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Folk In Memoriam Local History Memories Music

John Murphy, arts community losses

IN MEMORIAM…AMONG THOSE WHO LEFT US IN 2009

Looking back at the year 2009, it seems New Brunswick, the southern half particular, was more bereaved by deaths in our musical community than in most recent years. Among those were:

John with Anna singing at home in Hampton

JOHN DOUGLAS JAMES MURPHY

In September 1975, John Murphy who had immigrated from England a year before, with his wife Pip (Susan), visited The Telegraph-Journal offices. He had just accepted a position as an art teacher in the Saint John area. He wanted to insert a notice of a meeting to form a folk club, such as he’d belonged to in London.

John, as it turned out played guitar and button accordion and had a very distinctive voice. Along with others who had a love of folk music I became a regular. At first it was sing a-rounds but in a few months John decided some were gifted enough to stage concerts. Admission monies raised were pooled, used later to book local name artists for special concerts, Ned Landry, Lutia and Paul Lauzon, Jim Clark and others were early featured stars.These were successful enough that in a couple of years the club was booking such famous acts as Ladies Choice Bluegrass, Stan Rogers, the National String Band, even international acts like Gordon Bok.

Bok, a Camden, Maine, musician and singer was Folk Legacy Records mainstay with over a dozen albums released in the US. A twice yearly link-up was forged between his close-knit group of Belfast to Rockland, Maine performers and our Saint John Folk Club. Out of our club a quartet, Hal an Tow emerged that became the trio of John, Bernie Houlihan and Jim Stewart. They won acclaim here and abroad with a recording, the Marco Polo Suite, for which Jim wrote the score and lyrics. The trio, also, appeared on The National Film Board’s Marco Polo: The Queen of The Seas

Another trio to emerge from our ranks was Dawg’s Breakfast (a.k.a. Exploding Do-Nuts)…Stan Carew, Costas Halavracos and Bill Preeper…all CBC Radio staffers. Preeper and Steve Sellars, a duo, were featured on an ATV New Faces episode, as were Valerie MacDonald, who staged monthly Hampton coffee-houses, and Debbie Harrity. Another trio, Windjammer…Paul McCavour, Kevin Daye and Gayle Vincent (Katie Daye when Gayle dropped out,)…emerged and a Fredericton folk club was a spin-off.

In the mid-1980’s the Saint John Folk Club ceased to exist but remnants continued to interact with the Maine folk-scene.

John Murphy became active in school mural art projects and in school musicals. He also appeared in various local stage productions, involved himself with various local fund-raisers, became active with Amnesty International, visited Africa and helped bring about Hampton’s partnership with the Swaziland community of Piggs Peak.

He died very unexpectedly while driving into Saint John Regional Hospital in mid-September. Those of us who attended a three-day music gathering at his home only weeks before, received the news with utter disbelief. To all appearances John had been his usual imperturbable self, He is already sadly missed not only in Hampton, his home for over 30 years, but beyond. Many from Maine and England attended his Sept. 21 funeral.

A colourful and remarkably detailed mural entitled Article 26: The Right To Education, unveiled Dec 10, 2009 on the Hampton High School exterior has John’s picture at the top with other NB human right luminaries, symbols and visages, depicted across its wide expanse.

JOHN ‘EARL’ MCGINNIS

Canada Day 2009 brought sad news: John, known to most as Earl, McGinnis had died the day before at home in Norton. He was 89 but was one of those people who seem eternal. For over 30 years Earl coached the Norton Kings hockey team and was a die-hard Montreal Canadiens fan. Many of us, however, loved him for his vast repertoire of old Irish ballads, a treasure shared with his brother Willie who predeceased him. Together and individually they were hits at early variety shows in Norton, Hampton and Sussex. Austin, one of his sons, has led a country music dance band in that area for many years. Earl and his wife of 63 years, Beatrice, had two sons and three daughters. Austin’s son Darren, one of Earl’s 12 grandchildren, is now a rising young Canadian country singer with a manager and booker. In recent years Earl frequently joined Austin and Darren to perform on country shows as Three Generations of McGinnises. But for a few of us our most cherished memories of Earl were of him singing The Croppy Boy and other Irish songs at Randy Vail’s maple sugar, pancake nights on Bull Moose Hill. Although his passing left a gap Earl will live on in the memories of all who knew him.

