Written by John Mann and Geoffrey Kelly in 1989 during one of the band's first tours of England, it was originally more of a poem than a full-fledged song. According to producer Danny Greenspoon, the band considered it still a work in progress, and had not brought it to the primary recording sessions for the album; rather, it was brought to Greenspoon's attention only as he was about to conclude work on the project and return home to Toronto. Recognizing the song's potential, he immediately worked with the band to resolve their uncertainties about its readiness, and finally recorded it as the last song of the sessions.

While originally intended to be a throwaway tune, it wound up on the album Save This House at the insistence of producer Danny Greenspoon.

Kelly in an interview with the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame:

It is to me still very strange that Canada has really latched on to the song, because the song is really about being in the U.K... We had no plans for it to be a single or even a video...despite all of that, it’s powered through, and it’s by far our most loved song.

The song tells of a drinking spree in London:

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a week, I've been drunk since I left
These so-called vacations will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink, I need home for a rest.

British geographical references such as Euston Station, Charing Cross Road and Yorkshire appear in the lyrics. The later choruses switch the length of time that the narrator has been gone from a week to a month, and in some live performances changed from a month to a year. The song's musical arrangement incorporates the traditional reels "Castle Kelly", "Glass of Beer", and "Swallow's Tail".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIk87-mPzY

Guitarist Alex Lifeson explained the song's opening riff as "I just wanted to give it something that gave it a sense of static – radio waves bouncing around, very electric. We had that sequence going underneath, and it was just really to try and get something that was sitting on top of it, that gave it that movement."

"The Spirit of Radio" features the band experimenting with a reggae style in its closing section. Reggae would be explored further on the band's next three records, Moving Pictures, Signals, and Grace Under Pressure. The group had experimented with reggae-influenced riffs in the studio and had come up with a reggae introduction to "Working Man" on their tours, so they decided to incorporate a passage into "The Spirit of Radio", and as Lifeson said, "to make us smile and have a little fun".

Lyrically, the song is a lament on the change of FM radio from free-form to commercial formats during the late 1970s. The Brampton, Ontario based station CFNY-FM—which had not abandoned free-form programming—is cited as an inspiration for the song. The reggae finale also has lyrics inspired by the song "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel.

Rush had grazed the UK Top 40 two years earlier with "Closer to the Heart", but when "The Spirit of Radio" was issued as a single in February 1980, it reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart in March. It remains their biggest UK hit to date (the 7" single was a 3:00 edited version which has not appeared on CD, as of 2011). In the US, the single peaked at number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980 and number 22 in Canada, and in 1998 a live version of the song reached number 27 on the Mainstream Rock Chart.

Promotional 12-inch copies were released in the United States in late 1979 with the B-sides of "Working Man" and "The Trees", and the song being incorrectly titled "The Spirit of the Radio".

Cash Box said that "Geddy Lee's high vocals and the band's electrically charged instrumental should click on AOR lists."

"The Spirit of Radio" was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and was among five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010. Record World called it a "crafty rocker that's an out-of-the-box AOR-pop smash."

Classic Rock readers voted "The Spirit of Radio" the fourth best Rush song.

The song was covered by the British alternative rock band Catherine Wheel in 1996, with their version appearing both on their B-sides and rarities album Like Cats and Dogs and on the CFNY-branded compilation album Spirit of the Edge, Vol. 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QtO0Rhp0w

Lightfoot supposedly wrote I’m Not Sayin’ while watching a hockey game on TV. A strong driving melody, with some great guitar licks courtesy of David Rea that Red Shea and Terry Clements would continue to embellish for many years. The subject matter and sentiment here is not far removed from For Lovin’ Me.

