That's the Order of the Day: Canadians at Number One in Canada

July 1, 1967 was Canada's one hundredth birthday. To mark the occasion, Queen Elizabeth II visited Parliament Hill in Ottawa, while Expo 67 in Montreal had one of its busiest days. Elsewhere, ecstatic Canadians attended fireworks shows in various cities and no doubt enjoyed picnics and barbecues. The people of Winnipeg were just three weeks away from hosting the Pan American Games, so it must've been busy there. The Order of Canada, the closest thing my homeland has to knighthoods and MBE's, also began on that day, with then Governor General Roland Michner being its first recipient (which was in no way a conflict of interest). Casting something of a downer on the celebrations was native actor and activist Chief Dan George who gave his deeply influential "Lament for Confederation" speech to a packed crowd at Vancouver's Empire Stadium. Over in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, Barry and Carol Anderson welcomed the birth of their daughter, 'Centennial Baby' Pamela (you may have heard of her). And, finally, The Turtles' "She'd Rather Be with Me" enjoyed its second and final week at number one on the RPM hit parade. One of these things is not like the others.

One of my favourite blogs is Aidan Curran's Irish Number Ones. When I was in the early stages of planning this blog, I was pleased to discover its existence. American and British number ones have been talked about to death so it's nice to see other country's charts being represented for a change. "If this guy can write about Ireland's number ones then I can do Canada's," I said to myself at the time. Curran is also a very good writer with many entertainingly terse observations about a whole heap of pop songs he has no time for. (He is a good deal stingier with his scores than I am)

Curran has covered a lot more ground than I have but even still, it's a little dismaying to see just how many Irish singles he's had the opportunity to review. They aren't always very good but that's a whole other matter. As of the publication of this blog post, he's been on something of a role with homegrown acts: eight of the last twelve singles he has reviewed from the end of 1971 into the spring of '72 have been Irish. Meanwhile, I've just passed the tenth anniversary of the first CHUM chart and only seven Canadian singles have so far managed to make it to the top spot. Canuck pop and rock stars of my parents' youth weren't off to a great start.

It's worth noting that I did leave a handful of Canadians off, mostly because they happened to be members of American groups. Bands like The Lovin' Spoonful and The Mamas and the Papas had Canadian members (in both cases, they were vital as well) but it's a stretch to claim that "Summer in the City" or "Monday, Monday" are "Canadian". That said, Jack Scott isn't terribly Canadian either. He grew up in Windsor, Ontario but eventually found his way across the bridge to Detroit where he remained for the rest of his life. Still, he was a solo artist and that makes a difference. Had Zal Yanofsky or Denny Doherty released solo number ones then they would have been included here too but under the circumstances of playing with Americans, they have been excluded. Basically, if anyone's Canadian-ness had to be questioned then they've been left off — unless, of course, I say otherwise.

There are only seven at this point but it will begin to grow steadily from 1969 and on into the seventies and beyond. In fact, in 1996 there were seven Canadian number ones alone. The list will be updated with every new edition while this essay will remain until I eventually decide to publish a new one, perhaps with the next numerically attractive anniversary of Canadian Confederation.

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Paul Anka: "Diana"
Jack Scott: "My True Love"

Richie Knight and the Mid-Nights: "Charlena"

Lorne Green: "Ringo"

Guess Who? (aka Chad Allan and the Expressions): "Shakin' All Over"

Little Caesar and the Consuls: "You've Really Got a Hold on Me"

Young Canada Singers: "Canada"

The Turtles: "She'd Rather Be with Me"

June 24, 1967 (2 weeks)

I recently discussed how it's hard to really place The Hollies. They weren't quite among the elite of the British Invasion but there was more to them than just a mildly irritating throwaway. Occupying a similarly ill-defined zone are The Turtles, the one-hit wonders who in fact had several hits and that rare sixties act not named The Monkees who have so far been snubbed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

One-hit wonders? Well, sort of. They had five Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and seven on the RPM chart but can many people name any of them other than "Happy Together"? Oldies radio owes a great deal to the song they are best known for but they've never gone out of their way to play, say, their cover of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" or "You Showed Me" or, indeed, "She'd Rather Be with Me". When you're only remembered for one song then you might as well be a one-hit wonder.