HELEN GRACE SMITH

Another major loss occurred Aug.31 with Helen Smith’s death. She was 88, a petite woman but full of energy and spirit who once at 16, while still with chicken pox, walked five miles across Kennebecasis River ice, Summerville to Drury Cove, to play with Don Messer at a 1937 Saint John concert. Although only four-foot six, never more than 70 pounds and a widow, she had lived in her own Long Reach, Kingston Peninsula home until a week before her death when she moved to Kings Way Care Centre, Quispamsis. Friends described her as ‘comical, the life of the party and someone drawn to music like a magnet.’ She played ukelele first then guitar. Later she studied fiddle with Winston Crawford and was a member of the Maritime Fiddle Association. Her son Fraser, a singing guitarist and daughter Sylvia Campbell, a yodeling singer, who plays guitar and fiddle, organize the Long Reach Kitchen Party concerts. Helen performed on one just before moving to Kings Way. It was the second 2009 Smith family tragedy: Fraser’s son, Evan, 23, died in a snowmobile accident Feb.28.

ALLIE B. PRATT

Allie Pratt, is another that is impossible to imagine gone, even though she was 84, I had talked with her at a Tom Connors concert just weeks before her death Oct.1. She had invited Carol and I to her next Allie Oop music weekend, a gathering of musicians and fans at her home in Lower Greenwich. They were events that often saw over 300 show up to camp and enjoy barbeques, meals and music. Allie played several instruments and only two weeks before had received a standing ovation at the Grand Bay KBM. She was a CWAC staff car driver in WW 2. At the time of her 1972 retirement she had served 38 years as operator/supervisor with NBTel. I met Allie at the early Valley Jamborees which she often video-taped. We had been her guests at dinner theatres and restaurants

ROBERT ‘BOB’ CRAWFORD

Well-known, multi-instrumentalist, Bob Crawford, passed away at his Sussex home on Dec.22 with his wife Helen, sons Shaun and Christopher, brothers Winston, Frank and Richard there to mourn. I first met Bob at a Saint John fiddling competition: he was his brother Winston’s guitar accompanist a role he reprised just months later when Winston won a Maritime Fiddling Championship in Dartmouth. A bout with polio when he was four resulted in Bob walking with a limp but he never let it slow him down. He was energetic and resourceful in both his daytime employments and the music which fueled his zest for life. Bob enjoyed playing with numerous musical friends in duos, trios or multiple bands but especially as part of the Crawford Brothers & Friends and with his sons. Over the years he taught many to various instruments. He was just 61 when he died, after a six month battle with cancer.

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Concert Country and Western Event Local History

Stompin’ Tom mentions 3 great NB performers.

Stompin’ Tom said hello and congratulations to Ned Landry on receiving the Order of New Brunswick this year to go with his Order of Canada from a few years ago. He also mentioned that he was sad to hear that George Hector had passed away and between songs told the story of how he met Big John “T-Bone” Little and the encouragement he received from Big John when he was starting out.stompintomnedlandry

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Local History

Stompin’ Tom fans

Stompin' Tom Fans

allieprattrose

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Country and Western Folk Local History Memories Movie History Music Music History Writing

US Influence on Canadian Country Music

In my childhood, Wilf Carter was the only Canadian I heard on radio

From October 28, 1983

Any examination of Canadian Country Music would have to take into account the enormous influence of early American Country performers. In my childhood, Wilf Carter was the only Canadian I heard on radio;  later of course by 3 years came Hank Snow,then  Don Messer with Charlie Chamberlain, Duke Neilson and Ned Landry, but all the rest were US singers, morning, noon, suppertimes  and late nights. Soap operas and The Happy Gang ( they were happily, Canadian) took up radio afternoons and into the evening dramas and comedy sketches the length of the diual from 7 p.m. to midnight. There was Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow, Amos and Andy and all other fabulous situation character epics that made up radio’s golden age.

