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

I thought that Andy Kim had gone Neil Diamond. It sounds like a Neil song and production.

 

And here's the U.S. label for "Rock Me Gently":

 

Two consecutive RPM #1 songs by Canadian sons of Lebanese immigrants (although Anka's father was actually born in Syria).

Ownership of Andy Kim masters has always confused me. According to Pat Downey's information, "Rock Me Gently" has appeared on 48 different CDs issued in the U.S. (which suggests that Capitol owns it outright except perhaps in Canada), but none of his other hits have been issued on more than one (on a couple of long-out-of-print two-fers of the Steed albums issued by Collectors Choice). If Universal owned Kim's Steed masters outright, you would expect them to have released at least a couple of best-ofs by now. The most comprehensive Andy Kim anthology out there was released by Kim himself and appears to have been sold only at his concerts.
Andy Kim – Limited Edition Anthology (2007, CD)
My best guess is that with the exception of "Rock Me Gently", Kim retains at least some degree of control over his masters.

 

Yet another example of what I'm constantly harping on about: how poorly these Canadian artists are represented in the digital era. That CD is a curiosity, as "Sugar Sugar" and "Jingle Jangle" are on it. Are those really the Kirshner originals, with Ron Dante singing lead?

Even at that, it's still a poor "career retrospective". With the exception of the two Archies songs and "Rock Me Gently", it's all Steed-era. Nothing from the Uni album and no Baron Longfellow material.

Including his 2015 Arts & Crafts album, there's enough out there for a decent collection. I doubt it's licensing issues; I think it's just laziness and inertia. It's a pity.

 

​

Performance from European TV



On Pop 74, whatever that is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBBbyNpwOeI

Music video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxYJqagN8jM

The story of the song from Behind The Vinyl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtCefKWsubI

The album reached #21 on Billboard, in Canada it peaked at #13 in November of 1974 (15 weeks on the chart)

 

Long, Long Way : Very well written and arranged. I particularly love the guitar solo that seemingly comes out of nowhere about halfway through the song.

Walk On : A great song about moving forward in the face of adversity. Supposedly inspired by Reprise's initial decision not to release Tonight's The Night, which had been recorded the year before.

This Flight Tonight : I heard this long before I knew who Joni Mitchell was. As much as I have come to love Joni's version, this is the definitive version for me.

Rock Me Gently : This song always puts me in good mood. It has strains of bubblegum, Adult Contemporary, and even some r&b during the instrumental break towards the end.

 

At #94 for the first of two weeks the week of September 14, 1974, "Rock My Roll" b/w "Once Before You're Gone" by Bill Amesbury on Yorkville Records (Casablanca in the U.S.)



It would be the last chart appearance for Amesbury. "Frogman Bradley" b/w "She's In Love" came out in the Netherlands with a picture sleeve, and the U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXHPQUAylTE



"Every Girl In The World, Tonight" came out on RCA Victor in August of 1975.

Dutch picture sleeve



Belgium



Other singles would come out with picture sleeves in Europe:
"Saturday Night" (Germany, Netherlands)

 

"I Remember" (Netherlands)



And "Sugar Pie" (Germany)



All of the previous five singles would be on Amesbury's 1976 album Can You Feel It on Capitol in Canada (peaking at #57 for two weeks in July of 1976 during a nine week chart run).





European cover on the Power Exchange label.




A final single "You Belong To Me" came out in 1977, though a song Amesbury produced would chart reach #1 in the U.K. in 1976, I'll be discussing that one later
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XoGlTiiLOU

Amesbury is now Barbara Amesbury, a documentary filmmaker.

 

A couple of years before Rock Me Gently, in an episode of Barnaby Jones that aired April 1, 1973, Andy Kim is featured as "Rick Michaels" doing his best Neil Diamond bit. I don't know the song he's singing. Anyone here?

 

That's a pretty nice song, but its melody obviously contains vast swaths of I'm Gonna Capture You. Since they were both written by Terry Jacks, you can't really accuse him of plagiarizing his own work ...

 

​

Another one that I pretty much find intolerable by now.

