The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania!

By Piers Hemmingsen

By the spring of 1964, Toronto had the largest and most organized Beatles fan base in North America. The Beatles in Canada: The Origins of Beatlemania! finally tells the true story of how The Beatles’ music and popularity began in Canada a full year before they landed in the U.S.A.

Piers Hemmingsen provides a concise look at how radio stations, newspapers and television networks in Canada covered the phenomenon that was Beatlemania, and this digital edition is packed with full-colour images of the band, their travels, those they inspired, and an immense hoard of memorabilia gathered along the way.

’After all these years, I still cannot comprehend where Piers gets his energy supply from. He has written four previous books about The Beatles and discovered an appreciative readership for all of them. However, to me this book, the one you are holding, is his breakthrough. Where it could have been an easy exercise with new information about the Fab Four, Piers has taken one large step forward. He is also able to incorporate the beginnings of the Canadian music industry. Through mainly focusing on one record company he has been able to capture the excitement of a young industry finding its way, competing with the giants in the United States. – Paul White, Capitol Records of Canada, 1957-1978

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnibus Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787590731

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About the author

Piers was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, in 1955 to military parents and attended schools in Salisbury, CFB Petawawa (Ontario), western Quebec (Aylmer and Hull) before taking university degrees at Carleton University (Ottawa) and the University of Toronto (MBA). From the early 1970s he was a pioneer in the field of applied computing applications. He designed and coded the first computerized passport system for the Government of Canada in 1978. He enjoyed a successful IT career for a major Canadian bank, working in Toronto, London and New York spanning 30 years. He now happily considers Toronto to be his home.

The author has followed The Beatles since he first saw them in England in early 1963. He has published four highly respected/pioneering reference books about The Beatles’ recordings in Canada over the past 15 years. His books still sell to Beatles fans around the world, and they have been acquired for music history library collections in Ottawa and Toronto. A Prime Minister, and yes even a world famous Beatle, have acquired his Beatles Canadian reference books. He is a regular contributor to the British Beatles Fan Club Magazine and has provided articles over the years to Goldmine Magazine and Record Collector Magazine. He has also provided detailed archival research on special project assignments for EMI Music Canada and Universal Music Canada. He has contributed to books by other authors including Nicholas Jennings (EMI), Bruce Spizer (The Beatles), Doug Hinman (The Kinks), and Andrew Sandoval (The Monkees).

Over the years, Piers has interviewed many of the important Pop musicians and artists from the 1960s. He has enjoyed memorable interviews and encounters with Denny Doherty, Paul Jones, Ray Davies, Pete Quaife, Noel Redding, Frankie Valli, Ellie Greenwich, Peter (Asher) and Gordon (Waller), The Zombies, Billy J. Kramer, Hughie Flint, John Mayall, Denny Laine, Eric Clapton, and Bo Diddley and many others. He has also interviewed the great Canadian record company pioneers Paul White and Bob Stone.

Picture Credits

The author gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyright materials in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints of editions of this book.

CONTENTS

Foreword – Paul White

Foreword – Mark Lewisohn

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE – The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Canada… 1955–1957 and Beyond

CHAPTER TWO – Ray Sonin, Music World & CFRB’s Calling All Britons

CHAPTER THREE – The Beat Brothers – A False Start

CHAPTER FOUR – Paul White, Capitol Records of Canada Ltd., and The Beatles

CHAPTER FIVE – 1963 – One Whole Year of New Pop Sounds in Canada

CHAPTER SIX – New Sounds in the Upper Ottawa Valley

CHAPTER SEVEN – Canadian Disc Jockeys See Them Coming

CHAPTER EIGHT – Very Together – Beatles Relatives in Canada Ahead of Beatlemania

Picture Section

CHAPTER NINE – Make Us Real Famous – Beatles Fan Clubs in Canada

CHAPTER TEN – The Last Hurrah for Capitol Records of Canada

CHAPTER ELEVEN – Beatling Into Summer 1964

CHAPTER TWELVE – LA BEATLEMANIE – La Belle Province et Les Beatles

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – Manufacturing, Distributing & Publishing Beatles Music in Canada

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Flipping Our Wigs – Early Beatles Advertising in Canada

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – The Beatles in Canadian Press During 1963 & 1964

CHAPTER SIXTEEN – From Start To Finish … Beatlemania!

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APPENDIX I – Beatles Discs in The Charts Across Canada

APPENDIX II – Capitol Records of Canada Promotional Items

APPENDIX III – Gone & Passes By

APPENDIX IV – Beatles Covers & Novelty Songs

APPENDIX V – Capitol Records of Canada 72000 Series singles (1961–1964)

APPENDIX VI – Capitol Records of Canada 6000 Series albums (1961–1964)

APPENDIX VII – Buddy Holly & The Crickets Canadian Tour Dates

APPENDIX VIII – Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps Canadian Tour Dates

APPENDIX IX – Cliff Richard Discography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FLASH FOREWORD… FROM THE DESK OF PAUL WHITE, CAPITOL RECORDS OF CANADA, 1957–1978

Photo by: Piers Hemmingsen

When I decided to take early retirement in 1994, I had been part of the Canadian music scene for almost 40 years. Starting out with Capitol Records of Canada (later EMI Music Canada) in 1957, I was able to witness the changes in musical taste, not only in Canada, but around the world. From the big bands, to crooners, teen idols (always white), exotic instrumentals, and then Bill Haley and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis changed the mood again for teenagers and eventually black performers came into their own. The British Invasion then heralded another form of pop music – the advent of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and many others. It was this history that I was going to leave behind with retirement. Apart from some freelance assignments for my last record company, BMG Music Canada, I thought I had left the music scene forever. Wrong! – In 1999 I was contracted by EMI Music Canada to assist on a book being written about EMI Canada and its 50-year history. Also assisting was a chap named Piers Hemmingsen, whom, unknown to me, was a devotee of an eclectic series of albums I issued for Capitol Canada, named The 6000 Series.