Early mornings, in Eastern Canada, you could hear the WLS National Barndance stars such as Linda Parker, Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes from six a.m.; perhaps you could hear them earlier but that’s when my father usually turned the radio on and I awoke and knew I had another hour before I had to get up for school.

At noon there were live or transcribed US country music shows and at suppertime, mixed with the news broadcasts, nearly every station had a request country music program.

There were singers like Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Snow’s avowed patron saint for whom he named his only son, Jimmy Rodgers Snow and Gene Autry who made” Silver Haired Daddy of Mine” a stock song of nearly every country singer in Canada. There was blind Georia-born tenor Riley Puckett, whose many solo recordings  included “Rock All Our Babies to Sleep”, later recorded by WIlf Carter and which is reputed to be the first disc to feature a country yodeller. Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers created an international hit with “Down Yonder” and Jimmy Davis gave the world “You are My Sunshine” and won an election as Governor of Louisiana in 1944 with it. He inscribed it indelibly in every Canadian country singer’s repertoire for many years to come.

Then late at night there was WWVA Wheeling with all-night disc jockeys and live music mixed. Saturday nights were special; that’ is when you could tune in the great WWVA World’s Original Jamboree with such top country personalities as Doc Williams whose “Old Brown Coat And Me” was recorded by many Canadians; Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper who made “Walking My Lord to Calver’s Hill a show finale with many Canadian  travelling groups; Lulu Belle and Scotty who wrote and recorded “Good Old Mountain Dew”, “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” and other great international country favourites.

Earlier on Saturday Night there was the Duke of Paduca, Amer’ca’s crown prince of country comedy and the inspiration for many Canadian travelling shows comedians; Judy Canova had her own radio program and who became the prototype of numerous standup girl comediennes both American and Canadian; Red Foley the first country star  to have his own US network TV show.

Countless great US country music stars crowded the dial including the Grand Ole Opry with Roy Acuff who made the “Wabush Cannonball” as well known in Canada as in the US.  (I’ve even heard a Norton area place name version of it.), Ernest Tubb, a Jimmy Rodgers disciple who arranged Hank SNow’s Grand Ole Opry debut and those two early bands, the Crook Brothers and the Fruit Jar Drinkers who inspired and influenced the creation of many early Canadian country bands. There was an endless procession of  performers, each possessing his own magic. Never to be forgotten either are the National Barndance Saturday night roster, Patsy Montana, the girl who wrote “I ant To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart” and was the inspiration of a host of Canadian girl singers such as Terry Parker and Marie King. Irene was Arky The Arkansaw Woodchopper who sang many lumberjack songs familiar to Eastern Canadians and America’s favourite comedian for two decades,  and on and on.

How could any single Canadian fledgling country singer not have been influenced by them? It would only have been possible to escape the i9nfluence if he or she had been raised in a completely isolated backwoods area without radio or phonograph.

I lived in a veyr rural section of N.B., ten miles by horse and wagon to the nearest town. Neither electric lights nor pavement reached us but the telephone did. We had the last phone on the line and it was my job toi run up Jordan mountain and “hollar” the message across to our neighbours.

Yet we did have a battery radio, one of the old timers, operated by a pack of telephone “round cells” . And we had entertainment over it that not even the King of England or the most wealthy potentate in the east could have commanded 30 years earlier in spite o  their power and riches.

That was the first wave of American influence, you might say, the radio wave.

Then there were the movies….the “B” Western was 100 per cent American.

Ken Maynard was the first cowboy to sing on the silver screen. The songs he did were rough, rowdy renderings of authentic western plain songs such as “Get Along little doggie”, “The Trail to Mexico” and “Home On The Range”, songs almost every Canadian was soon singing.

