By David Farrell

Lisa McDonald’s wonderful four-part FYI Interview with Grant Smith touched on the discipline that Toronto

Jay Douglas and Bill Gilliland

R&B bands had back in the ’60s.  Two Saturdays back, Grant and George Olliver performed together at the Estonian Hall in East York, along with Jay Douglas and Rita Chiarelli, backed by an eight-piece band with a horn section and Hammond B3 and Leslie. The show was a knockout, and George Olliver, now in his mid sixties, rocked the house with a gymnastic performance crowned by his still amazingly soulful voice. This was a night to remember, harkening back to a time when Toronto had a ’sound’ in an era when radio was king, and a hit single was solid gold.

One of the lions of that noble  era was Bill Gilliland who was both a maverick and one of the most successful record promoters of the time. Gilliland had and still has a fast ear for a commercial sound and a hit song, and his long standing rapport with broadcasters ensured that Arc Record, Yorktown and Yorkville had a run of top 10 hits on CHUM  that probably has seen no equal since by an independent Canadian record  label. The Ugly Ducklings, Ritchie Knight & The Mid-Knights, Anne Murray, The Sugar Shoppe, The Majestics, Ronnie Hawkins, Terry Black, the Stitch in Tyme are some of the easier names of acts to remember that populated the Arc and affiliated label rosters, but there were also others that sold gold in the backwaters and the provinces. Acts such as Harry Hibbs, Catherine McKinnon, the Metro Stompers and the cast from the hit CBC TV show, Singalong Jubilee.

Anne Murray made what might be seen as a snide remark about Arc in a recent Vancouver newspaper interview, but it was Arc and Gilliland that put her together with producer Brian Ahern and helped to launch a career that would continue for 40 years before her voluntary retirement. Gilliland was a lion in his day because he was as adept in nurturing talent as he was in persuading radio broadcasters to get behind his records. His Irish charm, engaging smile, wit, and ability to marshal a persuasive argument at a moment’s notice helped give him an edge in getting his records on CHUM, the taste maker of Toronto where Bob McAdorey held sway. It was an era when radio was populated by larger than life characters, and music enthusiasts. Among them Dave Mickey aka Dave Marsden, Jack Winter, Art Collins, Sheila Conner, Ed Houston, Jungle Jay Nelson, Duff Roman, Chuck McCoy, Tom Rivers, Bob Lane, Allan Slaight and Bob Wood. Roger Ashby was there  then, on CHUM AM, as he is still today, on CHUM FM. If anyone had anything bad to say about Gilliland or Arc, it was a case of sour grapes. He had the hits and that’s all there was to it (are you reading this, Elvira Caprice?).

Toronto for much of the Sixties was a rhythm n’ blues town,  playing out in a  variety of lounges and night clubs that bordered Yonge street, from Club 888 to the north, The Embassy to the west, then south in clubs with names like the Coq d’Or Tavern, the Hawk’s Nest, the Colonial Tavern, the Sapphire, Club Blue Note and the Zanzibar.

The ’sound’ of Toronto back then was highlighted by acts such as David Clayton Thomas and the Shays, Domenic Troiano, the Five Rogues/Mandala/Bush, George Olliver and the Soul Children, Diane Brooks/Eric Mercury and the Soul Searchers, Grant Smith and the Power, Shawne and Jay Jackson and the Majestics, Robbie Lane and the Disciples, R.K (Roy Kenner) and the Associates, Ritchie Knight and the Mid-Knights, John (Finley) and Lee (Jackson aka Michael Ferry) and The Checkmates (who went on to become Rhinoceros, Luke and the Apostles, and, later Prakash John and the Lincolns), Toby Lark, Shirley Matthews and Jackie Shane.

Parallelling these soulful if mostly white versions of the Tamla/Motown  and Stax sounds were the ‘folkies’ playing coffee houses that hugged the district surrounding Yorkville ((Avenue) . Clubs with names like the Riverboat, the Purple Onion, the Devil’s Den, the Patio, the Penny Farthing, the Mynah Bird and, later, Grumbles (run by Neill Dixon).

Incredibly, on September 24, 1966, After Four, the The Toronto Telegram newspaper’s teen section, and CHUM Radio jointly promoted Toronto Sound – a 14-hour marathon with 14 of the city’s top acts performing at Maple Leaf Gardens to an enthusiastic audience of 16,000.

The bill, in order of appearance, included the Spasstiks, the 5 Rising Suns, the Ugly Ducklings, the Stitch In Tyme, The Tripp, the Last Words, the Paupers, Luke and the Apostles, the Secrets, Little Caesar and the Consuls, Susan Taylor and the Paytons, the Big Town Boys, R.K and the Associates, and Bobby Kris and the Imperials.

