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

I once sold a copy of "Dickie" Damron's debut single "Gonna Have A Party" for over $1,000 and it was in hammered condition.

 

Entering the chart at #20 on February 1, Max Falcon with a cover of Ronnie Hawkins "Southern Love".

 

"Itty Bitty" by The Howard Sisters was the #1 song on the RPM country chart for three weeks starting Feb. 1, 1965. I can't find any information about them, but I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Howard were mighty proud.




UPDATE: It turns out that The Howard Sisters have a MySpace page!



In 2003, Doris, Laura, Isabel, Jean, and Marie were awarded the prestigious Barn Dance Pioneer Award by The Barn Dance Historical Society And Entertainment Museum. Here is the documented evidence:



The seal tells you it's an official B.D.H.S.A.E.M. document.

 

According to Discogs, at some point EMI Music Canada issued this album on CD. If that's true, then it must be worth a gazillion dollars by now. There was also an 'unauthorized' issue on a European label called Radioactive. If anyone has one of these discs, are they dubbed from records? The Sparrows stuff in iTunes is from records and doesn't sound very good.

UPDATE: I have finally been able to obtain a copy of the EMI Music Canada release of the Presenting Jack London And The Sparrows CD. Sound quality is excellent; these do not sound like disc dubs to me. If EMI Music Canada does have these tapes, why was this CD in print only very briefly, and what other 1960s Capitol of Canada recordings do they have?

 

The Made In Canada series was 'conceived, compiled and produced" by Paul White, the same Paul White who while with Capitol in the 1960s had signed all those Canadian acts. (If he's still with us, I wish he would write a book. He is also the person who decided that Capitol would issue the early Beatles records in Canada after Capitol in the US had declined to do so.) Much of the non-RCA material on these CDs is mastered from vinyl but this is barely noticeable. One of the mastering engineers was Jack Richardson, the Guess Who producer.

A 'note from the producers' says a lot about the challenges in attempting to preserve and reissue this type of material:

Master tapes for some tracks have seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Rights to others are tied in complex legal knots. In some cases it's been impossible to even establish ownership. Efforts to solve these problems are ongoing and will hopefully result in further volumes of "Made In Canada".
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Unfortunately, in the thirty years since there have been no further volumes.

 

I have a "You And I" 45 and the MAPL logo is on it. It's not on my Super Freak 45.

 

Yep. Here it is:



Looking through Discogs, it seems no other Motown-era Rick James release has it.

Who knows? If it was an old song of his, if he said "I wrote this when I was resident in Toronto", then the ML would qualify, as far as I can tell. But not the A. If he had managed, while a fugitive in Toronto, to become a citizen or even a PR, then he could still claim the MAL even upon moving back to the States. But then so would all of his Motown recordings.

Shrug.

 

I suppose it's no more random than Dick Dale covering "Mısırlı", but still it'san odd choice of a song to cover:

 

He was with the Staccatos right at the start, but left and was replaced by Les Emmerson who took them onto the charts with Half Past Midnight in '67.

 

#10 - SHAKIN' ALL OVER
by GUESS WHO?
#1 for 7 weeks: February 15 and 22, March 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, 1965




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Okay, first off, I want to start by giving credit where it's due. I have known this song my whole life. This song, this recording of it, is considered foundational in the establishment of a Canadian music industry and star system. Yes, we had Paul Anka's "Diana" and some others. But this song is considered by many to be the moment that Canadian Rock was born as its own entity.

I have known, as I think most Guess Who fans do, that "Shakin' All Over" is not an original but a cover. I have known that the original was by a British group called Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. But there are two things I didn't know before today: first of all, I didn't realise that the Guess Who's version is really a note-for-note soundalike, barely distinguishable from the original. And second, I didn't realise that the original came out in 1960, at a time in popular culture when four years might as well have been an entire generation. I guess I don't know that much about pre-Beatles British rock and roll, but the sound of that Johnny Kidd recording... that must have been really wild for 1960. It's a great song. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates should be way better known as revolutionaries.

