Categories
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

Categories
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.

Categories
Local History Memories

Playing Hockey On ‘The River’ Could Be Hazardous!

“Watson get out of the water! You’ve got your new clothes on! Your father is gonna kill you!”

These were the words we heard before we could even see the dam and river. But, I’m getting ahead of my story…you have to understand certain things first!

In Sussex from at least the 1930’s to the early 1950’s the favourite unofficial rink in Sussex was a stretch of quiet water above the filtration plant dam on Trout Creek. The dam created a deep pool about 30 feet wide which, because it was not as free-flowing as other river channels within the town, was always the first to freeze over in late fall..

It was the rink where most of us in that area got our early hockey instruction from older kids, no coaches or referees, seldom an audience. My apprenticeship began at eight when my grandfather bought me my first pair of tube skates. That was 1942; until then my skating had been done with bob-skates on garden patches of ice.

Like most everyone who played on ‘the river’ in those years I couldn’t afford a pair of shin pads or hockey gloves until my final years of high school. Just buying a stick and an occasional puck bent my budget and most of us still have bumps and scars as reminders of those happy days when we’d play from early morning to after dark Saturdays and Sundays and almost every afternoon after school when the weather permitted.

It was pick-up hockey with usually ten or more aside but with a number of those always ‘temporarily winded’ or recovering from minor injuries ‘off ice’ it made the number on each side usually just about right…a couple of defense men, a goalie and a number of forwards. Anyone coming late to ‘the game’ was picked up alternatively by the sides.

The big problem with the location, however, was losing pucks. All we ever had at the dam end as a barrier were wide planks on their edges and pucks lifted over a foot high that missed the net went over the dam and were usually not retrievable until the ice broke up in late March or April and water levels dropped. Those who took the time to fish them out became the suppliers of pucks the next fall but that stockpile usually ran out as all of them, of course, could ever be found, washed downstream and under banks. I remember one year retrieving 38 of them myself and others found some as well.

But the biggest thrill of all any fall was to be ‘first on the ice.’ You sort of felt you owned that river rink for the next few months if you were. But qualifying for that honour was not without its dangers as some found out. Thankfully there was never a fatality, but there were nail-biters.

I lived on Magnolia Avenue from 1939 until a couple of years after high school, a street that at our mid-stretch, had only a government yard and shed…a long tin covered structure housing bridge materials and road maintenance machines… between it, the river and dam. Winter Street which parallels Main in that part of Sussex ends right across from where the filtration plant and the dam once existed.

One afternoon I was walking home from school with Delbert Thorne, a friend in my class who lived on what was then the far end of Magnolia Avenue in the last of what were, originally, identical houses called the Seven Sisters. When we reached the end of Winter Street Delbert said suddenly: “It’s been pretty cold the last few nights, lets see if the river has iced up yet.”

As it turned out his sudden thought proved providential. We crossed the Avenue, walked along the side of the filtration plant and rounded the end of the tin shed to see a sight that afterwards the four of us would laugh about but could have easily ended in tragedy. Paul Watson who lived nearby had broken through the ice and was holding on to the edge. He was a grade younger than we were and his next door neighbour, a year younger than him, was running around yelling “Watson, get out of the water! You’ve got your new clothes on! Your father is gonna kill you!”

Well, Delbert and I quickly got a plank from the lumber piles in front of the shed, and between the three of us we were able to get Paul out, dripping and cold but uninjured. Paul’s father owned a fairly successful hardware and had taken him and his brother to Saint John recently for new winter outfits, one of which Paul was wearing. As the neighbour, who was his constant companion in those days, said he’d been so concerned about what Paul’s father was going to do to him he just hadn’t thought about helping him get out and, well, he knew Paul was a good swimmer.

That was the big danger of being ‘first on’: the dream of being that year’s celebrity could result in a quick cold splash back to reality. And if any of us had, unfortunately, gone through and came up under the ice we would have met the same fate as the young hockey player in Stephen King’s Dead Zone. If you’ve read that book or seen the movie that scene may already have come to mind.

My own icy water baptism occurred a couple of years later but not during a try at being the ‘first on.’ When it snowed we… us kids…would shovel off our river rink but when a thaw came and the river refroze with shale and ridges, as it sometimes did, we’d borrow a force pump with hoses from the filtration plant and flood the tennis court across the river in O’Connell Park.

