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

In the mid-1970s, our local parish priest would often visit our fourth or fifth grade class with an acoustic guitar, and this is one of the songs we would sing. I did not learn until many years later that it had actually been a hit record. (We did not sing "Stay Awhile".)

 

103. BE MY BABY
by ANDY KIM
DOT STEED.729X
Highest ranking for 2 weeks: December 26 (8), 1970 and January 9 (6), 1971




​

You might recall me mentioning that, after releasing his third and final studio album for Steed, Andy Kim carried on on the label for two more years, putting out five non-album singles in a row that would be mopped up on a greatest hits release. Well, this is the third of those five singles. In 1969, Kim and Barry had managed a Canadian number one by excavating an old Barry / Greenwich pop hit from the early 60s, so in 1970, clearly out of new ideas, the pair repeated the trick, this time taking on the Ronettes' "Be My Baby", co-written in 1963 by a man whose recent death threw the Steve Hoffman Forums out of whack. It's tough to speak unemotionally about this man, so often lauded as a genius, who brought so much misery to so many.

However, if we can put that aside for a minute, we have the question of the Ronettes' original, which no less of a genius than Brian Wilson has repeatedly declared the best song ever. I would certainly place it very high indeed on such a list, were I ever to compile one. That infamous drumbeat, Veronica Bennett's gorgeous lead vocals, the rich instrumentation (and those castanets!), and the deeply emotional vocal melody all add up to a textbook example of a perfect pop recording.

Andy Kim's version - and this is very high praise indeed - comes pretty darn close itself. A certain amount of the pixie dust that made the original so transcendent has rubbed off on Kim's cover, which is very much stylistically a "wall of sound" production (though the originator of that phrase had nothing to do with it). Excepting Kim's elimination of that trademark drum intro, the most significant difference would have to be the bassline, which is about four times as active as the original's bassline.

"Be My Baby" was a top ten hit on Billboard, Kim's last until 1974, when he would indeed have a significant hit. I will have one further occasion to talk about Kim between now and 1974, but this is the last time I'll be mentioning him during his Steed era. The Steed era, as I mentioned before, is mopped up nicely in a 1973 collection entitled Andy Kim's Greatest Hits, which got a nice black-and-white cover in every market except Canada, where it was replaced with an absolutely terrible cover instead. It's an eleven-track album, six on side a and five on side b. I had occasion over these pages to discuss every song on side a and one of the five on side b. A pretty impressive achievement for our Montréal-raised, New York-based purveyor of bubblegum.

While the a-side gets only the "A" quadrant filled in, the b-side "Love That Little Woman", credited to Jeff Barry/Andy Kim, has the "A" and "L" quadrants filled in, which either sheds a light on the working habits of the Berry / Kim songwriting duo or else shows that songwriting duos were bending the rules on the "M" and "L" quadrants as far back as the very inception of the system.

As always for Kim, the single was released on Steed in the USA. It was released on Dot in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, France, New Zealand, Germany and Argentina, and it was released on Paramount in the UK, Sweden and Spain. In Brazil, it came out on something called Young Records.

ON THE PAGES OF RPM: "Be My Baby" was only number one in two different issues of RPM,but they straddled the year divide and the customary week-off RPM enjoys in early January. So in fact, it was at the top for three weeks. And now we're in 1971!

The first edition of the year usually has a listing of the Top 100 for the preceding year. This time out, the Top 10 features two Canadian songs - and a third that, as we have seen, was written in Canada. They are:

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
2. I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family
3. Let it Be - The Beatles
4. Lookin' Out My Back Door - Creedence Clearwater Revival
5. American Woman - The Guess Who
6. Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head - B.J. Thomas
7. In the Summertime - Mungo Jerry
8. Cracklin' Rosie - Neil Diamond
9. Close to You - The Carpenters
10. As the Years Go By - Mashmakhan

"American Woman" finished as the fifth-biggest song of 1970 on RPM, but it was the third-biggest song on Billboard!