But "Happy Together" isn't the subject of this review — and a good thing too because it's very much the "Walking on Sunshine" of the sixties: a gloriously joyful pop hit that I would be perfectly happy never to have to listen to again. "She'd Rather Be with Me" was its follow-up and you'd be forgiven for assuming that it's one of those classic more-of-the-same singles that doesn't quite have the same energy as its predecessor. But that's far from the case. If anything, there's a little more spirit involved this time, like they realised that they couldn't quite recapture the euphoria of "Happy Together" and so added some audacity in its place.

Musical audaciousness may be a little discussed aspect of the influence The Beatles were having at the time. This didn't mean having to copy the Fab Four, the way industry plants like The Monkees were doing or the way whole generations of boring old power pop groups have been doing since the early seventies (even though I'd argue that aping a very narrow element of their sound isn't really something Beatles' devotees ought to be doing at all; being Beatlesque ought to involve being musically curious but I digress). The Beatles had been exploring and experimenting so much that it rubbed off on others — and it wasn't simply The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones they were rubbing off on. Though not all that sonically alike anymore, The Turtles had also modeled themselves on fellow Los Angeles band The Byrds (they had even once toyed with the misspelled Tyrtles in tribute but that was just being silly) who were also becoming far more unpredictable in the studio and whose brilliant fourth album Younger Than Yesterday had been released that February. (In fact, "She'd Rather Be with Me" is closer to The Beach Boys, especially in its Brian Wilson-influenced instrumental passage which is not unlike the ridiculous but adventuresome "Amusement Parks USA" from their 1965 album Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!))

The Turtles weren't in the same league creatively as either The Beatles or Byrds and they likely knew it but I have a lot of respect for the fact that this didn't stop them from trying. "She'd Rather Be with Me" might have come across as bubblegum pop had a less confident group recorded it; in the hands of The Turtles, however, it's loaded with a stomping beat, some honky tonk piano, blasting horns and what may or may not be a circus pump organ in the background. It's one of those songs that reveals a hidden instrument or production quirk with every subsequent listen. Plus, they have far more swagger than a band reliant on outside songwriters has any right to be.

"Yobo!" my wife just called to me from the living room, "the music is bothering me". I proceeded to shut the door so I could listen to it again. Yeah, I know what she means for once (we don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to music): it does sound like a racket at first and it doesn't matter how much you lower the volume, it can't help but be loud. Yet, "She'd Rather Be with Me" is a classic pop grower, a song I was largely indifferent towards at first but one that I can't get enough of now. An American Hollies? Glorified one-hit wonders? Nah. The Turtles were just an opportunist band making the most of their opportunity.

Score: 9

Jefferson Airplane: "Somebody to Love"

June 17, 1967 (1 week)

"Among the velvet-trousered denizens of the Scotch of Saint James, the feeling was that the vaunted San Francisco Sound was strictly Amateur Hour."

— Ian MacDonald

How things had changed. Though the British Invasion was immensely popular, it wasn't without its critics. American pop stars were surprisingly slow to react to The Beatles, with the output of acts such as The Beach Boys and Four Seasons still being rooted in Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. State-of-the-art recording facilities and crack house bands ensured that bigs acts signed to major labels would have nothing but the best at their disposal. (This was also during the last days of the staff songwriters in New York so there was always professional material available if need be) The Beatles generated plenty of excitement but their records were dismissed by pros in the States as rough and unsophisticated. (Only struggling folk artists from Bob Dylan down to David Crosby and John Sebastian were astute enough to look past their supposed faults)

Jump ahead three years and roles had been reversed. The British had become the backbone of rock's aristocracy while a new generation of bands, especially those that came from outside of Los Angeles, seemed crass, unable to play their instruments and were incapable of composing great pop. Hence the Ian MacDonald quote above. There were exceptions of course. Members of the Grateful Dead were all accomplished jug band and bluegrass musicians while the quintet that made up the ill-fated Moby Grape were all talented songwriters, including Canadian-born Alexander 'Skip' Spence who had been the original Jefferson Airplane drummer. 