One Saturday morning, after a late Friday night of hockey by moonlight I overslept, wolfed down breakfast, pulled on a jacket and hat, grabbed my skates, stick, a couple of pucks and ran across the open space…where the new Sussex Public Library now stands…which led directly to the river a few hundred feet upstream from the dam, jumped down. Unfortunately a few days of higher temperatures had weakened the ice under the snow and I was in water up to my waist before I knew it and still sinking. Luckily my reflexes were much faster then than they are now and I was able to catch an overhanging tree limb and pull myself out.

Then it was a fast run back to the house, dripping water all the way, a quick change of clothes and footwear and I was off again on the longer but safer route around by Main Street’s turreted bridge. And really thankful to find, on reaching our tennis court rink, that no one had witnessed my drenching or my dripping exit from the river

I’ve often thought that my two sons, who were transported in heated vehicles to indoor rinks with dressing rooms and toilets facilities during their dozen school years in organized hockey and never played a skirmish game on an open pond or river, missed so much in physical conditioning! All the fun of walking a couple of miles to play other area teams and often helping shovel an outdoor rink when you got there for a game at which we’d be lucky to have a referee, never even expect a linesman. It sure helped built self-reliance, certain survival skills and endurance, though, if nothing else!

Categories
2008 Performers Album Release Concert Country and Western

Stew Clayton’s Yodeling My Way Back Home CD Released!

Stew and Juanita Clayton
Stew and Juanita Clayton
Stew and Juanita Clayton giving an impromptu performance

Seldom have I seen an audience rise so quickly to sweep in a wave across an auditorium floor to a CDs for sale booth than at intermission during the Stew and Juanita Clayton Concert at Exhibition Park, September 1. The nearly 800 rose almost as one to meet the father and daughter duo as they reached it and, at 5 a.m. when we drove them to the airport their CD cases were all but empty.

Seldom, either, have I had as many calls after a concert for a recording stars address saying “well, I bought one but I’d like to get a couple more” or “I bought Juanita’s because I only had enough for one, now I’d like to get one of her father’s” or “there were so many I couldn’t make up my mind. How do I contact them?”

That’s right, the long reigning star of Winnipeg’s Sunshine Record label has recorded over 30 lps, cassettes and CD’s in the past half century and he said while here that he was thinking of doing another.

That one Yodeling My Way Back Homearrived Christmas week! Stew records the old fashioned way: He walks into a studio with backing musicians and wings it the way Wilf Carter always did! And if you think that didn’t work for Wilf in fairly modern times…well, toward the end of his recording career in the early 1980s, Wilf’sWalking The Streets of Calgary RCA Camden lp according to a survey by a Sam the Record Man Halifax store manager, Jimmy Dean, of their outlets and other national distributors was the top seller of its release year but when R.P.M. Magazine, compilers of Canada’s Top 100 records at the time, didn’t even list it, their answer when he inquired was: “Oh, we don’t chart anyone over 60. They’ve no career left.”

Anyhow though it may never officially get its dues either, Stew’s new CD Yodeling My Way Back Homewill be a joy to the ears of anyone who remembers the great years of Country & Western music. An eleven times international yodeling champion Stew explains his choice of songs for this CD in this way: ‘For many years I have been asked why I don’t put more yodel songs on my recordings. When doing shows, folks who stop by my booth will nearly always ask ‘which album has the most yodel songs on it?”

“Well, on this new release there is only one selection…the Johnny Cash Song …that isn’t a yodel song. I sincerely hope all my fans and all those who have ever felt bereft at the lack of yodeling on records now will enjoy this recording. I made it especially for them.”

The yodel songs are: The Old Harvest Waltz, I Love To Hear Her Yodel, The Yodeling Trucker (a comedic demonstration of voice dexterity and endurance), Answer To My Little Yodel Lady, The Yodeling Farmers Song, Blue Mountain Yodel, My Little Artic Sweetheart, Yodeler’s Waltz and the title song: Yodeling My Way Back Home. All ten were penned by Stew.

Copies of it are available by calling him at (204) 242-2670. You will likely get the message: “Hello, this is Yodeling Stew from Manitou. If I’m not here I’m most likely out doing a show somewhere but leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” Which he will do! Or write: Stew Clayton, P.O. Box 147, Manitou, Manitoba, Canada R0G 1G0

Categories
2008 Performers Concert Country and Western

Patti Page Sold More Records Than any Woman In History!

Do you remember How Much Was that Doggy In The Window?

At The Imperial
At The Imperial

… a #1 chart hit for Patti Page?

