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

That's quite a discrepancy between the run times on the Canadian and U.S. labels. The U.S. 45 appears to have been an edit.

 

The adult-contemporary-ish "Young Adult" chart was last published on April 4, 1970. After almost eight months without an AC chart, RPM introduced an "MOR Playlist" chart on November 28, 1970. This chart would endure various changes in name (but be continuously published) until it was discontinued after the November 22, 1980, issue (during the time that RPM was being published only every other week). After a couple of months without an AC chart, RPM premiered an "Adult-Oriented Cancon" chart on January 24, 1981. As its name suggests, it was a Cancon-only chart, a restriction that would only last until June 6 of that year, when the AC chart ceased being Cancon-only. An RPM adult contemporary chart would then be continuously published until the final RPM issue in November 2000.

 

OOOPS! It looks like whoever uploaded the Michael Tarry video to Youtube did not set it to be accessible from other sites. So I 'borrowed' his audio and made my own.



Unfortunately, I can't edit my original post, for which there appears to be a thirty minute time limit.

 

79. TWILIGHT WOMAN
by 49th PARALLEL
VENTURE MAVERICK 1004X
#1 for 2 weeks: April 14 and 21, 1969



​

I will confess to not having an awful lot to say about 49th Parallel that hasn't already been said in this thread. From Calgary and originally using the name Shades of Blond, 49th Parallel had released two punky singles on RCA Victor before moving to Venture Records and Maverick Records for three subsequent singles and a solitary full-length album. Maverick, listed on discogs as a subsidiary of Venture (and obviously nothing to do at all with Madonna's 1990s-era record label) seems to have existed scant longer than a year and, in that time, put out barely more than a dozen singles and only two LPs - one of which was this act's. Venture Records itself appears to have existed for only two years, long enough to release a small handful of album and some 40-odd singles. One of the chief principals in Venture Records was Clarence Avant, later owner of Sussex Records, who you may know as the chief villain in the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

It wasn't label shenanigans that did 49th Parallel in. When Venture / Maverick folded, they went on Barry Records for a final single in 1970. It was, apparently, the relative lack of a breakthrough and the ongoing personnel changes that did them in. "Twilight Woman", the third song on side two of the band's self-titled album, was written by lead singer Dennis Abbott, who left the band within a month of the album's release. It's a catchy, smooth and summery track. It saw release only in Canada and the United States, where it apparently achieved a modicum of success.

ON THE PAGES OF RPM: Although his first album came out in 1968 and his first singles were released all the way back in 1965, we haven't had cause so far to speak about one of Canada's most towering musical legends. A brief article (only two clause-thick sentences):

Toronto: To coincide with the presentation of The Country Artist of The Year Award, presented to Tom Connors on behalf of The Country Music Association of Canada by Canada's Country Music Ambassador, Bob Dalton, Rebel Records of Canada announces the release of Stompin' Tom's new album. Entitled "On Tragedy Trail", the album is a collection of Connor's original tragedy songs, all based on actual famous Canadian tragedies.

Rebel Records, incidentally, was a strange endeavour that lasted only two years. Run by John C. Irvine, Rebel concentrated mostly on country music, though they did release a Jackie Shane live album and a Mississippi John Hurt reissue - and a sublabel, Boo Records, existed long enough to release a single and an album each by A Passing Fancy and Grant Smith and the Power. The Rebel label's original logo, two crossed Confederate battle flags, was certainly an unusual choice for a Canadian record company!

Before 1969 was through, On Tragedy Trail would be reissued on Dominion Records - with the "Stompin'" added to the artist credit.

 

I don't know where one would have to go to find a record spindle made out of bullet casings.

 

In the U.S., this was ish'd on another label:

Mikim was apparently connected with former Motown producer William "Mickey" Stevenson and his then-wife, ex-Motown artist Kim Weston.

 

#62 on the April 21 RPM Chart. There was also a picture sleeve in France.

 

Thanks, I missed that one.

 

"Twilight Woman" would peak at #50 the week of April 28. #2 at Calgary's CKXL, #16 on the CHUM chart. Here's the B-side "Close The Barn Door" (also on the alum).



The album was released in September of 1969.

 

At #4 the week of April 14, the Five Bells with "Moody Manitoba Morning". It would reach #78 two weeks later. The Five Bells were not from Manitoba, but Montreal. The songwriter, Rick Neufeld, was though. We'll hear his version later when it charts.



