Till I Met You b/w It Didn't Take Much

The Classics’ second Jaguar single carried Tom Baird’s name on both sides. His instrumental ‘Aces High’ had given the band its first hit that summer, and this time he wrote both the A-side, ‘Till I Met You’, and the flip, ‘It Didn’t Take Much’. Released in September 1964, ‘Till I Met You’ reached No. 18 on C-FUN, one place higher than ‘Aces High’, and RPM later noted that it also drew play from stations outside Vancouver.

Drummer Gary Taylor led the group. Away from the band he taught at a local drum school, and on stage he took a five-minute solo. Baird, the only Vancouver native among them, wrote and arranged the material, while Howie Vickers, who had come down from Prince Rupert, sang lead and played trombone.

The rest of the band came from across the country. Claire Lawrence was born in Elk Point, Alberta, and moved to Vancouver to study music, and RPM ranked him among the best jazz saxophonists on the coast. Bassist Glenn Miller was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, and joined in 1962 after playing in bands around the Northwest. Guitarist Brian Russell grew up in Penticton, where his grandfather taught him to play at six, and he won the Okanagan Talent Contest as a boy.

Their next single, ‘I Don’t Know’, was in RPM’s view the best record they had made. American trade papers praised it, but Vancouver radio largely passed it by. By 1966 Bill Henderson and Ross Turney had joined a reshaped lineup, and in early 1967 the group became The Collectors. In 1970 the remaining members became Chilliwack.
-Robert Williston