Liner Notes from Lightfoot! by John Court

“So you come home from work or whatever to your favorite chair, open a cold beer and energize the telly. There is the ostensible World News and all the unrest it provokes, followed by a suggestion that Ice Blue Something is what we must look to for security in this nuclear Age of Anxiety. And as if that’s not enough of the Big Lie from the Big Eye for one gulp (we must of needs deduce that Katy Winters moves in a fairly odoriferous circle), there is next this
purportedly candid footage of some fellow protesting that he gets forty shaves from this extraordinary razor blade. Now we know, you and I,in our placid personal truths, that we won’t get anything like forty shaves ourselves, but that this fellow has cornsilk growing out of his face and therefore possibly is not personally lying; the big grain of salt we must wash down with our beer, though, goes with the protestation that we must also get about forty shaves, or the honers of this extraordinary blade will be unhappy to buy us a pack of Coo-coo brand, the bona fide inferior blade. It can wear you down, this kind of opportunity to have a bad experience with a razor blade and then send away for your free supply of The Inferior. It can wear you down.

Which brings to mind the first recording session for this album, at the risk of mentioning the real- world fact of a phonograph record’s birth pangs. It was a kind of melancholy Fall night that nobody could do anything about, and we were in the small Studio D of a large and impersonal New York recording company. Since there were only to be another guitar and a bass accompanying Gordon, we thought that a small studio might conjure a musical intimacy worth going for. But the moon was pulling too hard on everybody that night, and the color of the walls in this particular studio successfully captured the mood of gloom we thought we’d left outside. Our assistant engineer, an older fella, seemed none too emotionally involved in this kind of music, maybe none too involved even in this business of recording. From all that was apparent, he might have been happier in his work had it been cobbling shoes or trimming trees; he meant no harm, neither did he mean especially well. And anyone not born and bred in New York City can be extremely sensitive to this kind of split hair.

Anyway, the first tune Gordon put down that night was his Rich Man’s Spiritual and in filling out the “take” sheet this assistant engineer guy wrote “Richman’s Spiritual”, by which he probably didn’t mean to suggest anything about the implicit Brotherhood of Man, but only that, if indeed he tuned in on anything at all anymore, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to tune in on that night’s activities. So alien were they to anything that had ever moved him. Now, apart from all else, that’s a reasonably sad circumstance for a man and probably much too common a one in these times of magnified opportunity; that the man with, say, the soul of a baker should get caught up in the role of an assistant sound engineer. And because it’s a sad proposition, there was an essential sadness felt for the man when he went on to transcribe our artist’s name as Gordon Whitefoot rather than ask what was it again. That kind of sympatico can serve to distract even the most insensitive among us, and the night in Studio D had definitely taken on such a cast. But what’s remarkably more, and the single important fact at the bottom of all this meandering, is the privilege to report that, later on, blossoms of a sort were made to grow in
such a cold and angular atmosphere. Gordon’s eventual delivery of, among other tunes, his own Early Morning Rain seemed to make just the right use of those grey walls. And the great wealth of feeling he’s written right into that song is about the same shade of grey as was that entire session. Oh, there were many more happy sessions after the first, but it has been mentioned here in morbid detail to demonstrate the shadowy ways in which a real artist can find virtue lurking out the other side of predicament.

Gordon Lightfoot is his name, ladies and gentlemen. Gordon Lightfoot. Remember it well, as certainly you will because it’s that kind of name. He sings them all like he wrote them and in most cases he did. what’s even more important,and not always the case, he usually sings his own songs better than anyone else does. Which fact says a lot about the directness with which they come from the heart, or wherever that place is where artists are most comfortable with their thoughts and themselves. But whether he wrote it or not, when Light-foot the singer takes up a song there is an authority that the ear is quick to accept and relax behind. Gordon’s vocal talent is doubtless a sensational example of that elusive quality that puts a chasm between the amateur and the sheerly professional. Like must also be true for really great bakers and assistant sound engineers, to cloak the whole thing in terms of the necessary doing for the necessary living, and how a good feeling about one lends itself to a good feeling about the other.

Yes, Gordon Lightfoot, with ample gifts and gratitude, has good reason to be a happy guy. A Canadian happy guy with Swedish wife and a season as star of an English-made Country and Western tv show under his wide-buckle belt (as well as his own monthly special currently on Canadian tv). He wears cowboy boots most of the time, like Tyson of lan and Sylvia, his friend and hand-up-the-ladder. And he says “oot” for out, like Tyson and Goulet and Bobbie Burns. But, along with Tyson, he understands about the cowboy and the psychology of open spaces that makes up the mood of life in the biggest part of Canada, as it did and does in the American West.