He was followed quickly by Gene Autry,. Maynard featured Autry in his first movie rold “In Old santa Fe” (1934). He brought to celluloid the rest of the Jimmy Rodgers  school of song writing and singing with professionally written songs, professionaloly staged and sung with phantom strings and choruses that seemed to issue from the sagebrush, probably from a vand of hidden Cherokees.

After him came a host of others, including Roy Rogers, Jimmie Wakely, Tex Ritter, Dick Foran and many more. There had to be a musical interlude or two in all these movies. It seemed to be an unwritten law; it was part of the receipe of success.  Those who couldn’t sing pressed the services of Bob Nolan ( a boy who grew up in N.B, and who wrote “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” “Cool Water”, “Wanderers of the Wasteland” and dozens of other classic western songs) and the Sons of the Pioneers, or Roy Williams and the Riders of  the Purple Sage, or a number of other groups of their kind who, in the guise of cowpunchers or dance hall performers, would gather at the round-up campfire or the parlor social hour to sing the latest western hits or a newly composed song the group had written for the occasion.

How could anyone not be influenced? Nearly every radio program record and movie bore the “made in the USA” stamp and most Canadians consumed a large portion of them daily.

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Bluegrass Country and Western In Memoriam Music History

Aubrey Hanson Made His Dreams Come True!

Aubrey Hanson being honoured posthumously

“If you don’t have a dream how you
gonna have a dream come true?”

I’ll never forget Aubrey Hanson’s resolute face in the dashboard lights, a half dozen years ago, as he piloted his white Cadillac up one country road and down another searching for the wonderful B&B which was our lodging for the weekend.

We were lost somewhere between Wolfville, Kentville and Canning, Nova Scotia, after a Wilf Carter Tribute Night … Aubrey had been a featured entertainer at the Wilf Carter Tribute in Canning, and he wasn’t slowing down even to read what few highway signs there were, determined to find it by sheer will-power alone! And, after an hour and a half, we did!

The crowd, wild about Aubrey’s singing, playing and tales of touring with Wilf had brought him back for several encores. On our arrival at Newcomb House, the night before, Aubrey, when asked, had put on a parlour concert for a Carolina couple and other guests whom, I know, will remember the warmth with which he imbued their requests, mostly old favourites, for a lifetime.

Two years ago we were invited to return for Canning’s Wilf Carter Library Room opening but two days before leaving Aubrey phoned. “I’m in hospital again” he said.. You’ll have to go alone.” I did but even with nine other terrific acts Aubrey’s absence robbed that night of a certain warmth and magic.

That’s the same Aubrey Hanson being honoured posthumously at Harbourview High, Saint John, Saturday, Oct.18 , 1993 at the 20 th Annual NB Country Music Hall of Fame Induction Banquet & Ceremonies, an institution he forged almost single-handedly.

It was with sheer will and determination that he made this great dream come true. And the last 21 years of Aubrey’s life were spent nurturing that reality, fighting for it’s life while he fought for his own against untreatable heart deterioration and other very painful ailments, yet, somehow, as well, found time to keep a major segment of the Fredericton music scene vibrant.

The first 50 years of Aubrey’s all too short life were just as packed with achievements. In fact he was only a few months old when he made his first headlines. His mother entered him in the 1930 Baby Beautiful Contest at the Fredericton Exhibition and, hard as it is for anyone believe, who knew Aubrey as a burly red-headed adult, that he won!

“So, you see, Aubrey started out immediately in life gathering glory,” his wife Faye said, shortly after his death June 18, 2002. “And, of course, born wanting to entertain he got at it as soon as he could. He was very tenacious when he made up his mind.”

Aubrey once told me he couldn’t remember a time that melodies weren’t running through his mind and, after infancy, lyrics. He taught himself to play harmonica before starting grade school and would always tuck a couple of them in his pockets when leaving for classes. One day he was asked by a couple of teachers to play a few tunes for them and their applause, hooked him for life.

“I can’t ever, even back then, remember feeling nervous before an audience” he said.

