Aces High b/w Comin' Home Baby

In the summer of 1964 the C-FUN Classics had a hit on C-FUN. The band carried the Vancouver station’s name and served as its house band, and that August their first single, ‘Aces High’, climbed to No. 19 on the station’s chart. It stayed on the list for eight weeks.

‘Aces High’ was an instrumental written by Tom Baird, the group’s pianist and arranger, mixing surf guitar with a jazzier, horn-driven edge. Baird played alongside Howie Vickers on vocals and trombone, Claire Lawrence on saxophone, organ and flute, Brian Russell on guitar, Glenn Miller on bass and Gary Taylor, the drummer and bandleader. Managed by Les Vogt, the six of them worked Vancouver’s clubs, backed visiting American acts such as The Coasters, Del Shannon and Freddy Cannon, and went on to serve as the house band on CBC television’s Let’s Go.

The flip side, ‘Comin’ Home Baby’, came from American bassist Ben Tucker. Herbie Mann had cut it as an instrumental and Mel Tormé had turned it into a vocal hit in 1962, and the Classics took it into a set that ran from jazz to R&B.

Another Baird song, ‘Till I Met You’, followed later in 1964 and reached No. 18 on C-FUN. Baird then left for Los Angeles and Motown, where he produced Rare Earth’s Ecology album and co-produced Diana Ross’s ‘Touch Me in the Morning’. Back in Vancouver, Bill Henderson and Ross Turney had joined by 1966, and the group was writing more of its own material. In early 1967 they became The Collectors with ‘Looking at a Baby’, and in 1970 the remaining members became Chilliwack.

-Robert Williston