It’s these guys who have become the poets of that way of life, filtered as it now necessarily is through the Ice Blue democratic news of the world that affects us all, regardless of race, creed or color. And it’s gratifying to see the songs of a Gordon Lightfoot begin to receive the attention they deserve.

For, hung as they so often are on a wide-open-spaces metaphor, they nonetheless deal most poetically with the way life is for all of us, in one way or another. We won’t get hung up here reciting how Peter, Paul and Mary, a fairly well established branch of folk musical royalty, have had two substantial U.S., Canadian, Australian and European hits with Lightfoot tunes (in France, they sing “Tu N’ Aurais Jamais Du M’Aimer” when they mean That’s What You Get For Lovin’ Me). Or that Marty Robbins’ version of Gordon’s Ribbon of Darkness was number one on the Country and Westem charts for several weeks recently. Suffice it to say that, at the very moment of this writing, other artists of awesome stature and diverse interests are recording his originals. And meanwhile, back at the Lightfoot, Gordon’s treatment of the work of his songwriter contemporaries gets and keeps the respect of audiences wherever he is heard.

So, then. Of the fourteen songs on this, the first time out for an important artist, eleven are his own. All fourteen might just as easily have been his own, but in three instances Gordon felt strongly enough about other people’s work to want it included in his first collection. Nor, interesting to note, were the three exceptions chosen simply for reasons of musical variety. The album is not that kind of album, really. And frankly not the sort that is paced fast song-slow song- fast song for maximum and most symmetrical contrast. It is, rather, more like a statement; a collection of thoughts most importantly on Gordon Lightfoot’s mind these days. Ones he was anxious to organize in a single place and record for posterity before getting on to more adventurous projects, longer works in the ballad and talking blues vein, along with occasional and deft forays into the jungle of Top Forty competitions. Elsewhere, the expression “Country and Lightfoot” is already in use among the cognoscenti, and those who predict that a subtle amalgam of ‘Rock and Country is next in sight on the Pop horizon are well aware of the work of Gordon Lightfoot. For that matter, several of the aforementioned tunes on this album are already on their way to becoming standards. It’s just that the guy who wrote tnem would like to take the next little while and sing them for you, like they’re supposed to be sung, before he gets on to the next thing. And that, one supposes, is the logical content of a creative life in the real world. Coo-coo him no blades.”

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

Born Lucille Marie Raymonde Savoie in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Canada, Starr was a natural musician who could play guitar and bass as well as the mandolin. Although born in Manitoba, she was raised in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam's Francophone community of Maillardville, British Columbia starting her musical career with the local group Les Hirondelles. Using the stage name of Lucille Starr, she eventually teamed up with band member Bob Regan both as
his wife and to form their own country singing duo called "Bob & Lucille". Between 1958 and 1963 they released several 45 rpm records that were mainly covers of an eclectic mix of fashionable country, pop, rockabilly and folk songs of people such as Perry Como to Connie Francis. Their records met with modest success on the North American West Coast and in 1963 they were signed by A&M Records with which they began recording as "The Canadian Sweethearts".

At A&M Records in Los Angeles, California, Starr recorded a song called "The French Song" that was produced by Herb Alpert. It was recorded in both French and English. In 1964, at a time when The Beatles dominated the music charts, "The French Song" was an international success that made Starr the first Canadian artist to have a record sell over a million copies. The song took her from near obscurity to the world stage, touring the United States and appearing on the Louisiana Hayride radio show and on Chicago radio station WLS (AM) popular National Barn Dance. Starr also sang on American television musical variety shows such as Shindig! and Hullabaloo, followed by tours of Pacific Rim countries, Australia, South Africa, and across Europe where she became a particular favorite in the Netherlands. Selling sold over one million copies, it was awarded a gold disc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXfGTrmTPl8

The original Jack London and The Sparrows line-up was formed in Oshawa, Ontario in early 1964 by British émigré Dave Marden (aka Jack London), (born February 16, 1944 in London, England), guitarist Dennis Edmonton (born Dennis McCrohan, April 21, 1943 in Oshawa, Ontario) and keyboard player Dave Hare, who later played with Everyday People.