 

At #16 the week of September 21, 1974, "A Free Man In Paris" by Joni Mitchell, #10 on the Pop Music Playlist. #22 in Billboard, #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart



Live in London (April 22, 1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqdAXfSDnww

Live in 1979 Shadows And Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOUk1q12O0

Live in London again, this time in 1983
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hcXdtqojFg



B-side "People's Parties"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnIpj3klP6E

Free Man in Paris - Wikipedia

Joni Mitchell Library - Rock 'n' Roll's Leading Lady: Time (Magazine), December 16, 1974
Joni Mitchell Library - An Evening Spent at Joni's: Time (Magazine), December 16, 1974

 

At #75 the same week of September 21, "Cliches" b/w "Got You On My Mind Again" by Les Emmerson






He would chart once more as a solo artist.

 

155. CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN
by THE GUESS WHO
NIMBUS 9 APBO-0324
Highest ranking for 3 non-consecutive weeks: September 28 (6), October 5 (4) and 19 (6), 1974




​

Robert Weston Smith was inspired by controversial but seminal rock and roll DJ Alan Freed, who used the pseudonym "Moon Dog" at various points in his radio career. That pseudonym was, of course, inspired by the pseudonym of infamous New York City street busker Moondog. In any case, Smith took the canine moniker, mixed it with the persona of bluesman Howlin Wolf, and created the disc jockey character "Wolfman Jack", a character he would play for decades until his 1995 death. Smith entered legendary status when he went to work for XERF-AM in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico and, later, XERB-AM in Tijuana. The rough lawless equivalents of Pirate Radio stations in the waters around England at the time, Mexico-based "border blasters" were able to use that country's more lax radio regulation to blast radio far across the border to large portions of the continental USA (XERF could even be picked up in Europe and the Soviet Union).

The general lawlessness of northern Mexico created problems for Smith, though, who wound up moving back to the United States to record his shows to tape, sending them across the border for broadcast. This technicality created a library of Wolman Jack's radio broadcasts, effectively creating the concept of syndicated radio. By 1973, when George Lucas's American Graffiti tacked his name permanently to 50s nostalgia, Wolfman Jack was a celebrity, both in the United States and also in Canada. He would, though this comes later in the story, host a television show on the CBC in 1976 and 1977, cementing a connection between Wolfman Jack and the third of the three NAFTA countries. Of course, Wolfman Jack's most important Canadian legacy was certainly his ability to inspire Canadian legends who should have known better to record terrible novelty records.

As I mentioned while talking about "Star Baby", Burton Cummings has had a lifelong love of the music of the 1950s and early 1960s. He would, of course, be the perfect target audience for Wolfman Jack's retro broadcasts. The story of the song, such as it is, is that Cummings has taken his girl 'parking' only to find that she's much more into the DJ on the radio than she is into the man next to her. This story is punctuated with spoken-work outbursts from Wolfman Jack himself (who had a knack for vain self-promotion) and an earworm chorus entirely devoted to the DJ as opposed to the tale told in the verses. The song references early-sixties hits "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Duke of Earl" and, anachronistically, 1973's "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band.

"Clap for the Wolfman" reached number four in Canada and number 6 in the USA, the last time the Guess Who would reach the top ten in either country. It was the last single released by the Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall lineup, and in fact promotional TV appearances of the era show Domenic Troiano lip-syncing and miming Kurt Winter's guitar part as Winter's sudden exit occurred while the song was charting. In subsequent decades, Burton Cummngs has said that this particular lineup of the Guess Who, with Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall, was his favourite lineup. It's curious, then, that little concrete explanation has ever been offered for Winter and McDougall's sudden departure beyond the notoriously vague "exhaustion". Both would come back into the fold in 1977, but since by that time Burton Cummings himself had left the band, the legitimacy of the material they recorded has been considered suspect by many.

In any case, just as happened when Randy Bachman left the band, a replacement was procured and an album was recorded at breakneck speed. Consider this: "Clap for the Wolfman" was released in June (from an album that came out in April), Winter left the band in June, the single reached its peak in early October, and Troiano-led follow-up album Flavours and follow-up single "Dancin' Fool" were both released... also in October. That's not the recording date, that's the release date. It was apparently recorded in July, scant weeks after Winter left. And yet every single track on the album is credited as a Cummongs / Troiano composition.