As it is, down the decades the Guess Who have stolen their thunder. The reason the Who perform this on Live at Leeds is because enough people, confusing the groups, shouted out requests for the song that they just added it to their repertoire. For exactly the same reason, the Guess Who took to playing "My Generation" before the two groups had met each other.

I don't think it's unfair to say that the single most important rock group in Canadian musical history (not born in Kingston) entered the popular consciousness of Canada and, therefore, the world here. But it was far from their début. In one form or another, the band had been around since 1958 and, by now, had put out five flop singles on Quality Records. The band, which were originally called Chad Allen and the Silvertones, carried three different artist credits across these five singles: Chad Allen and the Reflections, Bob Ashley and the Reflections, and Chad Allen and the Original Reflections.

Confused yet? Don't worry; it only gets worse. For some reason, the band evolved one more time into Chad Allen and the Expressions... but that's not where the nomenclature game gets interesting. Famously, and significantly for the story that we are telling, Quality became convinced that Canadian radio disc jockeys were intentionally rejecting the Winnipeg combo merely because they knew they were Canadian. And in a very Canadian act of self-deprecation, the DJs assumed the tracks must ipso facto be inferior due to their north-of-49 origin. Their solution was a 1960s equivalent of sending a radio station a white label: they would hide the artist credit on the single, replacing it with the teasing words, "Guess Who?" in the hopes that DJs would be intrigued enough to spin it and then wowed enough to playlist it - presuming, perhaps, that the band was British and maybe secretly famous.

The ruse seemed to have worked: the song stormed up the charts. And, like those diners secretly given Folgers coffee, the DJs don't seem to have been too upset when the band's prairie roots were exposed. But for better or worse, the band was evermore stuck with their label's tricky moniker, following an incredibly awkward stretch where their first two full-length albums and several singles were attributed to both Chad Allen and the Expressions and The Guess Who?

Because that's not confusing.

One final thing to note: obviously true fame was several years and several band member changes away. Burton Cummings, not present on this single, will always be the voice of the Guess Who. But Chad Allen has an amazing voice himself, as evidenced by this recording. He wound up back together with Randy Bachman after both had left the Guess Who, but really he coulda been huge.

One other final thing to note: when this broke through on Quality in Canada, Scepter Records picked it up in the USA - starting a mildly fruitful relationship. It came out on a dizzying range of indies in different countries: Pye in the UK, Sonet in Sweden, Ariola in Germany, CNR in the Netherlands, NorDisc in Norway, W&G in Australia, PanVox in Greece, and Scepter again in Japan. The strange dual-name situation followed them in most of these countries, where the naming ruse was entirely moot.

ON THE PAGES OF RPM: Lovers of statistical analysis, the people at RPM decided in the March 29 issue to calculate the percentage of Canadian Content being played by radio stations coast to coast. The most Canadian stations on this particular week were CKCL Truro and CHSJ Saint John, whose playlists were 22.5% and 22% Canadian, respectively. Lest Maritimers get too overly proud of this, the next two most Canadian stations, each playing 20% CanCon, were in Peace River and Ottawa. CFCO in Chatham and CKGM in Montréal, on the other hand, couldn't deign to play a single Canadian track, even as "Shakin' All Over" sat at the very top of RPM's Top 40 (Ronnie Hawkins at #8 and Wes Dakus at #11 as well).

 

As already mentioned, Hagopian was the original lead vocalist of The Staccatos. The timeline suggests that this record was issued after the only Staccatos record on which he appears (which was credited to Dean Hagopian and The Staccato's).

I notice that the label does not list a songwriter but does state "Spanka Music". That's Paul Anka's publishing company. So it's possible Anka wrote the song (an Ottawa connection there).

 

Its ironic that Chad Allen is at the root of two huge groups and never really got there with the rest. Other than the classic Shakin'.
Why was Shakin' better? For one thing the guys had had time to play it out and gauge the kids reaction. It was a new song for Kidd. His was the blueprint. It was better recorded and just grungy enough. Randy just kills the lead guitar all the way through. Pretty sure it hit number 1 in Detroit.
A record for the mid 60s. Kidds was for 1960 Britain, where it was a bit daring.

