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Patty Surbey
(I Want) a Beatle for Christmas / Christmas All Year 'Round - 7"
Aragon - 1964
Michael Panontin
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Patty Surbey was sort of a perky amalgam of Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, with maybe a bit of Annette Funicello or Cathy Carroll thrown in for good measure. The Burnaby (BC) singer only released a couple of singles in her career, but both are well worth searching out.
The doubly gimmicky '(I Want) a Beatle for Christmas' was her first and was issued just in time for Christmas 1964 - in other words, about three months after the Beatles' first Canadian show, August 22 at the old Empire Stadium in Vancouver. It's a fairly straight-up rocker and one of the many Beatles novelty records released that year. Most of those were nothing more than shameless attempts to cash in on the Fab Four's obvious talents, but this one was something else entirely. Buoyed by a rollicking backbeat supplied by the Canadian V.I.P.s and peppered with Surbey's hiccupy vocals, '(I Want) a Beatle for Christmas' is a fine record on its own and could probably have done well enough without the Xmas or Beatles references.
Though the disc was spun locally around the lower mainland (CFUN listed it as one of its Twin Pick Hits for the week of Dec. 12), it unfortunately missed out on the lucrative juggernaut south of the border. Al Reusch, owner of Aragon Records at the time, blamed its lack of international success on the postal service of all things. "We made a deal to lease the master to the World Pacific label in the States," he reveals on the Museum of Canadian Music site. "We mailed it down in time but it arrived too late. It was too close to Christmas for them to put it out. It was a big record locally though."
Surbey and the Canadian V.I.P.s followed up with the equally excellent - and sought-after - 'Hey Boy' the following spring. That single no doubt benefitted from the deft hands of Kearney Barton, who recorded it at his Audio Recording studio in Seattle and whose resume boasts the cream of Pacific Northwest rock, including the Sonics, the Wailers and the Ventures, to name but a few. Unfortunately, Surbey's career was by then starting to falter. A truly wretched 1966 Let's Go episode on the CBC featured her (as well as Terry Jacks, Howie Vickers and Susan Pesklevits, a.k.a. Susan Jacks) singing mostly forgettable versions of contemporary Brit Invasion hits. It was pretty well all downhill from there, as Surbey would ultimately quit the music business altogether, only to resurface in Ontario...as a born-again Christian.
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