The B-side, "Big City", was the original A-side. It can be heard here as the lead track from their debut album Dimensions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLyZ7Ph0Otk



The band started as a duo of Cliff Edwards and Ann Ralph. They would add three more Bells, one of them being Ann's sister Jackie (both were from South Africa, which explains the slight accent). Their first record in 1966 was as Les Five Bells, "Vla Le Bon Vent" b/w "Amen" on Citation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj5AnLyO2A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQgy_5g7lc



After the LP, Ann Ralph (now married to Cliff Edwards) would retire from the band and they would become the Bells. And have many more hits.

 

At #5 the same week of April 14, is Andy Kim with "Tricia Tell Your Daddy" b/w "Foundation Of My Soul". It would make it to #76 (it was behind the Bells on the Canadian Hit Chart, but ahead of it in the top 100. Go figure).





"Tricia" in the song is Tricia Nixon, so of course "Daddy" is ol' Dick Nixon himself. It was written by two members of Jay & the Americans who put out their version in 1970 (arranged by Donald Fagan and Walter Becker).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvg1Qf3wRgA

Andy Kim had 10 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 from 1968 to 1971. This was the only one that missed (#110). It was also the only one out of a string of six in 1968 and 1969 not to top the Canadian Hits Chart.
Tricia Tell Your Daddy by Andy Kim –

 

Le pianiste et compositeur André Gagnon meurt à 84 ans

 

Pacemaker has issued a superb 49th Parallel compilation:
49th Parallel - Complete Recordings

 

Universal Canada has issued a Bells disc as part of the 2oth Century Masters series. Some of the tapes appear to have been lost, as a few songs are mastered from noisy vinyl. ("Moody Manitoba Morning" sounds fine.) This disc appears to have been issued only in Canada.

 

After each of their previous two singles had reached #1 on the RPM 100, Steppenwolf had to settle for a #4 peak for its next single, "Rock Me", on April 14, 1969. This one was written solely by John Kay.

Here's the ass-kicking mono single mix:



It reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

 

Just as RPM did not include artists like Paul Anka and Lorne Greene on its 'Canadian Hits' chart, it had not included Hank Snow on its country chart during the period from late 1964 to late 1967 when it was a CanCon-only chart. Snow therefore had to wait until April 21, 1969, for his first RPM #1 song, "The Name Of The Game Was Love". It reached #16 on the Billboard country chart. The song is reminiscent of his 1962 hit "I've Been Everywhere", but instead of listing places he's been, this time he's rattling off the names of girls he met in all those places.







"The Name Of The Game Was Love" was a track from the album Hits Covered By Snow:





Hal Willis was kind enough to lend him his coat for the cover shoot:

 

Hank got some mileage out of that Hudson Bay blanket coat.

 

And the U.S. label:

What was it with RCA Canada and their apparent allergy to listing music publishers and producers (other than their "A Dunhill Record Production" credit)?

 

Canadian RCA was behind the 8-ball in label designs compared with the U.S. which, by the time this was first released, already switched over to the orange label with modern 'RCA' logo:

Here you could get the producer (Chet Atkins) and publisher (Delmore Music Co., ASCAP) for this.

 

And the US label for the side that had this song:

For some reason, I always preferred the 45 label design over the LP version.

 

80. PRIVATE TRAIN
by FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND
CAPITOL 2368
#1 for 3 weeks: April 28 and March 5 and 12, 1969




​

On February 17, 1969, the first single ever released under the name Five Man Electrical Band charted on RPM's Canadian Content Chart. Five Man Electric Band had, of course, been in the industry for several years now as Capitol Canada recording artists, using the name The Staccatos. As the quintet came to view the name as old-fashioned, they took the name of a song composed by leader Les Emmerson and rechristened themselves with its title.

Anyway, Capitol 2368 first appeared on the chart in the seventh position (86 on the main chart). The week of February 24, it rose to number five (67 on the main chart). And then... something strange happened.

For the first two weeks that the single charted on both the CanCon chart and the RPM 100 chart, it was listed as "It Never Rains on Maple Lane". Then, for thirteen weeks after that, the single was listed as "Private Train". Obviously, it is the same single; the two tracks (which rhyme when you read them together) are both sides of the same single. Capitol singles frequently didn't identify the a-side and b-side, so we're a bit stuck here. In addition to a commercial release, there was a promo-only American release which identified, with a star symbol, "Private Train" as the plug side. But that might have come out at a later date (the single rose incredibly slowly up the charts here in Canada at least).

I can find no explanation on the pages of the magazine for the switch. I do see, however, that even after RPM started listing the single as "Private Train", certain stations were still programming the other side. Some decision was made somewhere by someone, surely. Let's just consider it a double-a-side.

