He was the voice behind such hits as Which Way You Goin’ Billy, That’s Where I Went Wrong, and Good Friends in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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Susan Jacks was one of the early Vancouver stars of the 1960s, blessed with a golden voice that could sing just about anything.
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“It had that unique quality, that once you heard it, you knew right away it was Susan singing,” said former Poppy Family bandmate Craig McCaw.
His voice remained pure and clear until he was 70 years old. But in recent years, he suffered from kidney problems and on Monday he passed away at Surrey Memorial Hospital. She was 73 years old.
She was born Susan Elizabeth Pesklevits in Saskatoon on August 19, 1948, and grew up in a large family of six brothers and one sister in Haney and New Westminster.
She was a natural singer, with a cold, clear voice that was somewhere between Karen Carpenter and Tammy Wynette. Her first brush with fame was when she joined CBC-TV’s Let’s Go and Music Hop in the mid-’60s.
In 1966, she joined guitarist Terry Jacks, who became her husband a year later. Initially, she hired Terry to play guitar in her band, but it became Poppy Family.
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“Someone said, the ‘Terry Jacks’ band just broke up, why don’t you ask him? Maybe he’s available,’” Susan recounted in 2014. “And he was, so he played guitar for me at a concert. And we both knew Craig McCaw (so we asked him to join). He became the group and got cooler and cooler.”
After bringing in tabla player Satwant Singh, the folk-rock group flirted with psychedelia and country before topping the charts around the world with the soft-pop classic Which Way You Goin’ Billy in 1969. It was Vancouver’s first million-selling record. Act.
The band had several hits including That’s Where I Went Wrong, Good Friends, I Was Wondering, No Good to Cry, and Where Evil Grows. But when Susan and Terry’s marriage ended in 1973, so did the band.
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Susan had solo hits with You Don’t Know What Love Is, I Thought Of You Again and Anna Marie. Terry, meanwhile, recorded Seasons in the Sun, which became one of the biggest hits of all time, selling 14 million copies.
After marrying Canadian soccer legend Ted Dushinski, she had a son, Thad, and moved to Nashville in 1983. She worked in music publishing and as a songwriter, and returning to her Ukrainian heritage, she opened a perogy restaurant.
“People loved them,” Jacks said in 2009. “We fried them though. Everything in the south has to be fried.”
When Dushinski was diagnosed with lung cancer, the couple returned to Vancouver. He passed away in 2005, but then his brother Bruce developed cancer and Jacks started taking care of him.
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“She was always a very sincere and caring soul,” McCaw said. She “she had very high principles and she was not full of pretensions. It could have been, because everyone loved Susan. Throughout her life she was always spectacular and everyone fell in love with her.
“Sometimes people get carried away with that, but she was unassuming, she was always just Susan. And she always cared about everyone.”
But she had her own health problems. She announced in 2009 that she needed a kidney transplant, and her brother Bill turned out to be a good match and donated one of her kidneys.
Susan was grateful for her younger brother’s generosity.
“He said, ‘If I never do anything more important in my life, I’m proud to be able to do this,’” she said.
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In 2016, she had further problems with her kidneys and was put into a hospital-induced coma. She but she recovered and lived five more years.
In recent years, he’s done the occasional show with McCaw and Singh, including a 2014 gig at the Khatsahlano festival in Kitsilano, where they were backed by some members of the New Pornographers, Destroyer, and Black Mountain, the cream of the alternative rock scene. Vancouver. Susan Jacks’ music transcended generations.
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Reference-vancouversun.com