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The Young Canadians
Makin’ My Mind Up / Satisfied Mind - 7"
Capitol - 1966
Michael Panontin
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The Dalton brothers - Dan, Jack and Wally - honed their musical skills in tiny Erieau ON, where they formed a group called the Dalton Boys. The 'boys', who were still in their teens, were brimming with talent, and so it wasn't long before they left to seek their fortunes south of the border.
They recorded their first single as far back as 1962 on the tiny Skyla label (with both sides, 'I'm Thinkin' and the grammatically challenged 'Much More Stronger' composed by brother Dan). More singles would follow, along with gigs at hip clubs like Philadelphia's Latin Quarter, New Orleans' Playboy Club and New York's Bitter End, and some pretty swell national TV exposure on Hootenanny and The Mike Douglas Show.
Dan would leave the group in 1963 to join his girlfriend and future wife, Hamilton's Lois Fletcher, in Randy Sparks' New Christy Minstrels spin-off group, the Back Porch Majority. Brother Jack, meanwhile, started a fruitful songwriting partnership with Gary Montgomery, and the pair took over the Dalton Boys name for themselves (as Wally by then had also departed). They were signed to Motown subsidiary V.I.P. and issued a single, 1965's 'I've Been Cheated' b/w 'Something's Bothering You', which unsurprisingly has become a bit of a sensation on the UK northern soul circuit.
That same year, Fletcher and Dan Dalton re-emerged along with Dan Moore in a group called the Young Canadians. Their first record, a folky Fletcher/Dalton‘ co-write called 'Joker', only managed to limp to an underwhelming #48 position on Toronto's CHUM charts. For the follow-up, the Young Canadians decided to hit up brother Jack for a few ideas. And the result was perhaps the best-known record to flow from the pens of Dalton and Montgomery (outside of all those soul anoraks, that is).
'Makin' My Mind Up' was first issued on the home front up here in Canuckistan on Capitol in June 1966. That buoyant beat and those cheery harmonies were classic sunshine pop, which in 1966 was only just starting to become a thing. Capitol's fairly heavy promotion aside - they took out at least two half-page ads in RPM in July alone - the song went pretty well unnoticed in Canada, as did a US release on Filmways a few months later.
But that was not the end of the story for 'Makin' My Mind Up'.
That same July, while Capitol was busy hyping the Young Canadians' record in Canada, the Turtles released their own version of the song. They had the added heft of White Whale and, more importantly, the skill of producer Bones Howe, whose deft addition of horns elevated the song to new heights. A British group, Katch 22, recorded an equally ebullient version the following year, while a then-unknown group from Sacramanto called the Spiral Starecase put their own version of the tune on the flip side of their debut single, a full year before they would join the one-hit wonder club with their 'More Today Than Yesterday'.
Oddly, none of those records bothered any charts. Dalton and Montgomery recorded a sought-after single for White Whale, 'All at Once', which they wisely got Howe to produce, before issuing a pair of lush popsike LPs as Colours. Fletcher would surface in 1974 with a version of Greyhound's 'I Am What I Am', which managed some regional success in Chicago and Vancouver, while Dan Dalton released just one single, the topical 'Male Chauvinist Pig', as Dan Dalton and the Hummers, in 1973.
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