MacDonald's essay on Jefferson Airplane goes to great lengths to describe their amateurism. He's probably not wrong but looking at the "Somebody to Love" cover above — which is identical to the sleeve of their debut album, the hit-and-miss Surrealistic Pillow — I don't think it's Spencer Dryden clasping a banjo which stands out. ("That's about right," MacDonald dismissively asserts; the critic mistakenly claimed that it was Jack Casady, which I suppose is an easy mistake to make: it's not as if many people were paying attention to anyone beyond Grace Slick) Rather, it's the sight of guitarist Jorma Kaukonen on the bottom left. In his shades and boyish t-shirt, he could easily pass for a member of The Velvet Underground.

Though contemporaneous, the Velvets never had much regard for what was going on in California. Their darkness supposedly represented an antidote to all that hippie free-love idealism centred around San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. While there's some truth to this, the doom which emanated in some of Jefferson Airplane's work suggests they shared more than a little in common. (Meanwhile, both The Doors and Love weren't exactly all flower power, peace 'n' love down in LA) The only thing really separating the two was that the New Yorkers had one-time professional songwriter Lou Reed as well as the classically trained violinist John Cale leading the way while no one from the Airplane was nearly as prodigious.

Yet for that "only 10,000 people bought the first The Velvet Underground album but everyone who did formed a band" malarkey, they never had anything even in the same universe as "Somebody to Love" (and don't think for a second that there weren't garage bands all over North America who were all about the Jefferson Airplane). Sure, I dig "I'm Waiting for My Man" and "Venus in Furs" and "The Black Angel's Death Song" but these are songs to rock out to and contemplate and be unnerved by respectively; "Somebody to Love" is as cool as anything Reed ever recorded while being the kind of thing people can't not sing along with.

As simple and direct as vintage Velvets, the trump card is Grace Slick, who wasn't just an attractive, charismatic front but a powerful vocalist which is easy to overlook. Male or female, there wasn't anyone who sounded like her. Amateurish? Maybe. Certainly she wasn't going to be anyone's first choice to do Bachrach and David or Greenway and Cook covers but that wasn't what she was there for. You can sort of hear in her original version with previous group The Great Society that she was in need of an accompaniment that was as committed as she was. There's something hesitant about her voice which contrasts sharply with the confidence she oozes in the more famous recording here.

The Bay Area was said to have been full of groovy kids dropping acid but the truth was much darker and suspect. "You'd better find somebody to love" is a surprisingly threatening statement that seems to reflect the countercultural ideals while offering a sobering warning to all. Slick and her bandmates may not have known that the Haight was soon to devolve into cults, madness and murder but they surely could see through the bullshit. Just because they were amateurs doesn't mean they didn't know what they were talking about.

Score: 8

The Mamas and the Papas: "Creeque Alley"

June 10, 1967 (1 week)

Bird and Dizzy, in a bit o' tizzy

Tryin' to play their solos so fast,

Roach and Blakey, gettin' kind of achy

Worried that the money won't last

In a jazz club, Bud played and played

And once in a while he even got laid

Monk and Miles quarrel over styles

A young Trane, he's way too green

And everyone played real mean

Except Prez and Bean

"Creeque Alley" ought to be the sort of song that's ripe for parody. With rhyming that clearly didn't cost writers John and Michelle Phillips (aka 'John and Michi': yes, they wrote themselves into it because of course they did) any brain cells, it kind of reminds me of the "Diarrhea Song" that we used to sing and try to make up verses to on the playground in elementary school ("when you're swimming in a pool and you feel something cool", "when you're driving in a chevy and you feel something heavy", etc., etc.). Surely I can't be the first person to make fun of all the bloody name dropping, can I?

