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Pat Hervey
Can't Get You Out of My Mind / Givin' In - 7"
President - 1966
Michael Panontin
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Pat Hervey passed away in 2016, quietly as it were with nary a peep about it in the mainstream media. Like many of the stars of the pre-Beatles era, her achievements have been largely forgotten save for the occasional mention on some obscure internet blog.
But for the record, Hervey started singing at the age of nine at high schools and social dances. The precocious Toronto native was discovered by CHUM jock Al Boliska while she was performing at an amateur hour variety show and promptly hustled off to CBC-TV, where she appeared regularly on shows like Club 6, Country Hoedown, Music Hop, Parade, While We're Young and Holiday Ranch.
It was local honcho Art Snider, at the time the musical director for Club 6, who first suggested that she make some recordings for his well-established Chateau label. Snider was wise enough to hold the sessions down in Nashville, corralling Chet Atkins himself to produce the four tracks...which in turn led to a contract with RCA Victor Canada. And so it wasn't long before Hervey's pretty pipes could be heard blasting from transistor radios around town, with three of her songs - 1962's 'Mr. Heartache', the following year's 'Tears of Misery', and 'Walking in Bonnie's Footsteps' in 1964 - all managing to crack CHUM's coveted top-twenty chart.
The thing is, as lovely as those songs are - Hervey sounds like a cross between Brenda Lee and Connie Francis - the only song that really matters today is her one-off stab at soul music, which she made in 1966 during a particularly dry period on the charts. The languorous 'Can't Get You Out of My Mind' is a true gem and is still coveted today across the pond by the northern soul anoraks in Britain (who if truth be told were the only ones who really noticed Hervey's passing).
You can add the fetching 'Can't Get You Out of My Mind' to the list of great hits written by Snider's little-known writer and arranger Al Rain, the man responsible for Grant Smith and the Power's 'Thinkin' About You' and all four sides by the Tiaras. Rain recalls the song with particular fondness. "Pat Hervey could sing the phone book and make it sound great," he recently told CM. "We went down to New York for a recording session with her, the Tiaras and the Allan Sisters. At that session the Tiaras backed up the Allan Sisters on 'Give It Up Girl' and 'I'm in with the Downtown Crowd' as well as on Hervey's 'Can't Get You Out of My Mind'. I co-arranged them all."
'Can't Get You Out of My Mind' unfortunately met with little success. Hervey eventually made her way out west to Vancouver where she managed to briefly relight the fire in her career with a summer TV show, an album (1971's Peaceful), and a non-LP single, Rain's topical 'The Land I Dream of', a product of those very same mid-sixties New York sessions, with 'Can't Get You Out of My Mind' tacked onto the flipside.
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Suggestions
Gilles Vigneault
Mon Pays
Columbia
The Ugly Ducklings
Nothin' / I Can Tell - 7"
Yorktown
Mary Saxton
Is It Better to Live or to Die / Losing Control - 7"
Pace
Douglas Rankine with the Secrets
Clear the Track Here Comes Shack / Warming the Bench - 7"
RCA Canada International
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