Jack London and The Sparrows began as a beat group and played heavily on Dave Marden’s English background. Their early repertoire reflected the influence of the “British invasion” and London even went as far as coaxing the others to “fake” English accents, in order to convince
the audience that they had just arrived from England. Shortly afterwards, Dennis’ brother Jerry (born Jerry McCrohan, October 24, 1946 in Oshawa, Ontario) replaced the original drummer and Brent Maitland (stage name: Bert Enfield) joined on bass. The group began to build up a local following, playing at various venues, such as the local Jubilee Auditorium (which was owned by the Edmonton brothers’ father).

After moving to Toronto later that year, C.J. Feeney joined on organ. A short while later, Bruce Palmer (born September 9, 1946 in Toronto), who'd played in Billy Clarkson’s band replaced Maitland who went to university. This line-up signed to Capitol Records and scored a #3 hit on the RPM chart with debut single “If You Don’t Want My Love”.

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Issued in Canada December 1964 on Capitol 72203. Jack London & The Sparrows were a Merseybeat-inspired group from Oshawa, Ontario. Though virtually unknown in the rest of Canada, they became one of Toronto's most popular groups. Singer Jack London (born Dave Marden, in London, England) founded the group in Oshawa in 1964 with his friend, guitarist Dennis Edmonton (McCrohan). Dave Hare was added on keyboards, then Dennis' brother Jerry Edmonton (McCrohan) replaced the group's first drummer, and Bert Enfield (born Brent Maitland) joined on bass. They built up a following around the Oshawa area, playing Merseybeat covers, then the group relocated to Toronto in the fall of 1964.

At this time, Dave Hare was replaced on keyboards by CJ Feeney, and Bert Enfield was replaced on bass by Bruce Palmer. This lineup was signed to Capitol of Canada. "If You Don't Want My Love" was their first single. It entered the RPM Top 40 & 5 on December 28, 1964 at #39, and reached #3 on January 12th 1965, and made to #13 on CHUM in February. Jack London & The Sparrows served as the launching ground for a couple of groups who would have far-reaching effects: Bruce Palmer went on to play bass in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young; meanwhile the core members split from London, became The Sparrow, and signed with Columbia for an LP in 1966. With the addition of John Kay, a move to Los Angeles, and further personnel changes, Steppenwolf was formed in 1967.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPitug_o3E

Sainte-Marie played piano and guitar, self-taught, in her childhood and teen years. In college some of her songs, "Ananias", the Indian lament, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (in Hindi) were already in her repertoire.

By 1962, in her early twenties, Sainte-Marie was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals and Native Americans reservations across the United States, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district, and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell (including introducing her to manager Eliot Roberts), and Neil Young.

She quickly earned a reputation as a gifted songwriter, and many of her earliest songs were covered, and often turned into chart-topping hits, by other artists including Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin and Taj Mahal. One of her most popular songs, "Until It's Time for You to Go", has been recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Françoise Hardy, Cher, Maureen McGovern, and Bobby Darin, while "Piney Wood Hills" was made into a country music hit by Bobby Bare. Her vocal style features a frequently recurring, insistent, unusually sustained vibrato, one more prominent than can be found in the music of any other well-known popular music performer.

In 1963, recovering from a throat infection Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine and recovering from the experience became the basis of her song "Cod'ine", later covered by Donovan, The Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Gram Parsons as a part of his Another Side of This Life: The Lost Recordings of Gram Parsons 1965-1966, and the songwriter Charles Brutus McClay. Also in 1963 Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement - this inspired her protest song "Universal Soldier" which was released on her debut album, It's My Way on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for Donovan. She was subsequently named Billboard Magazine's Best New Artist. Some of her songs such as "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, included on her 1966 album) addressing the plight of the Native American people created a lot of controversy at the time.

