Making simplest charts possible with Pages

I just downloaded Pages for a project I'm working on, but I find the charts and tables contain much more than I need or want. The question is, is there a way to reduce the elements in my chart? I was going to say to only two elements, but now I think only one is necessary. For clarification, I want to create a chart consisting of only rows and columns. The column on the far left would be used to show the names of singers (about 50). All the other columns would be headed by years. The boxes created by the intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines would be used to show the number of recordings of the singers in the year of the column. I think that's clear, but I have built a very small sample for illustration in which the lettters represent singers. I don't know if I can post it here. If not, I'm hoping that my description will be sufficient.

I can see the chart on my screen, but I don't know if, or how, it will appear in this posting. No vertical lines are shown, because I don't know how to do that.