He was, I discovered, a treasure trove of information about The Beatles. We met for lunch and have been meeting for lunches ever since! After all these years, I still cannot comprehend where Piers gets his energy supply from. He has written four previous books about The Beatles and discovered an appreciative readership for all of them. However, to me this book, the one you are holding, is his breakthrough. Where it could have been an easy exercise with new information about the Fab Four, Piers has taken one large step forward. He is also able to incorporate the beginnings of the Canadian music industry. Though mainly focusing on one record company he has been able to capture the excitement of a young industry finding its way, competing with the giants in the United States. He also touches on a particular love of mine – Canadian talent. It was the success of The Beatles and others from the British Invasion that gave me the budgets to sign and record hopeful homegrown talent in the ‘60s. Something else Piers has captured in this volume is how all the parts come together to get product released. He gives credit to the record pressing plants, the album jacket manufacturers, and others that no record company could exist without.

As you read this book, I hope that the enthusiasm Piers has for his subject is passed on to you. I know he has rekindled my love of the music business. When we last met for lunch, Piers told me that after this book he was going to take a rest from The Beatles. I’m wondering how long that will last before he phones me and says, I Should Have Known Better!

Paul White – October 2013

FOREWORD: BEATLES BIOGRAPHER MARK LEWISOHN

Photo by: Don Smith

I’ve known Piers Hemmingsen for 10 years and still he surprises me. Few days go by without him emailing me some nice new nugget he’s found, often one that links The Beatles to Canada. It could be anything – a record, a chart, a photo I haven’t seen before (and, believe me, I’ve seen a few).

Piers is good to have around. He’s smart, interesting, erudite, witty, and a determined good researcher. It’s true that his initials spell P-A-H, but he’s never blasé or labouring under any illusion that he’s seen everything or knows it all. An enquiring mind is always looking for more… more people, more stories, more nuggets. For certain, when it comes to the subjects of Canada and The Beatles, he’s very much the man in form. He loves both, and these passions happily intertwine in this, his latest and most expansive book. So I extend a warm welcome to The Beatles In Canada – The Origins Of Beatlemania!

Text is always a reflection of its author, and Piers plays several strong hands. One is his desire to find out as much as possible about this story’s great pioneers, the likes of Paul White (of Capitol Records of Canada), Ray Sonin (Toronto radio presenter), and the girls involved in starting the Canadian branch of The Beatles’ Fan Club. Along the way, he turns up tons of documents and artifacts to support his discoveries, so his books are always rich in illustrations as well as information.

The new book is all this and more – strong on background, strong on foreground, on local colour, national colour, the fan’s viewpoint, record company corporate perspectives, and the media’s take on things – print and radio especially. It’s also a book that revels in disc-jockey life stories, old charts, and great records. Piers Hemmingsen Loves Vinyl could be graffitied on a Toronto wall – he’s completely fascinated by the music (which isn’t always the case with music historians) as well as the nuts and bolts of the record-making businesses: the companies, the manufacturing, promotion and distribution.

Whither Canada? Because, as part of the British Commonwealth, she was more receptive to the news, views, and electronic sounds suddenly blasting out of the old country and scudding across the Atlantic. Where The Beatles are concerned, the historical footprint on the North American continent was made first in Canada.

For all these reasons, The Beatles In Canada – The Origins Of Beatlemania! is a welcome addition to my bookshelf. I’ll be turning to it often, comfortable in the knowledge that – because Piers has researched it – it’s reliable.

So well done, Mr Hemmingsen, and now I’ve only one more thing to ask of you. It’s that familiar old question: When’s the next one coming out?

Mark Lewisohn, author of the biographical trilogy The Beatles: All These Years, England, September 2013

INTRODUCTION

We were off to Salisbury Plain in England, and that sounded very far away. Dad had rented out our family home at 30 Chapel Crescent in Aylmer East, Quebec, sold the family’s ‘58 Pontiac station wagon, and mom got everything we owned packed and sent to storage with Mayflower Movers. For a few days in that hot July, we stayed at the Butler Motor Hotel in the Eastview end of Ottawa. Then we took the train to Montreal. The first leg of a long journey was underway.

CP Empress ship docking at Princes Landing Stage, Liverpool, 1961. (Liverpool Echo)

We stayed at the new Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal overnight and departed from Montreal to Liverpool aboard the Canadian Pacific ship Empress of England on Thursday, July 13. We headed up the St. Lawrence River, sailing past the Pont de Quebec, towards the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

On board we attended a life-boat drill, watched a funny film called Son Of Flubber, read Mad Magazines and Superman comics and took turns being sea-sick. Jocko, a funny Scots waiter gave us party hats. Dad took rolls of 8-mm colour films of icebergs, whales, and his boys horsing around on deck. Sadly, these films could not be developed as dad had bought the film on sale at Simpsons-Sears in Ottawa and had been duped – the film was bad.

After six days rolling slowly across some heavy seas, we docked in Liverpool on the morning of Thursday, July 20th. It was beautifully sunny on that Thursday morning as we headed down the gang-plank onto English soil, and then, having passed through immigration, we made our way to the open expanse of the Liverpool Pier Head. In the bright sunshine we saw the Three Graces that faced the Mersey River; the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building, and the Port of Liverpool Building. There was no such thing as jet-lag if you crossed the Atlantic by ship back then, just lots of salt sea air and sea-sickness. With our cases, we took a taxi from the Liverpool docks to Lime Street Station.

My brother Randall’s passport, stamped Liverpool July 20, 1961 (Randall Haslett)

Liverpool Pier Head circa 1961, with CP ships at dockside. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Who knew that The Beatles had performed in town the night before, or that, later on the same day we arrived, they would play at St. John’s Hall, in the Liverpool suburb of Tuebrook? I guess in those days, the sight of newly-arrived North Americans was an everyday thing in that grimy port city. It was an adventure for our family, but for Liverpudlians like John Lennon, we were just bloody tourists.

