Terrence Ross Jacks (born March 29, 1944) is a Canadian singer, songwriter and record producer, best known for his 1974 hit song "Seasons in the Sun". Early life Terry Jacks was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His family relocated to Vancouver in the early 1960s. Jacks took up guitar in his teens and at 18 formed a band called The Chessmen with guitarist Guy Sobell. The group had four top-ten hits in Vancouver between 1964 and 1966. Jacks and the Chessmen performed live on a Friday night in September 1965 for a "Back to School" event at the now-defunct T. Eaton Co. (Eaton's) department store at its Brentwood Mall store in North Burnaby, a municipality next to Vancouver. Pupils from Burnaby South Senior High School who followed music tuned in to CFUN 1410 AM, which advertised its "Request Line". Being skeptical about whether CFUN really listened to requests, they began phoning the Request Line and asked for the B side of the current Chessmen hit. To their amazement, CFUN began playing it and turned the record into a two-sided hit. Following The Chessmen, Terry and Susan Pesklevits (Susan Jacks), whom he later married, formed The Poppy Family along with Craig McCaw and Satwant Singh. They had several hits in Canada and internationally, their biggest being "Which Way You Goin' Billy?", which went to #1 in Canada and #2 on the Billboard charts in the U.S. The song was written and produced by Terry Jacks, earning him a Gold Leaf (Juno) award in 1970 for his production. The Poppy Family performed at the Lethbridge, Alberta, Stampede in the summer of 1971. "Seasons in the Sun" The song "Seasons in the Sun" was originally intended for the Beach Boys, with Jacks serving as producer for the recording. However, after the group decided not to release it, Jacks decided to record it himself in late 1973 on his own record label, Goldfish Records. It became the largest-selling international single by a Canadian artist at that time, eventually selling 14 million copies worldwide. It earned Jacks two Juno Awards and became one of the biggest-selling Canadian Singles of all time. The song was based on Rod McKuen's 1965 re-write of "Le moribond", originally by Belgian singer Jacques Brel from 1962. For his version, Jacks made some modifications to the lyrics, which, combined with McKuen's, resulted in a work that bears little resemblance to