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Sandy Selsie
The Poorest Girl in Town / A Date with Loneliness - 7"
Columbia - 1962
Michael Panontin
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No one talks about Sandy Selsie anymore. But at one point in the early sixties she was known as Canada's Brenda Lee.
Selsie got her start locally, in the (then) tiny burg of Richmond Hill, Ontario, but it wouldn't be long before the small-town teenager was charting songs across Canada while still a student in high school. "I started out singing in the area shows. And gradually branched out to radio and television," she would tell the local newspaper The Liberal back in 1963. "I've had guest spots on the Country Hoedown television show as well as The Tommy Hunter Show."
But her really big break came while the precocious singer was vacationing down in Nashville with her family. "We were down there on our vacation," she explained. "And we decided I should drop in to Columbia Studios for an audition." The suits down at Columbia were obviously smitten with Selsie and signed her on the spot. Selsie, it seems, could hardly believe her luck. "I was really surprised, because it's unusual for a big recording studio to sign you just like that."
By 1962, Selsie was ready for the big time. Columbia issued her first record south of the border in April and then up here in Canuckistan the following month. That disc, a reworking of the mopey Johnny Burnette b-side, 'The Poorest Boy in Town', backed with Tompall Glaser's country crooner, 'A Date with Loneliness', was an instant hit for our young star. Billboard raved about both sides, calling 'The Poorest Girl in Town' "[a] bright ditty" and 'A Date with Loneliness' a "country-pop weeper with feeling and emotion somewhat in the Brenda Lee style". By June 18, both tracks shared the #16 slot on CHUM-AM's influential chart, making this a perfect double-sider in more than just name.
Selsie issued five singles in the next year and a half but seems to have run out of steam towards the end of 1963. The March 22, 1965 issue of RPM called her "one of the greatest female country singers in Canada today" and went on to say that "it has always been a source of disappointment to us every time she made an attempt at the pop market and had to run the gauntlet of abuse from some of the witch hunters in hog town". It's not clear exactly what really happened to her in those years, but by the spring of 1965, Selsie had finally got her due, with her 'I Wish I Could Fall' single occupying the number one position on the RPM Country Tracks chart for the weeks of April 26 and May 3, and then again on June 14.
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