Wilf Carter who broadcast over the entire 250 stations of the CBS Radio Network continent-wide daily soon become his idol and became addicted to singing cowboy movies. Moved by these influences Aubrey taught himself to play guitar and eventually banjo. He, later, played drums for a Fredericton pipe-band.

While today’s country is a mix of rock, honky-tonk and what we used to call pop, what Aubrey performed always remained ‘country and western’ and that was what those attending his concerts, listening to him on radio and buying his records preferred, as well.

He gave his first public appearance during the Second World War, at age 12 on a show for servicemen. He also, treasured memories of visiting singing stars … he believed Hank Snow was one of them … coming to the Hanson farm because his father kept saddle horses and they wanted pictures taken on horse back for posters and song books. He also witnessed the last Fredericton stampede when box car loads of half broken western horses broke out of stock pens and ran wild through city streets.

“At school I wasn’t a good student, however,”Aubrey admitted, “couldn’t concentrate on blackboards. My mind was always too full of songs I was learning.”

Shortly, after he began to appear on concerts and minstrel shows he quit school to to work at the Hartt Shoe factory.

He did however, keep in touch with three musical friends at George Street High and when he got a call one day to join them in the gym after school to discuss forming a band, while practicing a few tunes, he took time off to go.

“The gym was full of kids,” Aubrey said,” and they began stomping their feet, as soon as we started playing. It wasn’t long before the principal stormed in breathing fire. He yanked the stage curtain down and yelled: ‘We don’t want that damn country music played in this school!’”

Well, that ended band practices in the gym but it didn’t deter Aubrey: the band were soon playing teen dances, socials. He bought his first car when he was 14.

“A week later we drove to Perth Andover and played an adult dance” Aubrey said.

After that, winter, fall, spring and summer they hardly were ever without a weekend booking

“But Aub never once considered leaving NB” his wife said, “Nashville, bright lights never appealed to him. He loved Fredericton, was happy to live here and always had a day job.”

“He worked at Hartt’s until his brother asked him to come work at a trucking business he was starting. When it was sold years later Aub became a provincial government employee and stayed with them until he retired.”

Aubrey’s radio career began in the 50’s when Burt Craigen offered him four dollars a night to perform live on CFNB. When Bart left the station in 1959 Aubrey worked a deal with station manager Jack Fenety to do an early Saturday morning broadcast which he did weekly for over 30 years until CFNB went ‘off air.’

Aubrey then moved his show to KHJ, later to CBC Radio. After that he did a show, Aubrey’s Picks’ on KHJ while doing a cable TV show as well.

During the 50’s through 70’s Aubrey was signed by three major labels and had single recordings released but his only lp, during that period, was distributed only in Europe where occupation forces radio had made ‘older country’ extremely popular.

Although I had known of Aubrey since the 50’s I didn’t actually meet him until I wrote an article on him and his Country Ramblers for a Sussex Fair section in the early 70’s. He had just done a Maritime Tour with his idol Wilf Carter and was estatic. What a great thrill it had been spending days as they travelled talking with Wilf.. They’d played Canning, in the area in which was Wilf’s home for four boyhood years. That’s why Aubrey and I were so warmly welcomed over 20 years later.

One of my funniest recollections of Aubrey happened in early spring 1982. He was recording his first independent album for Maritime distribution at Prime Time Studios near Sussex and I dropped in. At the time Gary Morris, the sound engineer, was balancing on top of a step ladder while Aubrey and his son Lloyd, layt side by side on their backs on a white carpet. He was trying to pose them so it would appear they were standing against a white wall for the disc’s cover. Impossible to do as it turned out.

Aubrey later recorded three cassette albums at his son Lloyd’s Reel North studio: Back To Basics, AUBservations, Memories, also a terrific 27-track CD album entitled AUBviously. Several songs he wrote and included on them attested to his great love of NB: City Of Fredericton March, New Brunswick’s The Province For Me, McEvoy Street Uprising, Road To Boistown, his CFNB Radio theme, Elm City Breakdown , many others.