SWEDEN:



FRANCE:



SPAIN:



GERMANY:

 

Canadian songs which made the Top 40 in 1970:

1970’s Biggest Canadian Hits

 

At #58 on December 26, 1970 for the first of two weeks, Pagliaro with "Give Us One More Chance" b/w "Good Feelings ALl Over". It would be the first release on the newly formed Much label out of Montreal.





Michel Pagilaro rose to fame in Quebec as a member of the group Les Chanceliers who hit #1 with "Le P'tit Popy", a cover of "I'm Your Puppet"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Eq5hyoRqeA

Here's "La Generation D'Aujourd'Hui", written by Pag himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE18arDfnjg



He would go solo and would have six more top tens and two more #1s in Quebec by the time he released his first record in English. We will hear "Much" more from him.

 

At #60 the week of January 9, 1971, "You Make Me Wonder" b/w "Nova Scotia Home Blues' by Everyday People





As the title of the B-side implies, they were originally from Nova Scotia (Amherst). They were led by Bruce Wheaton, a former member of the Stitch In Tyme ("Got To Get You Into My Life"). By the time of the first 45, they were based in Toronto where they were produced by Doug "Dr. Music" Riley and Terry "Future Rush Producer" Brown. We'll be hearing more from them.

 

Overlooking the NSFW nature of this album cover (we're all adults here, aren't we?), it's amazing how accurately it predicts the "Playing around with Microsoft Paint on a Windows 95 Machine" aesthetic.

The first track on this album, "L'amour est là", is attributed to "Lennon / McCartney / Pagliaro". I was curious which song was being covered. I had to listen about four times before I finally identified it. As a fun play-at-home game, I'll add the song here and you can guess as well:

 

I don't think I'm overstating things but Pagliaro's singles from 1970 to 1975 are on a par with any of the great singles artists from the time period..from ANYWHERE...not just Canada.

 

Cool version but I guess I'm still partial to Cilla Black.

 

Don't think I have heard this before. It's not bad, but I think I would prefer Baby I Love You over it.

 

I agree. He made some outstanding pop records.

 

On the December 19, 1970, RPM chart, Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" peaked at #16. It somehow did not receive a MAPL designation on either the chart or the 45 label.





Here's Neil performing the song with some chap from Liverpool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndEqu50MHdE

 

Hank Smith was born in Germany and emigrated to Edmonton in 1957. His recording of a Dick Damron composition, "Sweet Dreams Of Yesterday", was the #1 song on the RPM country chart on December 26, 1970. It was the first of his five RPM #1 country songs. Hank Smith was the last of the three Canadians named Smith to have a #1 RPM country song in 1970 (after Merv and Bob). None of these Canadian Smiths ever made the Billboard country chart.

 

After no chart was published on January 2, 1971, Hank Smith would be knocked out of the #1 spot on the RPM country chart on January 9 by another Canadian act, The Mercey Brothers. "Old Bill Jones" was written by Kingston, Ontario, native Don Cochrane, who had co-written two previous #1 songs for The Mercey Brother, "Whistle On The River" and "Uncle Tom". Cochrane would include his own versions of all three songs on his self-titled album in 1976.

 

Pronounced "mur-see" or "mur-say? Or even "mare-say"?

 

They seem to have taken after the US release:

 

Through the early 70s, I see significant MAPL irregularities for each of Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and Neil Young. What they have in common, apart from being megastars, is Reprise Records. I understand that it was on labels to submit bios for CanCon consideration, and I'm guessing maybe Reprise refused to.

I mentioned this before, but there is a stretch where I think "Heart of Gold" is on the chart with no MAPL designation, while lower on the chart is a cover of "After the Goldrush" that does have the MAPL designation. Which obviously makes no sense at all.

 

One word keeps floating through my mind in all this: schizophrenic.