There was rock ‘n’ roll happening throughout Liverpool that month. The first issue of the fortnightly newspaper Mersey Beat was published. Old black-and-white pictures taken outside the Cavern Club, before or after a lunchtime session, show a motley, leather-clad bunch. Bass player Stu Sutcliffe had left The Beatles for a new life as an artist in Hamburg only days before our arrival. The Beatles had returned to Liverpool from Hamburg just a couple of weeks earlier on Monday, July 3, and during the previous month there they had recorded the song My Bonnie with Tony Sheridan. Perhaps we passed one of The Beatles on the street on that July day?

The Beatles (George, Pete, John and Paul) pose outside the Cavern Club on Mathew Street in Liverpool for a fan at lunch time, 1961. (Mark Naboshek)

Entrance to Lime Station, Liverpool, 1959 (Dennis John Norton, Birmingham, England)

Locomotive and passengers cars leaving Lime Street Station, 1961. (Liverpool Echo)

The taxis were different and the driver spoke with an accent I had never heard before. From the doorway of the Punch and Judy Snack Bar at the entrance to the train station on Lime Street came the sounds of cutlery, rattling porcelain tea cups, and the smells of bacon, sausage and eggs. Signs and their wording were strange. Who were Punch and Judy anyway? Inside Lime Street Station, I heard a blend of hundreds of voices and sounds that told me that this was England. Later, on the steam train, a man in white work clothes whirled through our carriage with a large metal pot of mashed potatoes, and a long metal serving spoon hung out of his back pocket. I noticed all these new and wonderful things from my mind’s eye on that exciting day.

Matchbook cover from the Punch And Judy Snack Bar, Lime Street Station, 1961 (Piers Hemmingsen)

And then on to our ultimate destination, Larkhill Camp, not far from the Wiltshire market town of Salisbury, in south-western England. We took a steam locomotive train southbound from Lime Street Station to London and then transferred to another steam train to Salisbury. Phew!

Ticky Hemmingsen and Capt. R.M. Hemmingsen, London, 1954.

Robert and Ticky were our dad and mom. Dad was an instructor for the Royal Artillery School. I was the youngest of three boys. Randall and Matt are my brothers. We moved to Fargo Close, Larkhill Camp, not far from Stonehenge. All three of us attended St. Probus School, on Manor Road and London Road, in Salisbury between August 1961 and July 1963. After the first year, our family moved to a larger home at 3 Pownall Road at Larkhill Camp.

The three of us took two buses each day to get to school in Salisbury. We took one smaller bus from Larkhill Camp to Amesbury bus station, and then we transferred to a double-decker bus from Amesbury bus station to Salisbury bus station. And then we walked to St. Probus School, rain or shine. The trip home was the reverse, except on Wednesday, when I had no school in the afternoons.

Left to right: Randall, Mathias, and Piers at St. Probus School, Salisbury 1962. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Ticky, our mother, was a music lover. She appreciated music of all types, and had studied piano when she was younger. Not long after we moved to England, my father bought her a state of the art Pye G63 Stereophonic Black Box with a Garrard AT 6 turntable inside. Mom immediately bought a few expensive classical records in wide stereophonic sound. The best was the Beethoven Symphony 7, by Georg Solti (Decca SXL 2121), and the other was Chopin Les Sylphides, by Peter Maag (Decca SXL 2044). I loved listening to those albums when she put them on. That music seemed to transport mom to another world. We also loved the very English TV theme music to the television shows that we liked. They included Z Cars, Fireball XL5, The Saint, and Dr. Finlay’s Casebook.

While we lived in England, Randall and Matt schooled me on just about everything to do with pop music records and the best pop music groups from both England and the U.S.A. On a few occasions, they reluctantly took me along with them to Sutton Music Shop on the Market Square in Salisbury. This was a record shop where you could actually listen to the records. In April of 1963, Randall popped into Sutton’s and purchased a nice new stereo copy of The Beatles’ Please Please Me LP, which sounded great on our Pye Black Box.

We saw The Beatles’ early performances on our black-and-white television; on a show called Thank Your Lucky Stars, and then later on Juke Box Jury. We heard Brian Matthew introduce The Beatles on BBC radio on Saturday mornings in glorious mono. Well, you just could not avoid The Beatles by the middle of 1963, as they seemed to be everywhere. On one of our last Saturday mornings at Pownall Road, I listened to Sweets For My Sweet by The Searchers on the BBC. I fell in love with the Mersey Sound.

Pye G63 Stereophonic Black Box with our two first Beatles albums. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Salisbury Plain, where we lived, would be one of the colourful back-drop locations for The Beatles’ film Help!, filmed on location in 1965. They stayed at the Antrobus Arms Hotel in Amesbury while they were there. That was cool for me because our family had stayed there too when we were about to move back to Canada. The Beatles did play once at The City Centre in Salisbury. In fact, they played there while we lived there, on Saturday, June 15, 1963, at 8 p.m. Brian Epstein had tried to get the show cancelled, but a deal had been struck before The Beatles hysteria began, and he was a man of his word. Of course, I was much too young to attend, but we heard all about it, and my brother Randall ended up with a few black-and-white pictures of that show. Those photos were treasured at home for a long time afterwards.

When we moved back to Canada in August 1963, we took an R.C.A.F. Yukon turbo-prop airplane from Marville, France, to Trenton, Ontario. Then after a day or so in a Trenton heatwave, we boarded a slow C.P.R. train for Pembroke, Ontario, which was the nearest station to C.F.B. Petawawa. We passed through Smiths Falls. We were now back in the Dominion of Canada, and along with our family came the Pye record player and the imported Beatles records on the weird Parlophone label. We thought we had been cut off from the rest of the world, but The Beatles loomed on the Canadian horizon in the fall of 1963. Their electrifying appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show were just ahead of us.

Between early 1963 and the early 1970s, I was always keenly interested in The Beatles’ music and news of their events, and this was largely the result of the influences at home, both in Canada and in England.

Much has been documented about The Beatles before, such as my own books detailing the stories behind the recordings that were issued in Canada during the 1960s, but this book lays bare the hitherto uncovered details around the real origins of Beatlemania in Canada.

