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Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights


Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights - Charlena / You've Got the Power - 7

Charlena / You've Got the Power - 7"
Arc - 1963


Michael Panontin
'Charlena' was the first truly Canadian record to reach #1 on the CHUM-AM charts. That was impressive enough. But the fact that it came from a totally unknown local band makes the story all the more unbelievable.

'Charlena' was penned by a couple of Angelenos, Manuel Chavez and Sonny Chaney, who had been performing in a Chicano group called the Jaguars since the mid-fifties. Allegedly, the pair had first heard it sung by a teenaged Robert Rodriguez to his 12-year-old neighbor, Sharleena Romero. Chavez and Chaney registered the song in November 1960 and proceeded to shop around for someone to record it. It was a man named Cliff Goldsmith, who was managing a black vocal group called the Sevilles, who recognized the song's potential and had his group record it.

The Sevilles' version of 'Charlena' was issued in December 1960, on a tiny California label called J.C. Records and up here in Canuckistan on the slightly larger Zirkon imprint. It was likely the latter version that a bunch of kids calling themselves the Mid-Knights first heard.

"[We] had first heard 'Charlena' at a Toronto dance hall," the Mid-Knights' bass player Doug Chappell recalled on the Garage Hangover site. "It was quite a rough recording but the band loved the song and at a practice learned how to play it, with a slightly different version due to the fact [we] were learning it from memory."

The Mid-Knights were still raw themselves and spent the early years playing dances across southern Ontario, eventually becoming one of the circuit's favourite acts. The group, who by then consisted of Chappell along with singer Rich Hubbard (a.k.a. Richie Knight), guitarist George Semkiw, keyboardist Barry Lloyd, drummer Barry Stein and saxophonist Mike Brough, spent the entire summer of '62 in the bars along the hopping Yonge Street strip.

The guys caught the attention of Arc Records' Bill Gilliland, who brought them into the label's rudimentary studio in early '63 to record. "It was the label's office and storage during the day and doubled as the studio at night," Chappell explained. "With metal garbage pails lifted off the floor and stuffed with rags to stifle any sound, the band started the recording process. There were to be no overdubs, vocals and instruments were to be laid down as one item on a mono tape recorder. The process took a few hours stopping each time there was any error or to move microphones and even one time due to a train passing behind the buildings, which had no sound proofing."

Four hours later 'Charlena' was recorded and ready to be pressed up. Arc placed their version of James Brown's 'You've Got the Power' on the flip and issued both songs as Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights. 'Charlena' was presented to radio stations around town. CHUM, interestingly enough, balked on the single at first, preferring to take a wait-and-see approach. CKEY was the first station to break the record, but as listeners started calling in to CHUM requesting that they also play it, the disc was added to the powerhouse's playlist. 'Charlena' spent two full weeks - June 24th and July 1st - atop CHUM's coveted chart, marking the first time that a Canadian act had achieved such a feat.*

'Charlena' went on to sell upwards of 100,000 copies. But more importantly, it netted the band gigs galore. "It was a very exciting time. With a hit record, the teens flocked to wherever the band played, [and we] played virtually every dancehall in Southern Ontario." But that was just the tip of the iceberg for Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights. In July that year, the group found themselves the only Canadians on the bill for Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Mid-Knights played with many name acts in the years to come, including Bobby Curtola, Jimmy Reed and, perhaps the mother of all nights, a spot opening for the Rolling Stones on April 25, 1965.

The group issued a handful of singles in the years to follow, none of which managed to bother the charts in any significant way. Richie Knight abandoned ship in '66, and the group pivoted to the Mid-Knights Blues Band and then to the Mid-Knights Revue, the latter a massive Stax/Volt-style soul extravaganza. But the Toronto scene had exploded by then, and Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights, despite having paved the way for many of those younger musicians, were starting to slowly disappear in the rear view mirror of history.


(*The Canadian-born Jack Scott hit #1 on CHUM in 1958 with 'My True Love', but by that time Jack had spent more than half his life in the Detroit area, where the record was recorded and produced, so...)
         
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