 

104. IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND
by GORDON LIGHTFOOT
REPRISE 0974
Highest ranking for 7 weeks: January 16 (14), 23 (11) and 30 (7), February 6 (4), 13 (2), 20 (1) and 27 (4), 1971




​

Whose judgement can you trust? Can you trust record labels' judgement, when now two different labels have banked on one of Canada's greatest singer-songwriters only to turn around and release... a cover as his first single for the label? Seriously: United Artists launched Gordon with a cover of a Bob Dylan song. Reprise - who really ought to have known better - scooped Lightfoot up and then launched him with a cover of a Kris Kristofferson song. Lightfoot covered both of them commendably, but why? Why indeed, when Gordon's Reprise début was otherwise entirely originals?

So whose judgement can you trust? What about Gordon's, who didn't initially rate "If You Could Read My Mind" at all and didn't want it put out as a single? Gordon was much more invested in what was at the time the title track, "Sit Down Young Stranger". This track is famous as Gordon's commentary on the issue of American draft dodgers escaping to Canada. It seems that the prodigal son has returned to his American family from his time in Canada, and his parents are attempting to understand why he fled. It's an interesting text, but it doesn't strike me as the most interesting of songs, being unadorned and with the most basic of melodies - a plainspoken "folk song" in an era when many people had moved past that sort of thing. No, Gordon overlooked the fact that his first Reprise album contained within it what would soon be one of his most famous, most covered and - dare I say it - best songs ever, the magnificent "If You Could Read My Mind".

Reprise's pockets were deep enough to get Ry Cooder, Van Dyke Parks and John Sebastian on the album. Indeed, they were deep enough to get strings on five songs! Two had string arrangements courtesy of Randy Newman. The other two were arranged by Nick DeCaro, who had been in the industry for about a decade, working with an eclectic list of moderately famous singers: Andy Williams, Claudine Longet and the Sandpipers seem to be the biggest names in his C.V. before Gordon. Though I see some later credits for daughter Nancy, it seems DeCaro never worked with Lightfoot's new boss, Reprise head Frank Sinatra. It's a pity he didn't; Frank worked with most of the greatest arrangers out there, but DeCaro's absolutely gorgeous string arrangement in this song stands, head high, with the very best; it's truly magnificent.

So what did it mean that Gord was committed to the title track while, seemingly, the rest of North America was committed to this song instead (it hit number five on the Billboard 100 but actually topped the Billboard Easy Listening chart)? Well, it meant Reprise had to kill two birds with one stone by making "If You Could Read My Mind" the title track! And so Gordon's first album for Reprise was shipped out with the same cover image but a whole new title. This means, of course, that if you want to, you can buy this album with three different covers: the first pressing that had no text at all, initial pressings under the name Sit Down Young Stranger, and subsequent pressings when the album was renamed If You Could Read My Mind. In every case, he's looking dourly through a café window, with the city street reflected on the windowpane covering his face.

Frank Sinatra's label put the single out on 7" in Canada, the USA, Ireland, the UK, Greece, Japan, Germany, Mexico (as "Si Pudieras Leer Mi Mente"), Italy, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and France. A gallery of six images from four countries follows.

Louis Armstrong once said that "all music is folk music." Perhaps. Or perhaps it is true that all music is disco music... as Gordon Lightfoot might have discovered in 1998, when the multinational trio of Amber, Jocelyn Enriquez and Ultra Naté rebirthed Gord's folk/adult contemporary song as a thumping house anthem that served as the theme song to 54, a movie about New York City's disco Mecca Studio 54. What on earth Gord's sentimental song about love falling apart has to do with any of this, I have no idea. But the remake made it to number three on RPM, far above the lowly number 52 it placed in the USA.

ON THE PAGES OF RPM: The February 20th issue of RPM indicates that the next issue, February 27, will contain coverage of the first awards to bear the name of CRTC head Pierre Juneau, the Juno Awards - which are, of course, the renamed Gold Leaf Awards, which were the re-named RPM Awards.