We know that Canada was never their target in 1964, it was always the U.S.A., but Canada was in a uniquely fortunate position in 1963 to be able to adopt their music and style before they became incredibly famous south of the border. Their first North American fan clubs were started simultaneously in Montreal and Toronto.

John Lennon’s mother-in-law had lived in Toronto. George Harrison had an aunt and uncle in Toronto, and his sister had lived in Ontario and Quebec. That was cool. Capitol Records of Canada, The Beatles’ record company in Canada, had more faith in them than their Capitol Records U.S.A. parent company. It would be their fourth single on the Capitol Records of Canada label, She Loves You, that finally broke them in Canada in late 1963.

Rock ‘n’ roll music rolled into Canada in the mid-1950s. Its pioneers performed to wild crowds in some of the major cities, then left the stage soon afterwards never to return. When Beatles’ music arrived in 1963, the rock ‘n’ roll that Canadian teens had loved was reinterpreted and presented to them again in their own style. It worked like it never had before.

There are some incredible stories to be told about the cast of characters and their links with England that led to the importation of the new sounds from Liverpool via London. Between February 1963 and December 1963, all of The Beatles’ Canadian records were manufactured in Smiths Falls, Ontario. These vinyl discs were subsequently purchased and played on record players across the province in places like Petawawa, Deep River, Pembroke, Ottawa, Oshawa and London. They were also played in St. John’s, Winnipeg, and Grande Prairie.

There was only one way Beatles’ music was going to take off in Canada. The real truth is that no one bought the early Beatles’ records until there was a groundswell of demand from the kids, and the radio stations had to play these records for the kids to hear them. And that actually happened in Canada before it happened in the U.S.A.

There was something about their music that caught the notice of young Canadians who paid attention in 1963. At the same time, there were news stories from England that helped to spread the word about The Beatles.

This book explains the origins of Beatlemania in Canada, shining a light on a period that was screaming to be examined as never before. I have always been fascinated by memory and detail, and my goal has been to weave the facts into pages that would somehow convey the early strangeness and electricity generated by The Beatles during that time in Canada just before Beatlemania. Over the years, I have been fortunate to meet and interview many of the people involved in the origins of Beatlemania in Canada, and I owe each of them a huge debt of thanks.

The Beatles are still pretty cool even 50 years on, and their story in Canada is a very special one that will surprise many Beatles fans. Maybe after all these years I have approached the subject differently, and I sincerely hope you will like it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it. This book has been written especially for my dear family, and for my mom and dad who have always inspired me.

Piers Hemmingsen

Canada 1963 handbook, Dominion Bureau Of Statistics, Ottawa (Piers Hemmingsen)

CHAPTER ONE:

THE BIRTH OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL IN CANADA… 1955–1957 AND BEYOND

In the early live recordings of The Beatles, made before the end of 1962, you can hear the direct influences of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and the other pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll. In order to completely understand just what enabled The Beatles’ own version of rock ‘n’ roll to cross the Atlantic to these northern shores in 1963, we need to go back and examine the very beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll in Canada.

Polio

In 1951, a six-year-old boy named Neil Young living in Omemee, Ontario was diagnosed with polio. This was during the last major outbreak of polio in Canada. The outbreak would also strike an eight-year-old Joni Mitchell in Saskatchewan. The Salk vaccine to combat polio was announced to the world in April 1955. One year later, in the Tuesday, April 17, 1956, edition of The Toronto Telegram, a featured second section news story mentioned that 50,000 Toronto students would be given the Salk vaccine inoculation to combat polio.

On the same page of that late winter newspaper, Charles Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts featured a short comic strip about a young boy’s kite that was caught in a tree. A frustrated yet stoic Charlie Brown would later utter, Oh, good grief! in response to any vocal advice from his nemesis Lucy.

Peanuts cartoon, The Toronto Telegram, Tuesday, April 17, 1956. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

This comic strip appeared just a couple of weeks before the very first travelling rock ‘n’ roll show would hit the largest concert stage in Toronto. On Monday, April 30, 1956, The Biggest Rock ‘N Roll Show Of ‘56 would descend on Maple Leaf Gardens, on Carlton Street in Toronto. And on that same day, Canadians got their first preview of the famous Avro Arrow which would be built in Canada and then inexplicably scrapped. The Arrow, billed as a sleek triangle of speed, was going to be the watchdog of our skies. The Cold War was underway and Canada needed the Arrow.

A very large number of young Canadians in the post-war world of the mid-to late 1950s were about to embark on their teenage years. By the late 1960s, half of Canada’s 20 million citizens would be under the age of 25. A powerful shift took place in Canada in the 1950s, and rock ‘n’ roll would play a major role in the lives of teenagers.

No longer would students be concerned only with their grades: they would also have something else to pay attention to. And it was something that they could call their very own.

Front page of The Toronto Telegram, Monday, April 30, 1956, showing an artist’s rendition of the proposed Avro Arrow, which they said could travel at 1500 miles per hour! (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

Early drawing of the Avro Arrow. (Collections Canada)

A New Disease Called Rock ‘n’ Roll is Born in the U.S.A.

The 12 months spanning May 1955 through the end of April 1956 would usher in the dawn of rock and roll in Canada. Teens en masse in the Great White North did not yet know of the limitless freedom that was headed their way. For example, a teenager in 1956 would have had some firsthand knowledge of the impact of World War II on their lives. The concept of limitless freedom had not been considered.

It is a well known fact, rock ‘n’ roll was born in the U.S.A. Canada jumped on it faster than you could say A-Wop-Bop-Aloo-Wop-Bam-Boom. In fact, like the terrible outbreak of polio of the early 1950s, it sort of spread across Canada just like a disease. This time, radio was the carrier of this new disease.

Rock ‘n’ Roll; On Television – No; On Radio – Yes

Rock ‘n’ roll music was played on American radio stations as early as 1953, which was about three years before it was played on a very small number of Canadian radio stations, starting in 1956.

