Richie Knight and the Mid-Nights: "Charlena"

June 24, 1963 (2 weeks)

In the five year span from 1958 to 1963 a great many things happened. Boxer Floyd Patterson lost his heavyweight title to Ingmar Johansson only to regain it a year later. The Berlin Wall was erected and Yuri Gagarin went into space. Coronation Street and The Flintstones both made their debuts on TV. In Canada, the once-promising Avro Arrow program was abruptly cancelled and the seemingly unending dynasty of the Montreal Canadiens was halted (for a few years at least) when an ageing Maurice "The Rocket" Richard retired. Oh, and during that time there had been a hundred and three CHUM number ones since a Canadian act last topped the charts.

Such was the state of mainstream Canadian culture: we could have hardly expected anyone else in the world to be interested when we couldn't be arsed ourselves. If anything, Canadians may have been even more apathetic to their homegrown stars than elsewhere. Toronto's Percy Faith spent nine weeks at the top of the Hot 100 in 1960 with "Theme from A Summer Place", a single which got no further than number four in his homeland. To date, Paul Anka managed to have a pair of number ones down in the States but just the one in Canada.

Somehow or other it took a sextet from Toronto — a garage band who "never rehearsed in a garage" — to break a near five year streak of futility and help cause an influx of Canadian acts to eventually break through. The Mid-Knights were part of the emerging Toronto Sound, an R&B movement which eventually outgrew both its origins and the genre it came out of to encompass stadium rock and singer-songwriter folk.

While having a few listens on to "Charlena" YouTube, I took a look at the comments. First, it's nice to see people not going overboard in their praise. (I don't know about you but I can't tell you how many times I've seen a "I want to build a time machine to go back to..." or "I have a time machine. Who's with me?" accompanying any old random single from the sixties all the way through to the end of the nineties; I do wish I could have a time machine in order to warn everyone about the state of the twenty-first century but I have no desire to do anything else) Then, I took note of one individual who said the following: "The Sevilles version from late '60/early '61 is better.This is very white washed compared to the original though the sax player is good".

I understand what he or she is getting at though I have to respectfully disagree. While not quite as rough around the edges as The Sevilles, this version is hardly what you would call polished or anything like that. Besides, 'white washed' implies that Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights were no better than Pat Boone and that is demonstrably not the case. The closest this argument comes to holding any water at all is in the vocals which do sound like they been honed over several months playing the cafes and clubs all around Metro Toronto. Again, not sounding slick and smooth but just finely tuned to their R&B style.

The result is a solid and respectable single, somehow both catchy and forgettable, likable but also one that inspires indifference in the listener. Enjoy it while it's on and then go about your day as though those two minutes and forty five seconds never happened. What's puzzling is how it caught on to such an extent that it made it to number one when many other similar recordings by Canadian groups came up short. I suppose it's just timing. The Mid-Knights had toured southern Ontario relentlessly and it was finally paying off for them. All they needed was to have a similarly timely release set for the end of 1963 when nothing else of note was on the horizon. Oh damn...

Score: 6