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

His television roles include Ben Cartwright on the western Bonanza, and Commander Adama in the science fiction movie and subsequent TV Series Battlestar Galactica. He also worked on the Canadian television nature documentary series Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, and in television commercials as a dog food spokesman.

Greene was assigned as the principal newsreader on the CBC National News. The CBC gave him the nickname "The Voice of Canada"; however, his role in delivering distressing war news in sonorous tones following Canada's entry into World War II in 1939 caused many listeners to call him "The Voice of Doom". During his radio days, Greene invented a stopwatch that ran backwards. Its purpose was to help radio announcers gauge how much time they had available while speaking. He also narrated documentary films, such as the National Film Board of
Canada's Fighting Norway (1943). In 1957 Greene played the role of the prosecutor in the movie Peyton Place.

Actress and theater producer Katharine Cornell cast him twice in her Broadway productions. In 1953, he was cast in The Prescott Proposals. In that same year, she cast him in a verse drama by Christopher Fry, The Dark is Light Enough. Greene began appearing on isolated episodes on live television in the 1950s. In 1953, he was seen in the title role of a one-hour adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, and in 1955, he was rather incongruously cast as Ludwig van Beethoven in an episode of the televised version of You Are There.

The first of his continuing roles in a TV series was as loyal family patriarch Ben Cartwright on the western series Bonanza (1959–1973), making Greene a household name. He garnered the role after having turned in a performance as O'Brien in the CBS production of Nineteen Eighty- Four.

In the 1960s, Greene capitalized on his image as "Pa" Benjamin Cartwright by recording several albums of country-western/folk songs, which Greene performed in a mixture of spoken word and singing. In 1964, Greene had a #1 single on the music charts with his spoken-word ballad, "Ringo" (which referred to the real-life Old West outlaw Johnny Ringo), and got a lot of play time from, "Saga of the Ponderosa", which detailed the Cartwright founding of the famous ranch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6-57XCH6Vo

Ian & Sylvia started performing together in Toronto in 1959. By 1962, they were living in New
York City where they caught the attention of manager Albert Grossman, who managed Peter,
Paul and Mary and would soon become Bob Dylan's manager. Grossman secured them a
contract with Vanguard Records and they released their first album late in the year.

Ian & Sylvia's first and self-titled album on Vanguard Records consisted mainly of traditional
songs. There were British and Canadian folk songs, spiritual music, and a few blues songs
thrown into the mix. The album was moderately successful and they made the list of performers
for the 1963 Newport Folk Festival.

Four Strong Winds, their second album, was similar to the first, with the exception of the
inclusion of the early Dylan composition, "Tomorrow is a Long Time", and the title song "Four
Strong Winds", which was written by Ian. "Four Strong Winds" was a major hit in Canada and
ensured their stardom.

Ian and Sylvia married in June 1964. They also released their third album, Northern Journey,
that year. The album included a blues song written by Sylvia, "You Were On My Mind", which
was subsequently recorded by both the California group We Five (a 1965 #1 on the Cashbox
chart, #3 on the Billboard Hot 100) and British folk-rock singer Crispian St. Peters (#36 in 1967).
A recording of "Four Strong Winds" by Bobby Bare made it to #3 on the country charts around
that time.

On the Northern Journey album was the song "Someday Soon", a composition by Ian that would
rival "Four Strong Winds" in its popularity. Both songs would eventually be covered by dozens of
artists.

The song is based on the life of transient farm workers, forced to move where work can be
found, but its theme is the sometimes temporary nature of human relationships.

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

“Three Rows Over” was written by Tommy Casassa, who originally recorded the song in 1961. Casassa is an obscure wanna-be teen idol from the late 50s who released a single titled “Tender Loving Sweetheart”/”Won’t You Tell Me” with Decca Records in the fall of 1958. The B-side made the Top Ten on WARL in Arlington, Virginia, in December ’58. The A-side was an unremarkable rockabilly tune and the B-side a gingerbread teen tune.

When Casassa recorded “Three Rows Over (And Two Seats Down)” in 1961 it was through the Gill Music Corp.