AM radio in Canada could trace its roots back to Christmas Eve, 1906, when Quebec-born Reginald Fassenden completed the very first experimental radio broadcast at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

AM radio’s content and reach expanded significantly in Canada after the World War II.

The Cultural Influence of American Radio Crossing into Canada

In terms of its ability to spread the rock ‘n’ roll disease, television did not play as important a role as radio at this time. On the CBC television show Youth Special, in 1961, ex-CBC-er Norman Jewison was interviewed by CBC’s Stuart Smith beside New York City’s Central Park, where he was asked about the new television medium. In the interview, and just a few years ahead of Marshall McLuhan’s medium messages, Jewison touched upon the cultural influence of American television, film, and radio on Canada. But most importantly, Jewison highlighted the cultural dominance of American radio on Canadians, and he compared this dominance by American radio over Canadians to American television’s lack of a sphere of geographical influence over Canadian viewers in the early years of the medium.

Television is sort of an enigma to Canadian theatre and the whole field of performing arts… because in films we’ve never had a chance really. We have no tariffs on American films.

The Hollywood stars are our stars. Australia makes more feature films than Canada does. Radio… we were always… you could always turn the dial and pick up 50 American stations beaming in loud and strong to all parts of Canada. Therefore you were competing again with a country of 180 million people. Uh… in television, however, you know… the beam can only receive for 50 miles. Canadian television got a good start because you can’t pick up American stations except in border cities.

The impact of American radio on Canadian listeners could never be under-estimated, and this applied to the large cities of Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver that were close to the 49th parallel. Oddly, it also applied to the smaller and more remote towns across Canada where teens who were interested, could pick up American rock ‘n’ roll over the airwaves late at night.

Tuning the Radio to Find Rock ‘n’ Roll!

There was a postwar radio boom in Canada. Radios were smaller, incorporated bright colours, and were both affordable and widely available. Television would not arrive in Canada until 1952, and even then it took a few years before the average family could afford one. So even by 1955 radio was still the most important medium after newspapers.

The Toronto Telegram, Saturday, February 14, 1959. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library/Piers Hemmingsen)

Before the war, radios had largely been a shared family resource situated in the living room. After the war and into the 1950s, radios moved into the kitchen and beyond. It became much more possible for teens to have a radio in their own bedroom or at least in a space that they did not share with their parents.

Three Radios are Average for Families

An article titled Three Radio Are Average For Families appeared in the Saturday, February 14, 1959 edition of the Toronto Telegram. A special section of the newspaper was dedicated to the expansion of Toronto radio station CKEY. Hal Cooke, general manager and brother of CKEY owner Jack Kent Cooke, said, I’m not a man for figures but the experts tell me there are three radios to the average family and more if there’s a teenager in the home. This was a startling statistic for radio station owners in 1959. Cooke also said that Radio’s got a wonderful future. This would hold true.

The rapid expansion in the number of radios in Canadian homes took place in the years after 1945.

After the war, Canada-based Northern Electric manufactured the highly successful line of inexpensive Baby Champ table top tube-based AM radios in six different modern and smart colours. These Baby Champ table-top radios sold in high volumes in Canada over a number of years.

Left: A 1951 advertisement from Macleans magazine showing the Northern Electric radio range.

Right: A Northern Electric Model 5200 Delft Blue table top AM radio a.k.a. Baby Champ made in Belleville, Ontario Canada for the 1947-1948 model year. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Portable Radios Got Smaller and More Personal

General Electric marketed portable tube radios in Canada beginning in 1950. These could be carried but were very heavy. They also came in an assortment of bright colours. They were, of course, quite a bit more expensive than the regular plug-in radios.

By the mid-1950s, portable radios were somewhat lighter, but they did not sell in significant numbers in Canada until the late 1950s when their size was reduced even further.

Eaton’s advertisement for portable radios, Monday, April 30, 1956. (Toronto Telegram)

Two models of Sony portable transistor radio from the late 1950s. (SONY Corporation)

It would be the transistor that would cause this radical reduction in size. The much smaller, and far more portable transistor radio would change the dynamics of AM radio in Canada and deliver portable listening power to teens. The transistor radio arrived in Canada at exactly the same time as Top 40 radio.

For Christmas 1960, my parents gave my brother Randall a Sony transistor radio with a leather case and an earphone. This was indeed a liberating technology for listening to Top 40 radio, but the technology was completely reliant on 9-volt batteries and a new market segment for batteries was also created.

Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders – Heavy and Bulky

In the early to mid-1950s, portable, but very heavy, reel-to-reel tape recorders were hitting the market in the U.S.A. and Canada, but few teens could afford these and they were sold to a small but curious market. Kal Raudoja of Toronto was one of a few teens who experimented with his own reel-to-reel tape recorder in the mid- to late 1950s.

Radio was Affordable and Widely Accessible

So things were brighter for Canadian teens in the early 1950s who wanted to listen to their music on their own, or with their friends. AM radio was both affordable and accessible. Rich or poor – you could enjoy the music on the radio. However, prior to 1957 there was very little Top 40 music broadcast over the AM airwaves in Canada.

Two 1950s reel-to-reel tape recorders. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Listening to the Wireless Radio Waves

Listening to rock ‘n’ roll on the radio could be either a social or a private activity. A portable radio could be taken to the beach and sounds could be enjoyed among friends. Listening could also be a private activity. Listening to your radio while doing your homework became an accepted thing. Listening to your radio after the lights were out was another treat.

Some of the smaller Canadian radio stations did not broadcast 24 hours a day. In the 1950s, these stations would start broadcasting between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. and then shut down shortly after 11 p.m. The end of day would normally be signalled by the playing of such patriotic instrumental tunes as God Save the Queen, Oh Canada, or even The Maple Leaf Forever.

Not all radios were created equal and some radios held their tuning more than others; for example, after listening to a station for several minutes into a song, the reception could become faint or distorted. By the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, it was not unusual for most teenagers to carry their own transistor radio with them wherever they went. These portable radios needed batteries of course and when the battery was low reception on the radio was weaker. Sometimes batteries were borrowed!