In the fall of 1982 Aubrey and I were interviewed together in Oromocto for Camp Gagetown radio. Afterwards we went for coffee and he told me about his dream.

He was worried about the great NB entertainers he’d known, all of them aging, many already dead. Without some documentation how would they be remembered? He had toyed with the idea of starting a NB Country Music Hall of Fame. If he should go ahead with it would I help publicize it. I was the only one in the province at the time writing about local traditional folk and country artists. I told him I’d do all I could to help him succeed.

Well, others had talked abo ut it over the years and Aubrey had health problems even then,and he wasn’t someone able to risk a lot financially. But I didn’t realize then how tenacious and dedicated he could be!

Early in 1983 he called. “I’m going to do it!” he exclaimed. “Everything’s falling into place. Ed McCoy at the Sportsman’s Club is a friend and I’ve got it booked. Premier Hatfield is a country music fan and he’s agreed to help with whatever he can. Harvey Studios will supply frames. Balf Bailey, my drummer, will do the calligraphy. Ken Boyle will donate the printing: tickets, place mats, certificates. Jim Morrison who’s editor of the Hartford paper … he was editor at The Telegraph-Journal and Atlantic Advocate … will also help publicize it. Can I still count on you?”

“Of course,” I told him. And our association over the next 19 years became close. In the Hall of Fame’s early years I came to regard Richard Hatfield highly, also. He attended all our banquets during his years in office and helped in every way he could. When politics reign in Fredericton changed, however, that support quickly diminished and Aubrey’s health continued to worsen.

Finally in 1995, after a financial loss the year before, Aubrey’s health was at such a low ebb no Inductions were held. To raise the Hall’s image Aubrey had moved it to the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel then to the Sheraton Inn and the expense of it had, of course, risen.

A meeting that year of concerned members decided it was time to rotate venues with others providing the financial backing as Charlie Russell had done when he held the 1989 inductions in Woodstock. Since then Gary Morris, Sussex; Ivan Hicks, Riverview; a Bathurst committee; the Miramichi’s Susan Butler; Vance Patterson, Saint John; for a second time have hosted events twice and Mavis O’Donnell and this year Frank Hartt. The New Brunswick Country Music Hall of Fame is now governed by a committee put in place with Ivan Hicks, chair; Vivian Hicks, secretary treasurer; and Faye Hanson, honourary chair.

Aubrey’s advice was often sought in how to set up the legalities of similar tribute halls. In fact the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame founder, Gary Buck, made many calls to both Aubrey and myself in the months leading to its establishment. Aubrey was also advisor to the NS Hall Of Fame and Minto Wall Of Fame. .

My wife Carol and I were driving into Fredericton after attending the funeral of Hall of Famer, Erdie Phillips in Minto on June 18, 2002 when news of Aubrey’s death came over the radio. It felt like a lightning bolt had struck. He’d phoned Friday full of plans for his annual Officer’s Square show, was lining up acts for the River Jubilee and United Way events, but he said “I have to go in for another operation Monday.” I called his son Lloyd that morning before leaving for Minto and it seemed the operation had gone well. The radio announcement therefore was a great shock.

Besides Lloyd, his wife Faye, and another son, Loren, who although not part of the music scene, was a great source of pride for Aubrey.

I understand the Harbourview High tickets to the Aubrey’s dream on October18, Reception, Banquet and Inductions are sold out but there are still tickets available for the concert which will feature this year’s inductees, Gordon Stillwell, Francis and David Gogan plus many of the past inductees

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Collector Memories Writing

Whatever Happened to All of NB’s Big Little Books?

a1brightsmall
Big Little Book – Dick Tracy and the Man with no Face

In the 1970’s, the CBC-TV long lived, weekly panel show Front Page Challenge featured a mystery object segment that had special significance for me, as I’m sure it did for many of my generation across Canada. The object, as it turned out, was The Big Little Book, a children’s publishing phenomenon of the 1930’s and 40’s.