The Airheads Radio Survey Archive (ARSA) website indicates limited chart action for Tommy Casassa’s “Three Rows Over”, though it made the Top Ten in Washington D.C. and Wheaton, Maryland.

In the sister pop music factory to the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway in Manhattan. Tommy Casassa’s original version had a backing group that supported him, with arrangements similar to what Bobby Curtola had with the Martells in 1963. One difference in the musical arrangement of note is the bridge (listen to link to Tommy Cassasa’s original version in the references section below). When Tommy Casassa sang “I just can’t seem to concentrate, I can’t buckle down. I never get my schoolwork done, my head’s always turned around,”  he slowed down the tempo. While in the Bobby Curtola version, the tempo in the verses, chorus and bridge remain the same.

In 1965, under the pseudonym Tommy Curtis, Casassa re-released “Three Rows Over”. On this recording he also slowed down the tempo during the bridge. His 1965 recording got a bit of airplay in South Carolina and Alabama.


Airhead Radio Survey Archive (ARSA)

In 1971 Tommy Casassa produced a few singles for Nashville-based country recording artist Weldon Myrick.

“Three Rows Over” is a song that concerns a crush a guy in school has with a classmate who sits three rows over, and two seats down. He can’t concentrate on his school work because he is so distracted by her good looks – all five feet four of her. Though there are other guys in his classroom who are vying for her attention, she seems to be most interested in him. Meanwhile, the classroom teacher is angry with him for not buckling down and studying his school assignments.

The phrase “buckle down” dates back to the American Civil War and was first cited in the Atlantic Monthly in 1865: “If he would only buckle down to serious study.” The phrase means to apply oneself to hard work, or the work at hand.

“Three Rows Over” was the third single release credited to Bobby Curtola & The Martells. The first being “Gypsy Heart”. The Martells were a group originally formed in 1957 in Midland, Ontario. They started out as The Corvettes. The group consisted of drummer and guitarist Tom Ambeau, bass guitarist Milt Budarick, pianist Bert DesRochers, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Larry French, and lead vocalist and second drummer Gary French. They originally formed while attending Midland-Penetang District High School. They were the backing band for Canada’s first teen idol Bobby Curtola as he toured the university circuit and changed their name to The Martells (after Curtola’s booking agent, Maria Martel). After leaving Curtola, the Martells toured across Canada and recorded with stars as Del Shannon, The Stampeders and Chuck Berry, disbanding in the late 1960s. In 1979, the Martells reunited and continued playing together until disbanding in 2015.

In 1963, Winnipeg’s Chad Allan & the Reflections (later the Guess Who) were introduced to Curtola. “We backed him on some Winnipeg dates and across Western Canada, all the way to Edmonton for Klondike Days and Calgary for the Stampede,” says guitarist Randy Bachman. “It was an opportunity for us to travel and promote our records. We had Shy Guy out at the time. At the Stampede we played the Teen Tent with him, sponsored by Coca-Cola. That was our first encounter with screaming girls who came to see Bobby every night. It was our taste of the rock ’n’ roll limelight. Bobby Curtola was a decent singer and performer and a nice enough guy who came along when Canadian teenagers were looking for their very own Elvis or Cliff Richard, and he filled that void. And he was very successful.”

And “Three Rows Over” was about a girl who was three rows of desks over and two seats down in the guys’ homeroom class. At the time rows of school desks looked something like this:

“Three Rows Over” climbed to #1 in Halifax (NS), #2 in Vancouver and Toronto, #3 in Belleville (ON) and Calgary (AB), #4 in Ottawa and Kingston (ON), #9 in Bakersfield (CA), and #11 in Montreal. The single also charted into the Top 20 in Saskatoon (SK), and did well in Winnipeg. “Three Rows Over” also got airplay in some radio markets in the state of New York, New Hampshire, Arizona and Massachusetts.