Learning the secrets of operating your own radio was a prerequisite to enjoyment. The first thing you needed to know was the call sign, and then the second thing was the broadcasting wavelength.

Late 1950s matchbook cover for CFRB 1010 AM Toronto. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Radio Station Call Signs

One easy way for teens to figure out where the radio station was based was to listen for the radio station’s call sign. All call signs for Canadian radio stations all started with the letter C. Some good examples across Canada from the 1960s included: CHNS in Halifax, CFCF in Montreal, CFRB in Toronto, CKOY in Ottawa, CFPL in London, CKOC in Hamilton, CKY in Winnipeg, CJME Regina, CFAC in Calgary, CJED in Edmonton, and CFUN in Vancouver.

In the U.S., the radio station call sign either started with a W or a K. All radio stations east of the Mississippi River used a W at the start of their call sign. A good example of this is WABC in New York City. All radio stations west of the Mississippi River used a K at the start of their call sign. An example of this is KRLA in Los Angeles.

The broadcasting wavelength was announced on air at each air check. For example, the DJ would say, This is Dick Biondi WLS 890 on your dial in Chicago (1962) – or This is Carl Banas CKEY 580 on your dial in Toronto (1959). These air checks could be announced on air as often as every 15 minutes.

As an example, CHOV AM (OV for Ottawa Valley), in Pembroke, Ontario, was broadcasting an AM wave at the rate of 1,340 kilohertz and was powered by an amplification of 1,000 watts. So a teenager with an AM radio in the reachable area of the station’s signal would tune into this station by dialling the tuning knob to 1340 on the AM dial.

The Skywave or Skip Effect!

There was one over-arching aspect of science that helped to enhance the geographical coverage of the U.S. airwaves over Canadian territory, and that one very interesting facet of radio wave broadcasting is called the skywave effect. It is also known as the skip effect. When the sun goes down, changes in the earth’s upper atmosphere (ionosphere) result in the bending back of radio waves towards the earth’s surface. This bending back results in radio waves travelling longer distances with significantly less loss in signal strength. For example, a teenager listening to his or her AM radio under the bedcovers late at night at home in Pembroke, Ontario, might tune in to a strong signal broadcast all the way from New York City that could not be picked up during the daytime. The enhanced broadcast capabilities of an AM radio station using an already powerful signal meant that teenagers in a remote area could pick up some big city sounds late at night from very far away. These remote radio stations would often broadcast music that was formed around a substantially different playlist than what was broadcast in the listener’s own area.

For example, a larger radio station like WLS 890 AM broadcasting from Chicago would offer much different songs to a listener who was based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and who was conditioned to their local radio playlist. Even the strange accent of a late-night disc jockey, like WLS’s Dick Biondi, The Wild Italian, announcing from 9 p.m. to midnight circa 1962, would be interesting to a foreign listener tuning in late at night from Northern Ontario.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. vs Privately Owned Radio Stations

In the mid-1950s, the network of radio stations across Canada was divided between Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)-owned radio stations and privately owned radio stations. There were 171 standard broadcast band stations operating in Canada on November 1, 1954, of which 21 were CBC stations and 150 were privately owned stations. (Source: CANADA 1955, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa).

But for a radio station on either CBC or a private network, the farther away it was from a major city, the more a local radio station customized its on-air content to the needs of the community that it served. For example, a radio station in a remote rural area like Pembroke, Ontario, tended to play more country & western music as a way of appealing to the farmers and farm workers who lived nearby.

Left: A CBC on-air announcer at work, circa 1950. (CBC Archives)

Right: CKEY Toronto announcer Mickey Lester in 1955. (Fairchild Media Group)

Because much of Canada’s population lived within 145 kilometres of the U.S. border, it would be the larger bandwidth American radio stations in the northern states that would play an important role in the communication of the new sounds of rock ‘n’ roll to early adopters in Canada. It was simply a case of fire power. After World War II, many large U.S.-based stations embarked on the expansion of their broadcasting power and the wattage gap in broadcast power between U.S. and Canadian radio stations near the 49th parallel was large.

Left: CHED Edmonton opens in early 1954 and the fan mail arrives! (Canada 1955, page 280)

Right: CHED Edmonton, Alberta’s new building, early 1954. (Canada 1955, page 280)

Left: CFCL Timmins, Ontario, (CBC Radio & TV affiliate), circa 1962. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Right: CBC’s CBK Watrous (near Saskatoon), Saskatchewan, building. (CBC Times July 25-31, 1964)

Teens in Winnipeg, Manitoba, could tune in to WLS 890 AM in Chicago in the early 1960s. WLS was broadcasting using 50,000 watts of power at that time. In 1960, disc jockey Dick Biondi moved to WLS following a stint at WKBW in Buffalo, and became hugely popular. Biondi became the first U.S. DJ to play The Beatles’ Vee Jay single Please Please Me when he aired it on WLS one evening in February 1963.

In Vancouver, teens picked up cool American stations from the Northwestern states, including KIRO 710 AM in Seattle with 50,000 watts of power, and KEX 1190 AM from Portland, Oregon.

Left: Winnipeg teens could tune into WLS. (Chicago Radio Museum)

Right: Vancouver teens could tune into KIRO. (Ted Wendland)

WKBW Buffalo, New York, U.S.A

One of the most powerful American stations was WKBW, located in Buffalo, New York. The amplitude modulated waves emanating at 1520 kilocycles from its Hamburg, New York transmitter tower, powered by 50,000 watts of electricity, were easily picked up in the Hamilton and Toronto listening areas. With this incredible broadcasting power, WKBW, sent a strong signal over the entire eastern seaboard covering north-eastern U.S. and south-eastern Canada. The reach of WKBW also included areas north of Montreal and Ottawa late at night, largely due to the skip effect.

Map of The Great Lakes, circa 1950. (Piers Hemmingsen)

The powerful WKBW radio transmitter had been upgraded to 50,000 watts just after the war, as seen in the advertisement above from 1946. WKBW was part of the Columbia Radio Network at the time.