Noel and Liam, you'd have to see 'em

Acting like a pair of old fools

Justine and Damon, lookin' for some fame in

Bein' the couple who broke all the rules

Jarvis, he mooned at the Brits

And after that he ran out of hits

Suede did not seem to care

And all in Britpop did fair

Except poor Menswear

Or maybe I am? While "Creeque Alley" had been a Top 10 hit in a number of countries, it hasn't really remained a part of the public consciousness in the years since. The idea that "Monday, Monday" would have been a bigger hit at the time than "California Dreamin'" surprises a lot of people but surely this fun but inconsequential single outpacing — at least in some territories — what is The Mamas and the Papas best known song is far more of a shock. Or what of "Dedicated to the One I Love" or "Dream a Little Dream", Mama Cass' two signature numbers? I thought the masses were suckers for slushy love songs. Yet, they opted to send this to the top of the Canadian charts instead. Though not terribly likely, it's possible that some might find my verses here to be amusing but for the fact that they've never heard "Creeque Alley" before.

Suga and J-Hope, seemingly cannot cope

With never being the Fab Four

Lisa and Jennie, made a pretty penny

But they'd really like to have a lot more

At Dongshin, Beast got their start

They got big, then they fell apart

IU and Suzy, still a pair o' cutties

In K-Pop you need to look thin

And everyone doesn't appear too shabby

Except Psy, he's flabby!

Okay, these lyrics don't exactly write themselves, so credit to John and Michelle for fashioning a tidy narrative around such a silly concept. Finishing off each of these parody verses is the tricky part. Did I choose bad subjects to immortalize? Jazz musicians from the be-bop period (except for Coleman 'Bean' Hawkins and Lester 'Prez' Young, since they were older and more rooted in the big bands which is why they didn't play so "mean"), some of the Britpop stars (and Menswear) and the KPop icons (along with Beast, who were very much the Menswear of Korean popular music) No, I think they're all good categories. Honestly, it's mostly down to me. I haven't really kept up my chops as a comedy songwriter so no wonder I'm slipping. On the other hand, if I had something more inspiring to work off of, I might have had better results. This entry doesn't say much for my talents but I'm not sure it does John and Michelle Phillips any favours either. Still, at least Mama Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty were present and correct: if nothing else could save a ropy Mamas and Papas single, their sparkling voices could go a long way.

LIps and Zoot, they seem kinda cute

Though they can't seem to open their eyes

Floyd said to Jan, "Hold on there man"

"We'll play whatever Dr Teeth decides"

Rowlf's not even part of the group

And as for Clifford, he flew the coupe

Animal should be in a cage

Although his drumming is all the rage

And everyone was a pro on the Muppet Show

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem?!? Okay, I think I've made my point. Assuming I even had one.

Score: 5

The Young Rascals: "Groovin'"

June 3, 1967 (1 week)

It's Sunday afternoon here as I write this. My wife just headed down to the gym. I thought about going but I figured this was as good a time as any to share my thoughts on The Young Rascals' "Groovin'".

We sometimes stay at my father-in-law's place on Saturday nights. She generally cooks dinner for the three of us and then I get breakfast ready the following morning. He isn't fussy which means he's okay with me preparing eggs, beans, toast and salad, instead of rice, kimchi and soup as many Koreans are used to.

We then accompany him to church. Actually, he walks over there about an hour early while we're typically twenty minutes late. I would trade with all those believers I've known over the years who never bother attending service though I did recently start toying with becoming a 'reform Christian', someone who practices what Christ stood for and taught without necessarily loving him nor needing a made up creator to pray to. (Wait, isn't this called 'just being a decent human being'?)

Lunch following the service is always very unremarkable. They never serve anything I've ever craved but I do appreciate how healthy it generally is. I think they've finally begun to accept that we don't eat meat, just as they long gave up on trying to get me to teach English Bible study.

We don't tend to get home until around two. We sometimes stop at a park on the way to walk the dog a bit but the air was really shitty today so we came straight home. Nevertheless, I still took out our little puppy while my wife put everything away. We were only out for about ten minutes but by the time we returned, she was ready to take a nap. She told me to wake her up in twenty minutes but I know full well that she's going to sleep a lot more than that.

With the wife abed, I prepare some afternoon coffee. I would love to read a book on these chilled out Sunday afternoons but I never get enough sleep to be able to concentrate. So, I'm faced with Netflix or YouTube as my main options. The lift I get from a couple cups of coffee sometimes gets me to the office to begin blogging but it didn't happen quite as quickly today.

