All inducted songs
“I wrote it in an empty bathtub in a suite in Greenwich Village because it was the only place the cockroaches wouldn’t go.”
You Were On My Mind
  • Year Inducted: 2007
  • Written In: 1962
Songwriters
Sylvia Fricker (Tyson) Songwriter
© Photo Credit Silvia Pecota
Artists
We Five
Jay and the Americans
Nanci Griffith
The Letterman
Barry McGuire
The Mitchell Trio
Judy Roderick
Crispian St.Peters
The gospel-influenced You Were On My Mind was one of many classic songs Sylvia Fricker contributed to the repertoire of famous Canadian duo, Ian and Sylvia, during the early 1960’s folk revival. One of the few female folk artists to write a major song in the genre, the blues song appeared on the duo’s third album Northern Journey in 1962.

Given a poppier treatment by the group We Five a year later, You Were On My Mind became one of the first big international folk-rock hits, going to number 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart in 1965, and number one on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, now Adult Contemporary, the same year. It subsequently became a hit for Crispian St. Peters in England and Los Barracudas in Spain and Italy.

“You Were On My Mind was the first song I ever wrote of the over 200 I’ve now published,” Tyson recalls. “I wrote it in an empty bathtub in a suite at the Earle Hotel in Greenwich Village because it was the only place the cockroaches wouldn’t go.”

Sylvia Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1992 and has served on the boards of FACTOR, the Juno Awards, and Songwriters Association of Canada, and in 1994, on a federal advisory committee on the cultural aspects of the information highway. She was honoured with the Order of Canada in 1994.

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You Were On My Mind (Sylvia Tyson) - performed by Jim Cuddy and Oh Susannah
"You Were On My Mind" was performed by Canadian singer-songwriters Jim Cuddy and Oh Susannah at the 2007 CSHF Induction Ceremony.
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