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Howie Vickers
Uncle Wiggley / Come Away Melinda - 7"
MCA - 1970
Michael Panontin
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Howie Vickers was a well-known figure throughout much of 1960s Vancouver, first as a member of the Classics, a group that appeared numerous times as the house band on CBC's popular Let's Go program, and later of course as lead singer of the Collectors, whose popsike ditties 'Looking at a Baby' and 'Lydia Purple' filled the speakers of many a transistor radio back in the day. (Advanced Canuckistani scholars will also be aware that Vickers interviewed an affable, 17-year-old Stevie Wonder as co-host for a special all-Motown episode of Let's Go in 1967.)
Vickers of course missed his big claim to fame when he left the Collectors just as they were about to morph into the million-selling Chilliwack. He would later record a pair of LPs as the Wildroot Orchestra, a curiously eccentric over-the-top cover band in the age of punk and new wave.
Perhaps more interesting, though, is the trio of singles Vickers issued as a solo artist in 1970, just after his departure from the Collectors. The last of those, the organ-tinged and flute-flecked 'Uncle Wiggley', was probably the best of the three, and the only one to get the added heft of MCA behind it. But it barely troubled the charts. For one, it was perhaps a tad too weird for AM radio. What's more, the song was recorded in mono, and was probably anathema to all those free-form FM stations that were in thrall to the newer, superior stereo sound.
'Uncly Wiggley' was the last recording Vickers would make until 1981, when the first Wildroot Orchestra record was released. But in an interview with Terry David Mulligan in the eighties, he showed little regret: "Around '70...I got involved more full-time into the jingle thing. In addition to that, around that time I ended up [with Jim McGillivery] forming what was the original Wildroot band, which became Wildroot Orchestra. Around '76, I basically finished with, on a steady basis, live performances. [Today] I'm involved more in producing and writing, behind the microphone as it were rather than in front of it. I wouldn't change anything. Things are going real well, they've never been better and I'm having a good time."
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