How could anyone not know of the singer who in the past 60 years has sold more recordings than any woman has in history? I talked with Patti for an hour a few days ago and her voice was so vibrant and young it amazed me. It was like talking to someone I’d known a lifetime, as I have nearly…her voice.

Still wintering in San Diego, she will soon be winging north from California for a concert at Saint John’s Imperial Theater Thursday, Apr. 10 at 7p.m., one of two in Atlantic Canada. This rare Patti Page Canadian Tour starts in Halifax the day before.

Miss Patti Page, The Singing Rage, as she has been known since 1946, sold over a hundred million copies of such hits as Allegheny Moon, Old Cape Cod, I Went To Your Wedding and many more….an incredible 111 charted hits from over a hundred albums and an amazing 16 of them Gold.

Born Clara Ann Fowler in Claremore, Oklahoma, population 4000, if country fans now think of Patti as only a pop singer, they should remember her recording of Tennessee Waltz sold over 10 million copies and topped Country, Pop and rhythm and Blues charts, for three months, one of a very few by either a male or female artist to ever chart on all three. That was in 1950. In 1951 she made Top 10 hits of both Mocking Bird Hill written by Vaughan Horton (Wilf Carter’s US manager), and Hank snow’s Down The Trail of Aching Hearts. She, also, made giants hits of Mister And Mississippi, Detour (a big 1946 hit for Spade Cooley), Changing Partners, Cross Over The bridge, Poor Man’s Roses , and in 1973, Hello We’re Lonely, a duet with Tom T. Hall. Also South of the Border, Y’All Come, No One To Cry To, Mom and Dad’s Waltz, Old spinning Wheel, and many more.

But, my own favourite Patti Page recordings are I Want To Be A Cowgirl’s Sweetheart, written and recorded by an old friend, Patsy Montana, in 1936, the first disc by a female singer to sell a million…Patti yodels beautifully on it…and I Wanna Go Skating With Willie.

She also made hits of such folk era songs as Jamaica Farewell, Danny Boy, Scarlett Ribbons, Try To Remember, and such movie themes as Boys Night Out and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. She starred herself in Boys Night Out and Elmer Gantry.

Patti only met Hank Snow once she said but told me … a real surprise … of hours on movie shoots with Elvis Presley. “I met Elvis first in Las Vegas”, she said. “He brought his mother into my dressing room at the Sand’s. I was her favourite singer, he said, and she loved my version of I don’t Care if The Sun Don’t Shine, a song he later recorded.”

“Then my husband, Charles O’Curran”, Patti said, “a choreographer at Paramount was assigned to work with Elvis on six of his movies. The first time I was free to visit him on the set was when they shot G.I.Blues. That was a year before I was signed for Elmer Gantry and it was sure a thrill!”

“Then, when Paramount shot Blue Hawaii in the islands, we’d get together at the hotel after dinner, Elvis would bring a guitar, others would get their instruments and the two of us would sing for hours. They were great nights!”

She’ll tell a lot of those stories during a wonderful recital of her hits when she appears at Saint John’s Imperial Theatre, April 10. Get your tickets now at their box office or phone 674-4100, if out of town call 1-800-323-7469.

Patti lives most of the year near Bath, New Hampshire where she and her second husband, Jerry Filiciotto grow and sell organic foods and maple syrup products.

“In fact, we spent Christmas there,” Patti said, “so I had a taste of the winter you folks are having!”

Patti was the feature act at Maine’s 2007 incredible Fryeburg Fair that I’ve visited several times as an ANE rep.

Last April’s Column

“She was The Rage back in the 50’s and the 60’s but what does Patty Page sound like now?” a lot of people have asked in recent weeks.

Well, the duets she did with Vince Gill on the Grand Ole Opry early this year answered that… her voice is just as sensational as ever, virtually unchanged by age! Tapes sent me of the satellite radio and Nashville Television coverage of those performances by Rocklands Entertainment Inc., the tour agency bringing Patti to Atlantic Canada … Halifax’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium April 9 and Saint John’s Imperial Theatre Thursday, April 10, both at 7 p.m.,..for the first time ever, thrillingly verify that!