I check on my wife every so often but she keeps muttering in a mixture of English and Korean about how she wants to rest for another half hour. After a while, I basically give up. It's at this point that I begin to nod off myself. But while her naps can stretch to three or fours hours, I'm never able to get much more than ten minutes.

Stresses involving homesickness, my very unpopular, irrelevant blog, friends I've been avoiding, my boredom with teaching and the appalling state of the world eat at me but these lazy, go nowhere Sundays offer some reprieve. I may appreciate our lifestyle more when we're taking a trip to Southeast Asia or to South Korea's island paradise of Jeju-do but this is our real life and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'd trade to be a believer who always gets to skip church but I wouldn't trade my home life for anything.

As for my thoughts on The Young Rascals' "Groovin'"? Those are my thoughts on The Young Rascals' "Groovin'".

Score: 8

The Happenings: "I Got Rhythm"

May 27, 1967 (1 week)

From the very beginning jazz musicians seemed to get George Gershwin. Classically trained, he was nevertheless open to modern music which allowed him to compose with jazz in mind. As early as the nineteen twenties figures like Duke Ellington were already fascinated by his work in a way that they weren't with Irving Berlin's compositions. "I Got Rhythm" was one of the earliest examples with it inspiring jazz standards such as Ellington's "Cotton Tail", Thelonious Monk's "Rhythm-a-Ning" and Charlie Parker's "Anthropology". In the fifties, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess began to be adapted by jazz musicians with notable complete or partial recordings by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. 

But the jazz greats weren't alone. Singers with a background in Broadway musicals can always be relied upon to have a perfectly enjoyable "I Got Rhythm" in their repertoires. They tend to sound more or less the same but what do you expect from a chorus of pros hitting all the right notes to make for one of the most glorious pop songs of the twentieth century?

Pop stars, on the other hand, have had a tougher time with Gershwin's works. A handful have been great but the majority are largely forgettable, mostly due to singers who gamely try out a "But Not for Me" or "Embraceable You" but who simply aren't up to the challenge. And then there's The Happenings who simply butcher "I Got Rhythm". The frat boy act had previously topped the RPM chart nine months' earlier with "See You in September". I can't stand it myself but at least it was daft enough to suit the cheery vocal group. In the case of "I Got Rhythm", however, they went well above their very modest pay grade.

Perhaps smart enough to know that they couldn't hope to compete with Miles or the MJQ, The Happenings can't help but try to overdo the Broadway tradition. With The Beach Boys moving further and further away from their patented doo-wop-influenced sunshine pop, they may have sensed an opening. It isn't the worst idea a fellow vocal group could've come up with but all their backing harmonies end up doing is drowning out much of the lead. (The powerful block harmonies of The Four Seasons would've served it far more effectively, just so long as Frankie Valli had shown some restraint with his falsetto; incidentally there is a faithful version by Brian Wilson from his 2012 album Reimagines Gershwin which sounds pretty much as you would imagine)

For all of their vocal prowess, there's something flat in their delivery too. "I Got Rhythm" is supposed to communicate a feeling of unrestrained joy but there's none of that in The Happenings' version. I'm sorry but it sounds like you guys could and would ask for a great deal more. But what do I know? All I ask for is a dynamic performance that works or a more conservative rendition that sticks to Broadway orthodoxy. This is an abject failure on both counts. Pitiful.

Score: 1

The Who: "Happy Jack"

May 20, 1967 (1 week)

"We'd like to play three selected hit singles, the three easiest... uh, there's "Substitute" which we like very much...(applause)...thank you, that was our first number four...and "Happy Jack" (more applause) which was our first number one in...Germany...brump-ump-ump-ump...and funnily enough our first big hit record in the States...and "I'm a Boy" which according to the...(even more applause)...thank you, according to the Melody Maker was our first number one in England, I think for about half an hour."

 

He's trying to make light of his group's lucklessness but it clearly bothered Pete Townshend that a number one smash continued to allude The Who. In their native Britain they peaked at number two with both "My Generation" and "I'm a Boy" and had an additional eleven Top 10 entries but they could never quite reach the summit. Elsewhere, they couldn't even do that well with just one Top 10 appearance — with the sublime "I Can See for Miles" — on Billboard's Hot 100. "My Generation" was also a number two hit in Australia while "Squeeze Box" would reach the same spot in Ireland, where they seemed to have this curious habit of doing no better than number fourteen. As for Germany, they had a number of Top 20 entries in Europe's biggest market but their supposed chart topper only got to number four.