WKBW, and in particular its disc jockey George Hound Dog Lorenz, would play a large and important role in the initial delivery of rock ‘n’ roll to Canada via the airwaves. It is an odd coincidence that the WKBW transmitter was located in Hamburg, a place that was named after the German city that would give birth to The Beatles.

WKBR studio and transmitter. (www.forgottenbuffalo.com)

Enter the Hound…

The Hound, later The Hound Dog, was a disc jockey by the name of George Lorenz. In the period before April 1956, Buffalo-born Lorenz would become the early evangelist of rock ‘n’ roll for many Canadian teens in southern Ontario. Lorenz would become a mysterious figure who bowed out of rock ‘n’ roll when it moved from underground to commercial. The Hound Dog would also become the inspiration for a more famous disc jockey named Wolfman Jack.

Lorenz started his radio broadcasting career in the late 1940s at Buffalo’s WXRA. He did not make much of an impact on WXRA, however, and in early 1948 he moved over to a morning show at WJJL in Niagara Falls, New York. At WJJL, Lorenz began to play the music he himself loved, which included Hank Williams. Soon his love of country music with a solid beat had translated to a loyal listenership. By 1951, George Lorenz had acquired the nick-name of Hound Dog. He told this story to the Buffalo Evening News in February 1971:

One of the jive expressions at the time was if you were hangin’ around the corner, you were doggin’ around. So I’d come on and say ‘ Here I am to dog around for another hour.’ That’s how they got to call me the hound dog.

While at WJJL Niagara Falls, Lorenz began to show the signs of a good business mind, even though George had not completed a high-school education. Lorenz managed to get his show re-broadcast on another radio station in Cleveland, Ohio, during the period from 1953 to 1955.

Left: DJ George Hound Dog Lorenz with a fan in Toronto, circa 1956. (www.hounddoglorenz.com)

Right: Article featuring RCA Victor 45-RPM disc player. (The Canadian Magazine, June 26, 1971)

In 1955, the Hound moved back to his home town and joined the much larger WKBW in Buffalo. WKBW was broadcasting on the AM airwaves at 1520 using a massive 50,000 watts of electricity, a broadcasting level unmatched by radio stations operating inside Canada. So WKBW was available, loud and clear, on radios in southern Ontario.

His nightly show featured intermittent sounds of a heavily echoed howling dog and pithy local advertisements with catchy phrases like, Tell them it was the Hound that sent you ‘round…. But all of this was sandwiched between great early rhythm and blues R&B) tracks. On top of all this, the Hound had a smooth radio voice and relied on a delivery that borrowed much from the beat poets of the day. Some recordings of his early shows have survived and are worth listening to. The air check from his show on WJJL that was recorded on May 7, 1955, is highly recommended.

It was during the May 1955 to April 1956 period that the Hound made a big impact on the Canadian teen market. There, he developed a huge fan base playing early rock ‘n’ roll music. As a result of this large cross-border fan base, he became the natural person to emcee the earliest rock ‘n’ roll shows on both sides of the border. He is known to have emceed the second of the first three travelling rock ‘n’ roll shows in Toronto, which was held during 1956. These shows were: The Biggest Rock ‘N Roll Show Of ‘56, Maple Leaf Gardens, Monday, April 30, 1956; Top Record Stars Of ‘56, Maple Leaf Gardens, Monday, July 16, 1956; and The Biggest In-Person Show Of ‘56, Maple Leaf Gardens, Saturday, September 29, 1956.

The first of these shows featured just one white group and that was Bill Haley and the Comets. The rest of the lineup of the April 1956 show was made up of the true pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll and R&B, all of whom were black: Clyde McPhatter, La Vern Baker, Big Joe Turner, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Bo Diddley, The Drifters, and The Teen Queens. Bandleader Red Pryscok was also a black recording artist.

Left: Toronto Telegram advertisement for the Monday, July 16, 1956, concert. George Hound Dog Lorenz is listed at the bottom of the handbill as WKBW’s Famous Disc Jockey. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

Right: Toronto Telegram advertisement for the Monday, April 30, 1956 concert. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

Big Joe Turner had an R&B hit with Flip, Flop and Fly, which had been recorded for Atlantic in 1955. Lavern Baker also recorded for Atlantic at that time and her big song at the time was Play It Fair. The Teen Queens had scored a U.S. hit in March 1956 with Eddie My Love. These R&B songs were played on the Hound Dog Lorenz radio show. The concerts were advertised in the Toronto daily newspapers, but largely the tickets were sold when kids in Toronto and Hamilton heard about the shows on Buffalo WKBW radio.

The Hound Dog also introduced Elvis Presley at his concert at the Buffalo Memorial Gardens on April 1, 1957. (Buffalo Evening News Archives)

The Hound was heard in the evenings on WKBW from 1955 through to July 1958, and this period really covered the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in Canada. His WKBW show was broadcast nightly from 7:15 p.m, except on Sundays. He also had a slot Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. There was no rock ‘n’ roll played on Sundays during the conservative 1950s.

While at WKBW, George Lorenz was hugely popular with teens in the state of New York and the province of Ontario. At his peak, he had a loyal fan base of listeners that numbered in the tens of thousands. His fans could even join his fan club and receive a membership card.

Ironically, George Lorenz would leave WKBW in 1958 when that station moved to a Top 40 format from a mostly adult listening format on July 4, 1958. That is when Lorenz was replaced by Tom Shannon. Shannon would become one of America’s best-known disc jockeys, as WKBW’s signal dominated the airwaves of the U.S. east coast at night into the 1960s.

According to Billboard Magazine, Lorenz felt upon his departure that the new Top 40 format at WKBR is hurting the record industry, is lowering radio listening, and is decreasing a new artist’s chance to make it.

Sadly, George Lorenz passed away in 1972 and never really received the recognition he deserved for his role in turning so many young listeners on to R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock ‘n’ Roll – Good or Evil?