It's a fascinating story, and perhaps others will tell it in this thread, but alas I won't. After an amazing 21 singles to make it either to number one on the CanCon charts or highest-charting Canadian song on the RPM 100 chart, I must now bid adieu to the Guess Who. This is the last Guess Who song that I will have cause to talk about, though of course I'll still be talking about Burton and Randy. Very, very soon in fact.

Despite its subject matter being a North American phenomenon, "Clap For the Wolfman" came out in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the USA and Venezuela. Many a picture sleeve to be enjoyed, including Mexico, where "Aplaudan Al Hombre Loco" came out with an image of Troiano on its sleeve. Spain and Portugal as well.

FRANCE:



GERMANY:



MEXICO:



THE NETHERLANDS:

 

PORTUGAL:



SPAIN:



THE NETHERLANDS (1980 REISSUE):

 

Amesbury went on to produce a record that made #1 on the British charts in 1976, that has universally been condemned on all fronts, as seen on:
Every #1 UK Single of the 1970's Discussion Thread (REVISITED)

 

The U.S. single (via Hollywood pressing):


At the point this was released, Wolfman Jack called New York station WNBC 66 AM his home. (WNBC's owner, NBC, was at the time itself owned by RCA, and for a time in the late 1960's the records division was even administered as a division of NBC within the RCA corporate structure.) He arrived there in a blaze of publicity in August 1973, paid handsomely to bring his schtick to The Big Apple; then, his publicist put a cardboard tombstone in front of ABC's then-offices of 1330 Avenue of the Americas with the message, "Cousin Brucie - Your Days Are Numbered," and that the Wolfman would "bury" him in the ratings. Alas, Bruce Morrow's days at his then-home, WABC Musicradio 77, would indeed be numbered, but not because of Wolfman Jack (WNBC was by all accounts an also-ran station, ratings-wise, at the time, while WABC shared the top spot with all-purpose WOR 710 from ratings book to ratings book); it was felt among WABC management by 1974 that Brucie was operating on autopilot, hardly involved in the show at all other than his on-air schtick; and it was felt on all parties that it was best he leave, which he did in summer 1974, after a 13-year run at "77." Around that same time, Wolfman Jack left WNBC. And who was his replacement at that station? Why, none other than Cousin Brucie, who would remain there until the "Massacre of 1977."

No doubt while the Wolfman was still at WNBC, this song was high up on their playlist. I seem to remember hearing an aircheck where this played on the AM drive show Imus In The Morning.

 

Which was quoting a 50s hit "The Letter” by the Medallions from 1954.

 

And Wolfman apparently showed up for the recording plastered. He manages to throw out enough bon mots to fill the quota but you can tell he's drunk at points.
Great record!

 

One key reason why he left WNBC and moved back West was to tour with The Guess Who over "Clap For The Wolfman."

Wolfman Jack also had something of a recording career, putting out an album on RCA's Wooden Nickel subsidiary in 1972.

 

The back cover of Road Food says, "Wolfman Jack appears on 'Clap for the Wolfman' Courtesy of Wooden Nickel Recordings, Inc.", so he was still under contract to them in 1974 at least. The other Canadian Wolfman Jack novelty record, which came out in 1975 (and we'll get to in due time, unfortunately), has no such acknowledgement, for what it's worth. And Wolfman Jack put out an album on Columbia in 1975, according to discogs.

Are these albums worth hearing? I can't imagine they would be.

 

Does anyone think that "Clap For Napoleon" would have been a smash hit title? Good call on Burtons part.

 

Free Man In Paris : It never ceases to amaze me how a song so sophisticated as this one was embraced by top 40 radio. That wouldn't happen today.

Clap For The Wolfman : I know that it was a big hit but man, this is a major step down from the bands early hits.

 

Meanwhile, Rosalie Tremblay refused to playlist Bob Seger's "Rosalie" due to fears of impropriety. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

And incidentally, regarding "Wolfman", did other radio stations play a song that was effectively advertising for their competitor?

I've heard that Rush's "The Spirit of Radio" wasn't a big chart hit in Canada because other Toronto radio stations refused to give their competitor free advertising.