The country that Townshend seems unaware of — and honestly, who can blame him? — is Canada where The Who managed to buck convention. In addition to "I'm a Boy" hitting the top spot on RPM in May of 1967 (fun fact: it happened precisely ten years before I was born), they would have another the following decade. They weren't exactly racking up the number ones like, say, Herman's Hermits or The Monkees, but a pair of chart toppers in one territory when they couldn't buy one anywhere else is nothing to sneeze at.

Pete Townshend's above quote (incidentally, it always surprises me what a soft, playful speaking voice he has) is taken from The Who's acclaimed album Live at Leeds. The quartet had just finished an intense four-minute rendition of "Young Man Blues" (which somehow feels like it's a great deal longer though it never drags) and may have been keen to lighten the mood with a series of fan favourite hits. But this was still The Who in their element (for all that is made of studio LPs, particularly Tommy and Who's Next, as well as their impeccable run of singles, they were primarily a live band) and, as a result, the trio of "Substitute", "Happy Jack" and "I'm a Boy" never sounded better.

That is the one thing big thing that holds the single release of "Happy Jack" back: on Live at Leeds, its deficiencies are easy to brush off or be blissfully unaware of. I scarcely notice Towenshend's lazy rhyming ("Happy Jack wasn't tall but he was a man / He lived in the sand of the Isle of Man") or the effeminate backing vocals because I'm either too caught up in Keith Moon's tendsion-bulding drumming or they wisely toned down trying to sound like a bunch of old ladies. The "Happy Jack" that appears on Live at Leeds comes from three years of playing it in concert halls and arenas around the world and working out how to best present it to an audience. While lengthy workouts like the fifteen minute power-fest of "My Generation" and a killer closer in "Magic Bus" showcase a band stretching out to full effect, even their two-minute pop songs could be concert showstoppers.

Whereas the studio version here sounds very much like an early attempt before the kinks were fully worked out. (Wouldn't it be nice if this happened to be at the same time The Kinks were struggling to figure out Who they were meant to be? Sorry, I couldn't resist!) About the only thing that is more or less the same is Moon knocking it out of the park, somehow guiding the rhythm while also being its lone soloist. The remainder of the group — singer Roger Daltry, bassist John Entwhislte, Townshend himself — do just about enough to keep the song afloat but this is hardly a vintage performance from three fourths of a band that acquitted themselves better on both previous singles and many future recordings.

Of course, fans weren't to know that The Who had merely scratched the surface in terms of what Townshend's compositions were capable of. What they had in 1967 was surely charming enough and youngsters were probably relieved to hear a Who song that was dripping in cynicism and/or rage. Cute little character studies had been more the kind of thing that Ray Davies and Paul McCartney specialized in and I'm not convinced Townshend was fully comfortable with them at this stage. but it's a worthy if slightly underwritten attempt on his part. I suspect it's a lot better divorced from how The Who would perform it on one of the greatest live albums of all time but I wouldn't know how to go about separating the two. Good as their albums and singles are, there's simply nothing like The Who on stage.

Score: 6

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Can Con

I've really been neglecting this feature of late. To some extent, this is down to laziness on my part but I haven't been helped along by some of the scans I've been presented with on the RPM archives page run by the Government of Canada. (Some of them are just a little hard to read, is all) Feeling like it was time for a deep shallow dive, I found teenage singer Susan Taylor, who according to a very short bio over on Discogs, was a librarian at a Toronto radio station prior to her short-lived recording career. Her minor RPM hit "Don't Make Promises" opens promising an old fashioned string arrangement before melting into an agreeable country-folk-pop ditty. It's nothing spectacular but as it builds there's some nice Motown-influenced harmonies. I would say she's one for me to look out for but it seems she only ever released two singles before vanishing. Good to know she was able to make the most of her opportunity by hitting the national charts.