It took some time for both the term and the genre rock ‘n’ roll to become established in Canada, and all sorts of books have been written about the where and the when. In Canada, the term rock ‘n’ roll began to infiltrate the media headlines in 1956.

Canada would be, by virtue of one huge common border from east to west, the first port of call outside of the U.S. for most of the American pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll. It was only a matter of months before a rock ‘n’ roll act made its way into Canada in early 1956, and the first foray featured a package tour of mostly black rock ‘n’ roll acts along with a headline act that was all white.

Helen McNamara, a jazz journalist at The Toronto Telegram, started a regular column called McNamara’s Bandwagon, which lasted for two decades and covered the jazz scene in Toronto. The Telegram sent jazzer McNamara along with staff photographer Jim Kennedy to cover the Biggest Rock ‘N’ Roll Show Of ‘56 in Toronto on Monday April 30, 1956. Helen’s review of the show was printed on page 3 of The Telegram the following day. And, a little over a year later, McNamara would be joining the list of contributors to Canada’s first music trade magazine called Music World. She also wrote for the Melody Maker in England. McNamara was unwittingly Canada’s very first rock ‘n’ roll journalist. She was an unlikely candidate for this title because she walked with a cane all of her life, and, much like pioneer rocker Gene Vincent, she wore a leg brace.

Left: The Toronto Telegram, Monday May 1, 1956, page 3. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

Right: Helen McNamara, circa 1956, in The Toronto Telegram. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

The text of Helen’s review:

Music had ‘em Rollin’ (and Rockin’) in the Aisles - 12,764 ‘Teeners Whooped it up

"A frantic, howling, dancing mob of teen-agers, part of a crowd of 12,764 people who filled Maple Leaf Gardens last night, proved that rock ‘n roll audiences are the same everywhere.

For the past few months, there have been reports of riots resulting from such shows in the United States. Last night’s Biggest Rock ‘N Roll Show Of ‘56, didn’t cause a riot but it came close to it.

During the first half of the show you might say things were dull. Down to a dull roar, that is. At no time was it possible to hear what the various vocal groups, singers, and musicians were singing or playing since the audience played as vital a part as the entertainers themselves.

BIG JOE

Let the tenor sax honk, the guitar get off on a boogie beat, let a singer howl, or a dancer leap across the stage and the audience responds with squeals and shouts. It was Big, Joe Turner who really got the audience out of the seats though.

No sooner had his voice boomed out the raucous strains of Flip, Flop and Fly than the predominantly teenage audience in the floor seats were rockin’ and rollin’.

This, in case your’e wondering, consists of dancing in the aisles, on seats, and in an extreme case, dancing on stage with the performers. Those who sat in the tiers confined their rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’ to handclapping and feet stomping.

By the time Bill Haley, and his six comets, clad in hideous pink jackets had rocked the show to a close with See You Later Alligator, the mob had surged up to the stage and the guards quietly gave up all hope of restoring order. As soon as the music (!) had ceased and the audience was assured there positively would be no more entertainment they subsided. And about time.

QUICK LIVED FAME

The various people who took part, The Platters, The Drifters, The Teenagers, The Teen Queens, The Flamingos, The Colts to name the vocal groups may be top-selling record artists, but its doubtful that they’ll ever be put up in the Hall of Musical Fame. Of all the entertainers, only Joe Turner and singer LaVern Baker stand out as musically worthwhile performers. As for Bo Diddley and his twangy guitar and the Haley comets, the less said the better.

Praise is due the master of ceremonies, diminutive Harold Cromer, for keeping the show moving at fast pace, and most of all the drummer, the unnamed, unsung hero of the Red Prysock’s 12-piece band. Anyone who can maintain the monotonous beat of rock ‘n’ roll for two and a half solid hours … and I do mean solid, … man! deserves a citation of honor."

There are some jabs in Helen’s review but there are also some very good observations about the incredible ritual she observed the night before. She was right.

National Coverage

Rock ‘n’ roll officially arrived in Canada in July 1956, when the huge and heavy July 7th issue of Maclean’s magazine hit the newsstands and mailboxes across the country. On the front cover was the title A Report On Rock ‘n’ Roll. It had taken two months to assess the impact of the Rock and Roll bomb that was dropped on Maple Leaf Gardens on Monday, April 30, 1956.

On pages 14 and 15 were pictures of Bill Haley and La Vern Baker in concert at Maple Leaf Gardens under the article’s title What You Don’t Need To Know About Rock ‘n Roll. The author was a 29-year-old staffer named Miss Barbara Moon, who had started with Maclean’s as a clerk-typist in 1948.

Barbara had been asked by her bosses at Maclean’s to find out all about the latest musical craze. This was probably because she was younger than they were and perhaps there was an inclination that she might be able to infiltrate whatever underground world existed in this dark and unknown area of the new music world of the 1950s. Her article was well researched and she undertook three critically important steps towards coming up with the goods for Maclean’s readers on pages 12, 15, 52, 52 and 53.

First, Barbara interviewed CBC Radio interviewer and afternoon drive show host Elwood Glover, who she had felt would know the answer to the question, What is rock ‘n roll? Elwood replied, Oh dear, oh dear. All I can say is that it’s the most exhibitionistic form of music today. It removes all inhibitions. Amazing thing. With this answer, Barbara went looking for more background information for her story.

Maclean’s magazine July 7, 1956 issue, front cover and inside photos. (Piers Hemmingsen)

Left: Elwood Glover from Music World, June 22, 1957. (CBC Still Photo Collection)

Left: Advertisement from The Scranton Times, Pennsylvania for The Biggest Rock N’ Roll Show of ‘56, dated April 24, 1956. (Scranton Times/Scranton Tribune Archives)

Right: First advertisement for the Monday, April 30, 1956 concert in The Toronto Telegram. (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library)

Second, she

Reviews for The Beatles in Canada

[David Gilchrist · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

great book! Who knew of all the history of the Beatles in Canada. So much information to digest, very thorough. A must for any Beatles fan in Canada.