Ned Miller: "From a Jack to a King"

December 17, 1962 (5 weeks)

For about as long as I can remember I have enjoyed playing cards. At various points of my life I have been into Asshole, Bullshit, Cowboy Poker, Crazy 8's, Cribbage, FreeCell, Old Maid, Rummy, Solitaire, Speed and War. I never really got the whole Texas Hold 'em craze and I have generally been pretty disdainful of card games involving gambling. (Not, mind you, because of a moral distaste but because I don't find them to be all that much fun and, I'll be honest here, my appalling excuse for a poker face; yet, I still say someone should play poker with a giant grin on their face even though it has never worked for me) Otherwise, card games are fun — and it's been the most effective way of connecting with my Korean nieces and nephews over the last decade.

That said, I'm no expert or anything. But I do know the order of a deck of cards. It goes: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K. Everyone knows this, right? So, is getting a promotion from Jack to King really such a step up? There is only one card separating them. In some games Jacks can even trump Kings. (We used to always play Asshole with the One-Eyed Jacks as trump cards presumably because we were all used to Jokers being automatically removed, never realizing they could occasionally be useful) In games like crib they're each worth ten points but Jacks do also sometimes give players a bonus point or two if you get 'Nibs' or 'Nobs'. I mean, I suppose the Jack is a knave and is probably not to be trusted but we're comparing him to the King for god's sake. Do you really think either of these people are particularly wonderful?

There are three reasons I chose to begin this review with a short discussion on cards. First, I couldn't think of any other way to get it started, second, the playing card analogy in "From a Jack to a King" is done to death so I might as well hammer the point home further and, finally, because the song in question is such a great, big bore.

In truth, I'm still not completely sure if "From a Jack to a King" is a bad song since it keeps losing my attention as I try to listen to it. I do know that the chorus is a load of dreck. Ned Miller has one of those irritating Country & Western voices you'd hear in that era, all quivering like a shrew in the middle of a blizzard. Hank Williams had tinges of it in his singing but it wasn't something he did to death either. Plus, the Hillbilly Shakespeare didn't make two minute singles feel like such a slog to get through. This one is just about the longest two minutes I've ever had to sit through.

What's amazing is the fact that Ned Miller managed to spent five weeks on top of the CHUM charts with it. A week or two would have been one thing: I can imagine a number of people playing it on jukeboxes, buying the 45 for a loved one for Christmas and/or requesting it over the radio for a time but shouldn't they have gotten sick of it by the New Year? I guess the competition wasn't terribly great as 1962 rolled over into '63 even if it had no business dethroning the mighty "Telstar". But Bobby Vee? The Rooftop Singers? Marcie Blane? Holding them off from the number one spot isn't such a great achievement. On the other hand, the Goffin-King penned "Chains" by The Cookies would've been a smashing chart topper to finish off a really strong year. Shame.

Score: 3

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Can Con

I could be wrong but I suspect that "The President's Canada Congress" has to be the unlikeliest name for a Top 30 hit in the history of pop music — and I mean anywhere. (Disagree? Post your candidates in the comments section below!) Gerry Ferrier was a CHUM personality which means (a) he must've been a conservative (I think it's a rule that DJ's are supposed to be die hard Tories) and (b) his records were intended to be comedic — though whether they actually were humourous is another matter. I wouldn't know, however, since there's currently no way to access this number twenty-eight hit. You think YouTube has everything but try looking up novelty songs by Toronto-area disc jockeys from the sixties and you may be out of luck. Same thing with old Al Bolishka, also a CHUM radio vet. Nevertheless, I'm not expecting much. Say what you will about old pop and rock stars hosting their own radio shows but they tend to be better suited to spinning records and yammering about nothing than DJ's do when it comes to cutting quality music.