If we do that, then we have two songs to look at. Both feature on the band's self-titled album, released in February 1969, their first album since Initially in 1966. "Private Train" is the first song on side A, and side B starts with what the album cover and label refer to asmerely "Maple Lane". A soft pop song with layers of harmonised vocals à la "Half Past Midnight", the latter is a lovely composition featuring perhaps a bit more falsetto background vocals than I might prefer. "Maple Lane" is driven by an organ, but "Private Train" is absolutely dominated by the instrument, which lays a thick bed that underpins the entire song. The song is a dreamy, lysergic mood piece which wafts by unassumingly. Perhaps the reason it took so long to reach number one is that its charms are not readily apparent upon first listening. If "Maple Lane" betrays a compositional debt to Paul McCartney, "Private Train" is all George Harrison. It's a lovely piece that for some reason is prematurely faded out after merely 140 seconds, right in the middle of an organ solo.

Note that the image above is of the "Maple Lane" side since I couldn't find a suitable image of the Canadian issue of the "Private Train" side.

OTHER RPM CHARTS: I could more properly have discussed this phenomenon while speaking about "Twilight Woman", but I'm pleased to take a gander at the RPM 100, where on the week of April 21, each of the top three singles had a Canadian component to them, and a fourth single came in at number 6. None of these four songs would show up on RPM's Canadian Content Chart.

Steppenwolf's John Kay-penned "Rock Me" was the sixth-placing track this week, though it would rise as high as number four (and would hit number ten on Billboard). Amazingly, "Rock Me" was from the band's third album At Your Birthday Party. ABC Dunhill was pushing the band so hard that, by November 1970, they were able to release an album called Steppenwolf 7, so titled because it was their seventh album release in three years!

At first and third place this week (though the latter would also see number one) are cover versions of two tracks from the smash Broadway musical Hair. Hair had débuted off-Broadway in 1967, but the international phenomenon moved the next year to Broadway (and West End as well) and became a massively successful show still recognised down the generations. Depending on your perspective either the absolute peak of the counterculture's societal impact or the moment when mainstream society successfully co-opted and defanged the counterculture, Hair was the work of three people: the libretto was written by two Americans, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, while the music was composed by Grammy-winning Montréal composer Galt MacDermot. While an absolutely head-spinning number of artists put out recordings of Hair songs in 1968 and 1969, the two we are concerned with here are Los Angeles's the 5th Dimension, whose recording of "Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" (to give it its full name) would top the RPM 100 for three weeks and the Billboard 100 for six weeks, ending the year-end charts at three and two respectively. The other single was the Cowsills' take on the production's title track "Hair", which would also hit number one for a single week on RPM and hit number three on Billboard.

And finally, David Clayton-Thomas's post-"Brainwashed" wanderings in the deserts of New York City have finally found fruition as Blood, Sweat and Tears Mk. II have released their first album (BST's début Child is Father to the Man was released in 1968 with no input from Clayton-Thomas). The first single from the album, "You've Made Me So Very Happy", was a cover of a 1967 Motown song recorded and co-written by Brenda Holloway. It spent two weeks atop the RPM 100 and got to number two on Billboard.

It's difficult to believe, but we are entering a twenty-six week period here where nine RPM 100 number one hits will have an element of Canadianness to them, topping the charts for eighteen of those twenty-six weeks (and six of the remaining eight weeks were a single song, the Beatles' "Get Back"). And all of this before the advent of Canadian Content legislation.

 

It gets even stranger. "Private Train" would peak at #37 in the Top 100, five weeks before hitting #1 on the Canadian Content chart. Here's where the Canadian songs in the chart stood on April 28:
33. Guess Who "These Eyes" (dropping from #7 to #9 on the CanCon chart)
50. 49th Parallel "Twilight Woman"
54. Sugar 'N' Spice "The Cruel War"
76. Andy Kim "Tricia Tell Your Daddy"
78. Five Bells "Moody Manitoba Morning"
85. "Private Train"

"Private Train" would move up to #60 then #58 the next two weeks and be the top ranked Canadian song, but only because "These Eyes" went from #33 to out of the Top 100 completely.

Anyway, here's "It Never Rains On Maple Lane"






Their next single, released in June, was "Lovin' Look" b/w "Baby". Neither track was on the recent album, and it would miss the Canadian charts, probably their biggest flop including their days as the Staccatos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp9aHif0f74

 

I have to wonder which company fashioned the type for the back cover. A good number of West Coast labels used this printing firm that handled this, including United Artists, MCA, and 20th Century. Maybe Warner/Reprise too.

As for the US label of the side shown on the Canadian label:

Released in the U.S. in December 1968.

And here's the side with "Private Train" on the U.S. LP ("It Never Rains On Maple Lane" was never on the album):

 

I don't see a single issue that omits "Maple Lane". It's just that the track title was shortened on the album for some reason. It's side two track one.

 

After "Signs" Capitol leased this to Pickwick down here.