I forget whether the question stumped the panel or not but it was apparent, afterwards, that the aging, often crabby Gordon Sinclair remembered them fondly. He had been trying to acquire a few, he said, and although he’d been offering $50 each for any in good condition he’d only found six.

Even then, some 30 years ago, they were as scarce here as hen’s teeth…almost! And so, I’d found in years of seeking, they’d become in the US as well.

Yet in the late 30’s through the 40’s just about every kid I knew of my age in Sussex had a collection of them. They were small, about 4 ½ x 3 ½ inches, yet quite thick, 352 to 432 pages usually. The best of the several companies that produced books in similar formats were the originators, Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. They sold in Canada for 15 cents each. Most of us traded them with friends regularly but all of us had favourites we kept as part of permanent collections.

The genuine Big Little Book was the brain child of Sam Lowe, president of Whitman’s sales division. Lowe had in the 1920’s persuaded F.W. Woolworth Company and other retail store giants to sell children’s books all year, not only during the Christmas season as had been their practice. Books for pre-teens were a mainstay of Whitman’s, a wing of Western Printing and Lithographing Company, who also manufactured jigsaw puzzles and board games.

blb2singlesbright
Big Little Books – Mickey Mouse and Dick Tracy

In 1932, after conceiving the idea of a ‘cube’ book sized to fit a school kid’s pocket, Lowe named them The Big Little Book, and had the company’s art department make prototypes of three titles with either a drawing or a still photo from a movie on the right pages and story text facing on the left. Lowe took those three prototypes to New York City and returned a few days later with orders for 25,000 books, without one even having been printed.

For exciting subject matter, Lowe entered into contracts with motion picture giants like Walt Disney, MGM, RKO and several daily comic strip syndicates making Whitman’s the first company ever licensed to reproduce daily and weekend comic strip characters such as Mickey Mouse Donald Duck, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Little Orphan Annie and such movie stars as Katharine Hepburn, Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard and many others in any standard book form. Big Little Books were, therefore, the progenitor of comic books which did not make an appearance until a couple of years later.

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Little Books – Charlie Chan, Captain Midnight and Tarzan

John Harmon, publisher of several Nostalgia Catalogues over the years, says: “Personally I liked Big Little Books better than comics. They were real books, those Big Little Books. Although kid’s called comics ‘comic books’, when they came on the market, they weren’t really books at all…not like Big Little Books.”

And, while parents frowned on comics during those dark depression and war years, because of the fact Whitman, along with Saalfield and other publishers who adapted similar formats, ‘novelized’ comics, movies, classics and original stories, they were accepted as having a certain literary value. Aunts and uncles could, without any pang of conscience, give them as Christmas and birthday presents to nieces and nephews, even depression impoverished parents could feel good about giving a couple to their children on such occasions by the same reasoning, and to watch their eyes light up at the sight of those excitingly colourful covers. Although only 15 cents they were presents that most kids loved and read with delight.

When I think of how many of them existed in a town the size of Sussex, where I grew up, it’s hard to believe that in the half century since the last ‘real’ Big Little Books, or Better Little Books as Whitman’s called them after 1938 (since Saalfield’s had named their line, confusingly, Little Big Books), were published they have become such rare finds even in antique stores.

A Moncton internet book dealer told me recently of getting $137 US for The Shadow and The Ghost Makers, a very common one among students in my early school years. I remember, however, trading three Big Little Books and 18 comic ‘books’ to an older student for a Shadow and The Living Death copy that was really rare by that time, toward the end of World War Two.

At the time of the Front Page Challenge flashback I had about 170 of them and have added more since. Dedications in many ‘previously owned’ copies I’ve acquired like ‘To Vernon from Marguerette, May 19/35, Happy Birthday’ bear out the fact that they were a very popular gift even then in NB and for years after.