By introduction Vince Gill said of her: “ A finer woman or finer singer never graced this earth.” And Brian Edwards, Rockland’s president, says, “Patti looks much younger than her 80 years, a beautiful woman! In fact, time has added an even more thrilling depth to her wonderful voice!” Patti’s singing of her ten million selling hit that night, the Tennessee Waltz and her beautiful duet with Vince Gill on Home Sweet Oklahoma, a new song tribute to the state both were born in, are proof of that … both performances brought capacity audiences to their feet, wildly applauding! And so did her singing of another of her great hits Mockin’ Bird Hill !

Of course, Patti, has never taken a hiatus from recording. After years with Mercury and Columbia … two stints each … when she ruled the airwaves, she recorded with Epic until 1975, when she signed with Avco. Then, in 1981, she switched to Plantation, placing My Man Friday on Billboard’s pop charts in 1982 and several others on country charts!

Patti launched her own CAF label in 1998 and won a Grammy as Best Traditional Pop Singer. In recent years she has released Live At Carnegie Hall 50th Anniversary Concert, Child of Mine and others. They are for sale on her website www.pattipageproducts.com/hilltop or at her Hilltop Farm near Bath, New Hampshire.

Patti Page over her long career as a vocalist and actress has sold over 100 million records, more than other female recordings artist yet her April 10 concert at Saint John’s Imperial…her only N.B. concert … still has seats left, just $50, at the Theatre box office, by dialing 674-4100 or 1-800-323-7469.

Categories
2008 Performers Country and Western Festival Folk

Buffy Sainte-Marie to Open 51st Miramichi Folksong Festival

All the lights of Broadway don’t amount to an acre of green,
And I’m gonna be a country girl again.

gtbuffy08smEntrancing, wild, jubilant … like no voice I had ever heard before! So beautifully controlled yet so primitive in its passion, evoking visions of native village fires of long ago!

That is how I felt on hearing Buffy Sainte-Marie on radio in 1964 for the first time. It was a voice I required daily doses of for the next dozen years, as she released 12 vinyl LP records and two ‘best of” doubles, which I quickly acquired. Each had its treasures, the plaintive lamenting of Now That The Buffalo’s Gone, the wild exuberance of Cripple Creek, the beautiful soaring intonations of Gonna Be A Country Girl Again and the eerie haunting falsetto of Vampire…so many creations of her pen that no voice but her own will ever imbue with the same magic!

Then she released number 13, Sweet America, in 1976 and, as unheralded as she appeared on charts internationally, she vanished from the recording scene. It left me grieving I had not seen her live in concert, that, although born in Saskatchewan, she had never appeared this far east.

But that is soon to change! A bulletin from Susan Butler lists Buffy Sainte-Marie as headlining the Official Opening Concert of the 51st Miramichi Folk Song Festival, August 4, 7 p.m. at that city’s Civic Centre.

Born on a Cree reservation in Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Buffy, orphaned in infancy, was adopted by relatives, Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, and raised in Maine and Massachusetts.  Musically gifted she taught herself piano and guitar at an early age and on graduating university with a PHD in Fine Art and Oriental philosophy and teaching degrees, she quickly became known as a writer of protest songs. In 1962 Buffy hit the concert trail, booking her own venues and traveling alone, playing universities, First Nation community centers and concert halls.  In 1963 appalled by Vietnam campaign wounded returning, she wrote Universal Soldier, which included on her debut Vanguard album, It’s My Way, quickly climbed singles charts, leading to her being voted Billboard magazine’s Best New Artist in1964.

As well as her own phenomenal chart successes that followed, numerous songs she penned,like Until It’s Time For You To Go and Piney Wood Hills, became block buster hits for Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Bobby Bare and Donovan among others.

By age 24, Buffy had toured Europe, Asia, Australia, the US and Canada, was showered with awards, medals, and many honours. And, although, opting to quit recording in 1976 she embraced children’s TV, joining the Sesame Street cast for five years.

Involvement with writing, Aboriginal teaching, computers and art followed.

In 1992 she recorded Coincidence & Likely Stories and in 1996. France named her Best International Artist in 1993 and the United Nations selected her to proclaim 1993 International Indigenous Peoples Year. Induction into the Juno Hall of Fame came in 1995. In 1997 she won a Gemini Award Up Where We Belong, released in 1996, and was made an Officer Of The Order of Canada. A resident of Hawaii for many years, she limits herself to 20 concerts a year so the Miramichi is greatly honoured. It’s her only NB concert…so don’t miss it!

Tickets are now available at Books Inn and Bill’s Kwikway, Miramichi Stitching Post, Bathurst, by calling Susan Butler at 506-662-1780, or emailing bb2@nb.sympatico.ca