A number of loosely related events helped to pop the musical balloon that was floating Toronto’s music up and beyond. Liberalized liquor laws helped bring about the demise of folk spaces in coffee houses, the success of  the Beatles opened the door for what seemed like an unending wave of British pop acts that washed over our culture and stormed the airwaves,  And in 1968,  CHUM’s owner, Allan Waters, had brought in an American consultant to stylize CHUM AM. In that same year, CHUM-FM switched over from Classical to what was then known as ‘Underground’ music. The rub was in for the multi-faceted ‘Toronto Sound’ as London, Newcastle and Liverpool pushed music in a whole new direction.

It was in 1968 that the first stirrings of a discussion to enshrine music as a cultural force were heard in Ottawa. It was a rag-tag clutch of disparate and unlikely collectives that pushed the envelope in creating the Canadian Content legislation that became law in 1971. Among those listed in having made submissions to the CRTC:  American psychologist Richard B. Adams, Big Brothers of Canada (Hamilton branch), the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Dental Association, the Ottawa branch of the Canadian Red Cross, the Canadian Safety Council, the Canadian Welfare Council, the Ottawa branch of the Citizens’ Committee on Children, the Nova Scotia Heart Foundation, the Ontario Society for Crippled Children. Astonishingly, not a single record company is listed in the more than 100 submissions made to the broadcast regulatory commission at that time.

For a brief moment in time, there was a definable Toronto sound. The backbeat and the instruments differed depending on whether one was on Yonge Street or the Yorkville ’strip’ – but it all changed with liberalized liquor laws, CHUM AM tightening its format with a more restrictive playlist that spun fewer records with greater frequency, the arrival of the Beatles, and the beginning of the shift of youthful ears from the AM band to FM . Add a few more years and the Cancon regulations became a fact, and an unholy war between radio and records was spun. A tragic and furious battle that stalled many careers, trashed idealism, made a few radio consultants and law firms incredibly wealthy, and awakened slumbering giants with foreign owners to jump in the game and control it.

The government had legislated 30 percent of  radio spin time had to be Canadian in content, and the majors wanted to own as much of that share as they could.  Endless arguments would ensue over what constituted Canadian in content, what hours Canadian records would be spun in, and the percentage of spins devoted to non-hits. The legislation was a tragicomedy that spurred major acts such as Anne Murray, Bryan Adams and Gordon Lightfoot to wonder out loud whether the Act was serving its intended purpose. Now, 38 years later, noble intentions have left a legacy of failed Canadian-owned record companies, and few global Canadian artists with ties to Canadian record labels or music publishers. Add to this, at least one billion dollars has been invested in creating an industry that is arguably as anemic as it was when the legislation was enacted.

All that has really changed is back then radio was king and a hit single was solid gold; today the internet is king and a hit single is an amorphous digital download. Proponents of the legislation, and there are many, will argue that there are scores of acts that owe their legacies and livelihoods to the Cancon regs. To them I say, there were acts doing just fine before the regs; and to  those that will argue that Blue Rodeo, Tom Cochrane, Jully Black  or Bryan Adams would not have found their own level without the regs, I say this  is an insupportable claim that is also discourteous to the acts.

The ideals behind the Act were laudable but the execution was disastrous.  Placing the onus of structural change on the shoulders of the broadcasters, without an overall strategy and tax incentives was short-sighted and even foolhardy. Where before there was camaraderie between record promoters and broadcasters, thereafter there was acrimony and unflinching resentment. The battle petered out with time to occasional skirmishes, but now the music business is asking for more financial support from the broadcast industries, even as the music is more often than not heard elsewhere. The battle lines are being drawn up, even as the war is lost. The landscape has shifted, yet many in the music industry remain clinging like limpets to a sinking ship. The new world is the internet and a new business model is slowly  evolving and anyone wanting to connect is going to have to pay to play in the future. Beating up on the broadcasters makes about as much sense as chasing down Bernie Madoff for unpaid parking tickets.

The titans that have loomed  large in Canada built empires without legislative support. Donald Tarlton and Michael Cohl, as brilliant businessmen and impresarios; Jack Richardson, Bob Ezrin, and David Foster, as record producers; Bruce Allen, as a manager who has no equal; Sam Felman, as a bullet-hardened businessman with artistic vision and style.  There are others, of course, but I’ve made the point.

All of which is a far cry from simpler times when one hand delivered a hot new pressing to the music director at the local radio station, back in a time when radio stations had music departments staffed with dedicated people employed to make decisions about what went on the air. Back in a day when there were weekly music meetings, and stations fought to get one over on the competition and beat them in getting a hot new record on the air.

There are many stories to be told about those glory days, about the characters and the companies, the artists and the club owners that helped to create a largely untold history. A history that has mostly been overlooked in favour of the Seventies and beyond. I welcome any and all reminisces, or arguments about some or all of the views I have expressed here.  Sadly, some of the great legends like Ron Scribner are no longer with us to share the stories and memories.  As time marches by memories forget, facts get lost and people disappear. Hopefully some of those reminisces and stories will surface for all to enjoy and reflect on.