I bought my first Better Little Book, King Of The Royal Mounted and The Great Jewel Mystery (written by Romer Grey from an outline by his father Zane Grey), in 1939 while I was in Grade One at Sussex Consolidated School. A next door neighbour’s daughter, Myrtle Goold, who had started school that same year, told me an interesting story about that purchase at our 50th Graduation Reunion in 2000. The year before she’d been in Sussex visiting relatives, and passing the town’s Broadway Café saw an old friend, Frances Helyar whom she’d worked with in Hamilton, Ontario, seated at a table inside.

group3booksbright
a4brightsmall Little Books – Buck Jones, Red Ryder, the Lone Ranger and Tom Mixhtsmall

Surprised, she went in and gasped: “Frances whatever are you doing in this part of the world?” Frances explained that she’d moved to Saint John some years before to try and make a living singing in clubs and other venues. She’d recently released a CD.

“Gee, I went to school here with a guy who writes about music in The Telegraph- Journal,” Myrtle told her. “You should talk with him.”

Frances explained she knew me and I’d already written about her. Myrtle told her she’d been with me the day I’d bought my first book.

“His mother gave him ten cents to buy a Montreal Standard,” she said, “but Gamblin’s Drug Store had sold out of them, so he went across to Stedman’s, put a nickel he had with the dime and bought a book.”

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That was the first of quite a few Big Little Books I purchased at Stedman’s until wartime measures late in 1940 cut most book imports. The next year, however, a wall of used ones appeared in Van Wart’s Restaurant on Broad Street in Sussex and I began stopping there often on my way home from school. They’d bought ‘a trunk load of ’em’ at a second hand store in Boston, Mr. Van Wart told me, and he’d decided to sell them for a nickel each since his family had all read them.

Another vivid memory of mine concerning those Big Little Books is the morning in 1946 that Everett Lounsbury, head of the Sussex Cheese and Butter Company’s ice cream division, took his big La Salle limousine out of their garage for the first time since war-time rationing of gas was imposed and drove Mrs. Lounsbury, their daughter Grace, son Fred, a mutual friend Raymond Thorne and I to Moncton. In Eaton’s we discovered the first display of new Better Little Books we’d seen in five years and I bought three: a Buck Rogers, a King Of The Royal Mounted and a Tailspin Tommy, in a new series called ‘All Picture’ which dispensed with novelizing in favour of comic word balloons. I didn’t realize until months later that these had actually been printed in 1942 before the US itself, feeling the pinch of war following Pearl Harbour, had curtailed all such printing and distribution. And, because of our Canadian embargos before that, they had never been for sale in Canada until that week.

When new Better Little Books began to appear later that year, increased publishing costs had bought about a format change. The books were now a regular 327 pages instead of the 429 that had been the norm since 1936. By the 50’s new titles had ceased to be issued as the television age filled much of a child’s leisure time.

A talk I had recently with a book dealer here in Saint John sent me on a computer search for information on the Whitman Publishing Company and I was astounded at the wealth of Big Little Book knowledge and lore to be found on the world-wide net. There’s even a collective you can join, The Big Little Book Club, by writing them at PO Box 1242, Danville, CA 94526, USA and enclosing $18 in US funds. The club holds show and sell meetings from time to time, mostly in Texas and California, but there was one recently in Maine. Members receive six issues of the Big Little Times newsletter yearly, are given access to continuously updated club books for sale listings and several other perks.

And here is something to watch for! A new omnibus hitting book stores in mid-December 2004, The Big Big Little Book Book: An Overstreet Photo Journal Guide by Arnold T. Blumberg, published by Gemstone Publishing will have 2000 photos of Big Little Books in colour, a perfect gift for holidays and birthdays for those of us who remember them so nostalgically.

If you have access to the internet and want to learn more about all this, visit: http://www.biglittlebooks.com/whitman.html

The sad part of this is that Whitman no longer publishes children’s books and Western no longer exists. On the other hand the first Big Little Book published by them, The Adventures of Dick Tracy can fetch $2000 in mint condition, so be sure to check your family’s attic. No, I haven’t got one, but I sure wish I’d tucked away a dozen or two.