Can-Con 45 Of The Day - December 15

Can-Con 45 Of The Day - December 15

Postby radiofan » Thu Dec 14, 2017 10:13 pm

Today's Can-Con 45 was a Top 10 hit at CKXL Calgary in early 1968 ... The 49th Parallel and "She Says" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOH_p5Kn9RQ

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Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - December 15

Postby Richard Skelly » Fri Dec 15, 2017 12:37 am

Is it just me, or was RCA International sporting one of North America’s drabbest looking labels on its late-60s product? Granted parent company RCA Victor was no great shakes with basic red or orange labels, having more or less retired Nipper for special releases. But at least with RCA Victor you didn’t need a magnifying glass to read credits.

Which is a roundabout way of drawing attention to this 1968 single by The 49th Parallel. Squint hard enough and you’ll see Gaiety Records in those credits. Turns out there was just a few degrees of separation from Calgary’s rockin’ Parallels to....Loretta Lynn???

Ya see, Gaiety—based in Winnipeg—released or licensed prairie pop they’d recorded. Gaiety was co-owned by Don Grashey. Back around 1959, Grashey and partner Chuck Williams were in Vancouver running their upstart Zero Records. It was also funded by forestry executive Norm Burley and a young investment broker called Art Phillips. (Yeah, that Art Phillips, the future transformational mayor of Vancouver.)

Meanwhile, Loretta Lynn had traded in eastern US Coal Country for the rain forests, living in Custer, Washington and—as a complete unknown—taking gigs on both sides of the 49th Parallel (a degree of separation?). The Zero guys caught one of her performances, supposedly in a converted chicken coop. They soon had Loretta recording some sides in Los Angeles, from which emerged I’m A Honky Tonk Girl. That hit propelled her to eventual country mega stardom, unfortunately for Zero, with another labeland management.

Grashey moved to the prairies, co-founded Gaiety and eventually signed the Calgary-based 49th Parallel. Repeating the Loretta Lynn formula, the band recorded in LA. An early single, Blue Bonnie Blue, was written by Delaney Bramlett for his feisty wife Bonnie. The Bramletts would gain future reknown backing Joe Cocker and as a duo. Post-divorce, Bonnie Bramlett memorably ko’d Elvis Costello for drunken slurs against Ray Charles. (Costello found sobriety soon thereafter.) Grashey, who died in 2005, had subsequent success guiding the career of Canadian country chanteuse Carroll Baker.

Despite the Gaiety support, The 49th Parallel never prospered south of the border. Original member Dan Lowe and later-Parallel singer Doran Beattie fared better with Painter which saw West Coast Woman chart on Billboard. That band morphed into Hammersmith. Lowe’s biggest apparent payday came from helping create Q Sound, a high tech company focused on entertainment acoustics.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - December 15

Postby Neumann Sennheiser » Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:20 am

No question Danny Lowe possessed a high measure of talent and smarts. Painter was a worthy act to see and hear live as evidenced here; early 70’s:
https://youtu.be/n6pD8zboJtQ
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