It was preceded at number one by "Ne me quitte pas" by Les Gendarmes, a faithful cover (with a different lyrical theme) of Neil Sedaka's "The Diary". That was preceded by a five-week run for "L'amour" by Thérèse Deroy of Sainte-Thérèse-de-Colombier, which is a village near Baie-Comeau. It was an RCA Victor release with a picture sleeve (which describes her as "comely" and "a little flower" and says the song is a cover of an Edith Piaf song, though I can't track down the original).

    Other chart-topping CanCon includes Donald Lautrec of Jonquière, whose "Loin dans ma campagne" held the number one spot for five weeks in January and February. It is, of all things, a yé-yé version of "On Top of Old Smokey". Lastly, we have "Aline", which held the top position with two simultaneous recordings, one of which was by Daniel Guérard of Saint-Félix-de-Valois. The other was by its French composer Christophe, which had been a million-seller in Europe in the summer of '65.

    The same situation occurred immediately before "Aline", with "Les yeux d'un ange" topping the charts in November in two different recordings, the original by Franck Fernandel and the Québécois version by Pière Senécal. The keen CanCon spotter will observe in the songwriting credits the name of Eddy Marnay, who wrote and produced dozens of songs for Céline Dion in the 1980s.
     
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  10. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    The first two Chad Allan & The Reflections 45s were on Canadian-American. not the different addresses on the bottom rim print:

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  11. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
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  12. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    Here's a clip of Shirley Matthews singing "Big Town Boy" live on Music Hop (introduced by Alex Trebek!). Note the three back-up singers: we'll me hearing from them tomorrow.

     
  13. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    The Big Town Boys released their debut LP in March 1966. Both sides of the single were on it. Unusually Capitol released it in a gatefold cover.

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  14. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit Mi USA
    To do a gatefold at this time was something special even in the US. CapCanada must have expected some sales. Any idea how the LP sold? When it left the catalog? CD release?
     
  15. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    The producer was Stan Klees and the "Executive Producer" was the legendary Paul White, so they certainly had friends in high places. It's rare, so it was never re-pressed, never released on CD.
     
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  16. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    He would release a solo album in 1970, Planet Earth. He had four Top 100 hits in Canada. Here's one of them, "Sahajiya", where he puts his lessons under Ali Akbar Khan to use. (The song was written by Brent Titcomb of Three's A Crowd, we'll be hearing from them later.)



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    The story of what happened to the rest of the Big Town Boys (and their adventures in Germany) is fascinating, we'll get to that later.
     
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  17. bunglejerry

    bunglejerry Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    So taking a quick look at it, it seems like in Capitol's 6000 Series, they use the letters KAO to indicate albums with gatefold sleeves. Big Town Boys' début is just the third Capitol 6000 album to get a gatefold and the first Canadian one to do so - it was preceded by a Cliff Richard album and by a rip-off "instrumental versions of Beatles songs" album, both in 1965. Only 13 albums in the 6000 Series ever would get gatefold's, Sylvia Tyson's 1975 release being the final one. But interestingly Tommy Graham's Planet Earth is one of those thirteen!

    EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is that that Big Town Boys sleeve is really gorgeous!
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2020
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  18. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    On April 18, the third single by Toronto's Dee & The Yeomen, "A Love Like Mine", peaks at #5 on the Cross Canada chart. Their first release on Reo, it would hit #27 on thebig chart. Note that the song was written by group member Terry Watkinson, later of Max Webster.



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    Last edited: Sep 23, 2020
  19. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

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  20. bekayne

    bekayne Senior Member

    At #15 on April 18 is "I Like The Way You Walk" by Dean Curtis & The Lively Set. The B-side was "The Gouge", which was the name of a Toronto club where they played. It was their second single on Barry, the first being "Stuck On Yourself"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClrKe9cUVxY

     
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  21. gabbleratchet7

    gabbleratchet7 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    (aside: Perhaps Bernard Purdie played drums on this...)
     
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  22. bunglejerry

    bunglejerry Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    My grandmother, God bless her, got hoodwinked by these sorts of albums every damn time. She'd come back from the shops happy that she'd picked up a new Elvis album, say, only to find out that it was really

    Scott Pillman and his Orchestra Play
    ELVIS PRESLEY'S
    GREATEST HITS!