With “Three Rows Over” Bobby Curtola was in the midst of a streak on the C-FUNTASTIC FIFTY record survey in Vancouver. On August 18, 1962, “I Cry And Cry” began to chart. From then on, Curtola kept on charting one (or more) of his singles on the C-FUNTASTIC FIFTY on consecutive weeks until January 11, 1964. He managed to have one of his songs on the pop chart for 70 of 71 weeks in a row. (Curtola had earlier charted for 20 consecutive weeks on the C-FUNTASTIC FIFTY from February 2 to June 16, 1962).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjO72B2tJ5w

Bobby was born in Port Arthur, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) on April 17th, 1943. He had a musical youth, enjoying all types of music he could get his hands on; especially Rock & Roll. At 15, wanting to emulate the stars of his youth, Bobby would begin singing. It didn’t take long for his natural talents to make themselves apparent.

Like many teens, Bobby craved freedom and would work various jobs while in high school to afford it. The final job he had was at sixteen, working pumping gas at his father’s garage, while performing at sock hops and other small-scale events with his group, Bobby and the Bobcats.

The incessant playing and frenzied reaction of fans caught the attention of label owners and song writing team, Dyer & Basil Hudson. They recently founded TARTAN and were looking for talent to sign to the label. TARTAN was mostly used for Bobby Curtola’s singles and albums, but over their 11 year run, the label also release 3 singles by a then 14 year old Lynda Layne in 1963-1964, two singles by Nova Scotia teen singer Honey Wells (later of the band Bradstreet), one killer Garage-Rock blast by Bobby Curtola’s backing band The Martells, and potentially more by other artists; no official discography has surfaced over the years.

After signing with TARTAN in early 1960, the Hudson brothers whisked him into the studio and had him record a number of tracks. Curtola recorded his first hit, “Hand in Hand With You,” in mid-1960. The buzz from that first single got him a gig opening for Bob Hope in Winnipeg. Shortly after this, the Hudson’s had arranged for Bobby to do a small tour of Western Canada. The tour was met with resounding praise and they sent Bobby to Nashville to record multiple songs, to help capitalize on the hype.

He soon found himself in RCA studios with recording legends such as Bill Porter, Chet Atkins, and the list goes on. The Hudson’s clearly spared no expense; having him record top quality material, with top quality musicians and producers. Their investment payed off! Hand In Hand With You, was followed by a slew of hits: “Don’t You Sweetheart Me,” “I’ll Never Be Alone Again, “Hitchhiker” and his main claim-to-fame, his million-seller “Fortune Teller.”

The next few months were like being caught in a whirlwind for Bobby. With the success of his recent hit singles, he was able to tour internationally, backed by the Martells. He toured with Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars and travelled to England, where he appeared on Britain’s Thank Your Lucky Stars. His continued success led to more T.V. appearances for Bobby.

T.V. was something else he proved to have a knack for. His appearances on shows like American Bandstand helped him nab hosting jobs of his own back here in Canada. His charisma and beautiful voice were always front and centre. Whether it be hosting After Four, Shake, Miss Canada pageants, or even doing commercials and jingles for various products, Bobby always brought a professionalism and joy for the job that was unmatched and never forgotten by those that got to work with him.

As the 60’s wore on, Bobby had a continued run of hit singles on the Canadian charts. Overall, he released 25 gold singles, 12 gold albums and won the 1966 RPM Award, for Best Male Vocalist. Through this time he helped establish the blueprint for nation-wide touring in Canada (at least for Pop stars, Jazz artists may have got to it first), and became one of the first performers in Canada to found his own publishing, recording and concert promotion companies.

After a near perfect run of the 60’s, the 70’s saw Curtola switch gears. In the Frank Sinatra vein of teen heart throb gone casino entertainer, he reinvented himself in the crooner mold. He put out a lone album for the Canadian Talent Library in 1972. This album and new style proved instrumental in landing him a multi-million dollar deal with the Howard Hughes Hotel chain; a place where he’d work happily for over 20 years.

Although our industry wasn’t perfect at the time, Bobby made the most of it and got lucky along the way. His importance as an industry pioneer cannot be understated. He lit the way for many young performers like himself.
-Aaron Lusch
AaronLusch@hotmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWPUIVS4DSw