Alas, the online archives I am using do not include the February 27 issue. The next issue, March 6, does contain some Juno coverage, but it's mostly given over to sycophantically discussing the audience's reaction to the award given to Juneau himself.

In any case, it's a matter of public record. Anne Murray won Best Female Vocalist over Susan Jacks, Debbie Lori Kaye, Joni Mitchell and Ginette Reno. Gordon Lightfoot won Best Male Vocalist over Andy Kim, Pierre Lalonde, Gene MacLellan and Tom Northcott. The Guess Who won the retitled Best Group (as they have done every year save one since the awards were inaugurated in 1965) over Edward Bear, Lighthouse, Mashmakhan and The Poppy Family.

The Country equivalents of these three awards were won by Myrna Lorrie, Stompin' Tom Connors and the Mercey Brothers. Stompin Tom would earn a handful of Junos in the early 70s before giving them all back in protest a few years down the line. Bruce Cockburn won the seemingly-mistitled "Best Folk Singer" award over Great Speckled Bird, Anthony Green and Barry Stagg, Joni Mitchell, and Tom Northcott. Which is two duos.

Lastly (skipping over six ho-hum industry awards), Brian Ahern won both of two production awards: Best Produced Album was Honey, Wheat and Laughter by Anne Murray over Make Someone Happy by Tom and Judy, Sit Down Young Stranger by Gordon Lightfoot, This Way Is My Way by Anne Murray, and Young Years by Pierre Lalonde. And Best Produced Single was "Snowbird" by Anne Murray over "American Woman" by The Guess Who, "As the Years Go By" by Mashmakhan, "Fly Little White Dove, Fly" by The Bells, and "If You're Lookin'" by Tranquillity Base.

JAPAN:



GERMANY 1:



GERMANY 2:



ITALY:

 

THE NETHERLANDS 1:



THE NETHERLANDS 2:

 

The U.S. was witness to the change in album titles:

I natch' have the first variant.

It should be noted that there were two mixes. The stereo, and the one released here, has him singing alone throughout. Another (mono?) has him duetting with himself at key points (namely the "I never felt I could act / feel this way . . . " section).

 

The week of January 23, 1971,"I Think It's Going To Rain Today" by Tom Northcott peaks at #46 in the top 100.



The B-side, "It's True" was a re-recording of the A-side of the Eternal Triangle single.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfiPTzjmOfs

We'll hear more from him with his next record and his "debut" album.

I Think It's Gonna Rain Today by Tom Northcott –

 

Peaking at #76 the week of January 23, Vancouver's Seeds Of Time with "My Home Town" b/w "Muskrat Rumble" on the Coast label. It would be a hit in "Their Home Town" (#5 CKVN, #18 CKLG), #26 on the CHUM chart. Both sides can be hard at the link.

Seeds of Time - My Home Town b/w Muskrat Rumble (promo)



The band was started by drummer Rocket Norton in high school in the spring of 1965 as the Surfs, then the Aztecs, the Statics before becoming the Seeds Of Time. The next year they would draft lead singer Geoff Eddington and guitarist Lindsay Mitchell from another local band, Paisley Rain (formerly William Tell and The Marksmen who had been signed to the New Syndrome label).

The unreleased "Mary Jane" by William Tell and The Marksmen






My Home Town by Seeds Of Time –

 

The new line up would become one of the most popular live bands in the Lower Mainland. Here's them sharing the May 31, 1968 edition of CBC-TV's Let's Go with Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck.

 

The Seeds Of Time would chart once more.

 

At #56 the week of February 6, "Sally Bumper" b/w "Mama's Cookin'" by Houston. The clip has them backwards.





It would be released on Greg Hambleton's Tuesday label, and on SSS International (blue vinyl!) in the USA. The band as from Toronto and led by James Houston (hence the name). James Houston was a member of the Paupers during their final few months in 1969. Houston would release one LP, which had different covers in Canada and the U.S.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqN1hFqMLvI

They would have one more single, "Mucho Gusto" b/w "Fast Thinkin' Man" but it didn't chart.