    I would feel so sorry for her because she'd get so upset at herself... and then just do it again and again...

    This one is highly deceptive because The Beatles is the only name on it, and there are real pictures of the four of them.

    And it's on Capitol!
     
  23. Paul C

    Paul C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Interesting that "Put You Down" and its B-side "Forget About You" are on the Capitol album, since that single was on RCA.

    The only Big Town Boys hit that has ever been on a legit CD that I'm aware of is "It Was I", which is on Volume 4 of the Made In Canada series. A number of their songs can be found in the unauthorized Only In Canada series: "Put You Down" is on Volume 2, "Hey Girl, Go It Alone" and "Jack Rabbit" are on Volume 3, and "It Was I" is on Volume 7.

    Unless the album had a US or UK release, and that does not appear to have been the case, it is not likely that tapes still exist.
     
  24. bunglejerry

    bunglejerry Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, ON
    29. LOVEDROPS
    by BARRY ALLEN
    #1 for 6 weeks: April 25 and May 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30, 1966




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    If there's any reason to remember 50s and 60s R&B duo Mickey and Sylvia, it's most probably for their sole Top 40 hit "Love is Strange" (a/k/a "That song Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey are mouthing as they crawl around on the floor"). If not that, then perhaps it's for the duo's individual contributions to the music industry (he in guitar instruction, she in hip-hop production).

    In any case, it's not likely to be for "Love Drops", a forgotten b-side from 1961 which made it to a lofty number 97 on the Billboard 100.

    It might have just dropped off the face of the planet if it weren't for Barry Allen of our friend Wes Dakus's backup group the Rebels, who recorded it with Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico as the title track of his second album (which would be his final album under the aegis of Capitol and Norman Petty). It was apparently Petty who observed Allen as a member of Dakus's the Rebels and identified him as a potential solo star. Allen maintained his solo career and his membership in the Rebels simultaneously.

    The album I mentioned, Lovedrops, was a Capitol 6000 Series album which, among other things, featured a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Codine". It wasn't released in the country where it was recorded, though the single was released on Dot Records. It got released in Germany as well.

    Barry Allen is another of our 2020 losses, as he passed away in April of this year. We will hear from him once more in 1966, where I suppose we can talk about his subsequent activities.

    A few points: if the label just happened to say "Robinson / Baker", we wouldn't think twice of it. But the label credits "J. Robinson / M. Baker", with the J. presumably being Sylvia Robinson's husband Joe Robinson. And what, pray tell, is with the name of the music publishing company - Ben Ghazi Enterprises?

    Confusion also reigns as to whether to spell the song title as one word or two: Capitol Canada spells it as one word, and so does the Willow Records release of the Mickey & Sylvia original. But both Dot Records of the USA and Ariola Records of Germany spell the Barry Allen version with two words - as you can see on the lovely Ariola 7" cover linked below.

    ON THE PAGES OF RPM: From May 23: "Here's a quote from one of Canada's leading top forty format stations, "Following the example of many responsible broadcasters, certain records have been eliminated from our playlist because their lyrics promote the use of drugs." (Ed: Now that glue, buttermilk and gasoline sniffing and the use of marijuana are becoming common in our conversation it is the duty of ever broadcaster to screen out those records that could transmit a message to potential hopheads. The station that does program this type of disc is in actuality sanctioning the use of "go for glow" brain damaging opiates. lt doesn't require too much grey matter to figure out which of the popular records should be shelved.)"

    Germany:

    [​IMG]
     
  25. Paul C

    Paul C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Who exactly wrote "Lovedrops" is a bit confusing. The Mickey & Sylvia single credits "Jay Robinson/S. Gibson". Sylvia was married to a John Robinson (not Jay), and Sam Gibson had written or co-written previous Mickey & Sylvia songs.

    Starting at 3:02 in this clip, Barry Allan and The Rebels talk about "Lovedrops" and then perform the song. They first perform the Wes Dakus hit, "Las Vegas Scene".



    "Love Drops" was listed by Billboard as a 'Breakout Hit' in Boston, but no Rebels song, whether credited to Barry Allan or Wes Dakus, ever charted.
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2020
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