 

Some Guess Who notes:
-Chad Allan changed his name from Allan Kowbel when the Silvertones became the Reflections.
-"Original Reflections" was due to the hit "(Just Like ) Romeo & Juliet". Just to remind folks who was first.
-They were billed as "Chad Allan & The Reflections" when they played in Winnipeg until the summer of 1965. Then they went on a U.S. tour where they were generally called as The Guess Who. And the handful of times they appeared as the Expressions they were also simultaneously billed as "The Guess Who?"
-They were Anglophiles from the start. Their first 45 was a cover of a Joe Meek production, the second was titled "Made In England". There was this guy in Winnipeg named Wayne Russell whose cousin in England would send him the latest records, and he'd share them with his friends.
-"Shakin' All Over" was not the original A-side. That was "Till We Kissed". The actual title was "Where Have You Been All Of My Life" but somebody screwed up. Written by Mann-Weil and first recorded by Arthur Alexander, it was covered by the Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers, the Searchers, Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders and Gene Vincent (who recorded it when he was in England). The version released by New Zealand's Ray Columbus & The Invaders in July 1965 repeated the Guess Who's song title error.

 

The previous 45 to "Shakin' All Over", showing a strong Merseybeat influence, was "Stop Teasin' Me"

 

Randy Bachman's first a-side as a composition.

 

It's a Winnipeg invasion! Peaking at #10 on the CanCon chart on February 22, it's the debut single by the Jury (we'll be hearing more from them later).

 

Groups with guitars across Canada are on their way in! The same week, peaking at #8, is "Say Baby (Who Am I)" the debut single from Toronto's Dee & the Yeomen (we'll be hearing more from them later). Released on the newly created Wolff label, with an opulent colour picture sleeve. Group includes future Max Webster organist Terry Watkinson.

 

The same week, at #18 is "I'm Coming Home" by Vic, Paul and Bruce aka The Canadian Beadles (we won't be hearing more from them later).
The Canadian Beadles | Garage Hangover

 

Chad Allen had a god voice that was perfect for pop or adult contemporary but it wouldn't have been a good fit for BTO or the Guess Who circa American Woman.

 

For the first two weeks that the record charted on the main RPM chart, it was shown as "Till We Kissed". By the third week it was being listed as "Shakin' All Over". On the CanCon chart, "Till We Kissed" was shown as the hit side for the first four week, getting as high as #3 on February 1, 1965.

"Shakin' All Over", which spent three weeks at #1 on the main RPM chart and hit #22 in the US, is only the second international hit I can think of that was fully a product of the Canadian industry. By that I mean a Canadian act, signed to a Canadian label with a hit recorded in Canada (where I assume it was recorded). The only prior one that comes to mind is "The Man In The Raincoat" by Priscilla Wright in 1955.

I believe Randy Bachman now owns the pre-These Eyes Guess Who masters.

 

During the seven weeks that "Shakin' All Over" was the #1 Cancon song in the country, a total of fourteen Cancon songs (by 1970s rules) reached their peak on the main RPM chart (counting Ronnie Hawkins as Canadian). Twelve were by Canadian artists and two others were written by Canadians.

"Think About Me" by Pat Hervey debuted at #31 on the February 15 chart and never got any higher. The label states it was recorded in England.



This one isn't even on the 'unauthorized' CD that I have.

 

Ray Griff's "That Weepin' Willow Tree" spent one week on the main chart (Feb. 22) at #39. It peaked at #7 on the CanCon chart that same week. Real Gone Records has released a Ray Griff CD, The Entertainer - Greatest U.S. and Canadian Hits, but this song isn't on it. It does contain his #1 RPM country hit from 1976 "If I Let Her Come In".

 

On the February 22, 1965, RPM country chart (which was Cancon only), "Afraid" by Donn Reynolds started a two-week stay at #1. He had been at it since the 1940s and was known as much for his yodeling as for his singing. Unfortunately, my beat up 45 sounds even worse on Youtube.

 

Only a couple of months after being at #1 on the Cancon chart as a member of The Esquires, Paul Huot had another hit, this time as a member of The Townsmen. "Please Don't Say Goodbye" peaked at #23 on the main RPM chart on March 1.