The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

Jack Long enjoyed a career performing alongside such musicians as Moe Koffman, Gordon Lightfoot, and Nat King Cole, but it was in the musical instrument business where he made his name across Canada.

In the 1940s, Long started playing trumpet while in Grade 9 at Toronto’s Humberside Collegiate. By Grade 13 he was a member of the musician’s union and played regularly with adult bands. “The other kids didn’t have money back then, but I was always loaded,” he says of those long-ago lucrative gigs.

Prior to opening a musical instruments shop in Toronto, Long played at Toronto’s King Edward Hotel, various lounges in Montreal, and went on the road in the United States with his pianist wife, Carol, whom he met at the University of Toronto while he was earning his Bachelor of Music degree. Long obtained a franchise to sell band instruments in the Toronto area in August 1956, working out of two rooms in a house at 100 Carlton Street, just a short walk from Maple Leaf Gardens. Long continued to play gigs six nights a week for several years to make ends meet.

Soon after starting the company, his friend Jack McQuade, a top studio drummer in Toronto, came looking for space to teach. With McQuade on the premises for a few hours each week, he began selling drums, and the new partnership, Long & McQuade, was formed.

Because this was the early days of rock and roll, the two started getting requests to supply guitars and basses, and they became distributors for Fender products from their first shop located just north of Bloor and Yonge streets where Toronto’s main public library now stands.

Musical giants who purchased equipment at Long & McQuade include Gordon Light-foot; David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears; Robbie Robertson of The Band; and Neil Young.

McQuade, who wasn’t as keen as Long about the business side of music, eventually phased himself out of the company, selling half his shares to Long in 1963 and the rest about three years later. By then, the Long & McQuade name was firmly established. McQuade died in 1976 of cancer.

Long & McQuade expanded from its Toronto base in the 1970s, opening stores in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Windsor. It later added outlets in such places as Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Oshawa, Ontario.

Today, the company is the largest chain of musical instrument retailers in Canada with 42 Long & McQuade shops stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland and employing more than 900 people. Long’s son Steve is the company’s current president. “I love hanging around the music store and talking with musicians,” Jack once told us. “I always considered myself more a musician than a businessman.”

Music BITE!

Long once recalled playing a gig many years before with then unknown Gordon Lightfoot on drums. “He used to say he was going to be big once he got his folk act going.” When the gig ended, Light-foot, who later had such hits as “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” came by the store to buy a Martin acoustic guitar. “I couldn’t understand why he wanted a guitar because to me he was a drummer.”

What do Anne Murray, Tom Jones, Gordon Lightfoot, Tony Bennett, Liona Boyd, and legions of Canadian music fans have in common? All crossed paths with Sam Snider-man at one time or another.

They Said it!

“Not everyone remembers me but people remember the song.”

— singer-songwriter Terry Jacks about his multi-million hit “Seasons in the Sun”

Sniderman is the Toronto retailing icon that turned a job stocking records at his brother’s radio store into the legendary 51-store Sam The Record Man chain with its landmark record emporium on Toronto’s Yonge Street. Along the way, Sniderman supported a who’s who of young and rising musical talents in Canada by promoting their records and concerts and fighting for more airtime for their music.

The Toronto native jumped into the record business in 1937 when he began stocking classical records in his brother Sid’s store. It was a tactic to woo the woman of his dreams, Eleanor Koldofsky, and it worked: they were married five years later. When record sales outpaced radios in the mid-1950s, the Snider Radio Sales and Service sign was replaced with the much catchier Sam the Record Man marquee.

Initially, the outlet was a hangout for musicians who were lured by its stock of obscure labels and artists; soon, however, Sniderman was drawing enormous crowds of music lovers who couldn’t resist his discounted loss leaders.

In 1961, Sniderman changed the face of Yonge Street when he converted a two-storey furniture outlet at 347 Yonge into his flagship store and invested $15,000 in a huge neon sign in the shape of two huge LPs. The sign was designed to trump his arch-enemy A&A records, two doors away, and back Sniderman’s claim that the store had the largest selection of retail records in Canada. Over the years, many customers referred to the Yonge Street store as a madhouse, especially during Boxing Day sales when lineups often wound around the block onto Gould Street.

If you lived in Toronto, or even within driving distance during Sam’s heyday, it was almost a rite of passage to visit the store. Many baby boomers fondly recall making the trip to Sam’s with money ready to spend and hours to kill flipping through endless racks of albums.

In an article in the Financial Post, Sniderman credited much of his success to a tip from his mother, who once told him: “You’ll always be dealing with the consumer and you’ve always got to be fair and honest if you want to stay in business.” For years he personally handled complaints from his customers. It was his way of ensuring customers kept coming back.

But Sniderman, who during the 1960s smoked two packs of cigarettes and downed 25 cups of tea a day, was more than a peddlar of records, tapes, and CDs.

They Said it!

“I often think that perhaps the reason I became a successful singer was that, as a kid, I could never do anything as well as my brothers. I wanted to do something better than they did.”
— singer Anne Murray

An Order of Canada member and recipient of the Governor General’s Award for voluntarism in the performing arts, Sniderman for years lent a hand to up-and-coming Canadian artists like Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Joni Mitchell by hyping their records in the media and displaying and playing them in his stores. Back in the days when there was no such thing as a Canadian music industry, he had a significant hand in crafting the “CanCon” regulations that required radio stations to give airtime to more Canadian artists.

One of the highlights of his career was when Sainte-Marie received a Canadian Music Hall of Fame award. “She said that Sam the Record Man was instrumental in her success … to be recognized in that fashion gave me goosebumps,’’ he told Profit magazine.

They Said it!

“there’s something romantic about being canadian. We’re a relatively unpopulated, somewhat civilized, and clean and resourceful country. i always push the fact that i’m canadian.”

— country singer, k.d. Lang

Sniderman’s contributions to the lives of some of Canada’s most famous performers are well documented, from badgering record companies on Lightfoot’s behalf to finding space on the stage at Mariposa for Mitchell. At one point a disconsolate Anne Murray told him: “Sam, if this record doesn’t work, I’m going back to Nova Scotia to be a gym teacher.’’ Murray remains his favourite Canadian singer and her song “You Needed Me,’’ is one he listens to often.

After casting his famous shadow on the world’s longest street for forty years, the world came crashing down on the Godfather of Canadian Music late in 2001 when Sam the Record Man declared bankruptcy. On June 30, 2007, the flagship store at the corner of Yonge and Gould streets in Toronto finally closed its doors. Its iconic neon sign was removed on October 8, 2008, to be restored and hopefully to find new life in the future as a reminder of a piece of the city’s historic past. In 2008, Ryerson University paid nearly $40 million to buy four properties around its downtown campus, including the former Yonge Street location.

The last remnants of the Sam the Record Man retail empire are two franchise stores that remain open in Sarnia and Belleville. Sniderman, who will celebrate his 89th birthday in June 2009, lives in the Toronto area.

1–4. The Band: Four Canadians — Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel, all from Ontario — were part of this popular and influential group, inducted into the Hall in 1994.

5. Neil Young: Inducted as a soloist in 1995, the singer-songwriter from Winnipeg was also a key member of Buffalo Springfield, who were inducted in 1997.

6. Joni Mitchell: The highly praised and successful musician from Alberta joined the Hall in 1997.

7. Gene Cornish: The Ottawa-born guitarist for the popular sixties group, The Young Rascals, was inducted along with his bandmates in 1997.

8–9. Buffalo Springfield: Besides Young, two other Canadians who were part of this important band of the late sixties, inducted into the Hall in 1997, were drummer Dewey Martin and bassist Bruce Palmer.

10. Denny Doherty: The smooth-voiced singer from Halifax was inducted along with fellow members of the Mamas and Papas in 1998.

11. Leonard Cohen: This truly gifted singer, songwriter, poet, and guitarist, who was born and raised in Montreal, was inducted into the Hall in 2008.

They Said it!

“i don’t believe war is a way to solve problems. i think it’s wrong. i don’t have respect for the people that made the decisions to go on with war. i don’t have that much respect for bush. He’s about war, i’m not about war — a lot of people aren’t about war.”

— Canadian pop star Avril Lavigne

Rock music fans growing up in and around Toronto from the late 1950s to the early 1980s more than likely considered the weekly CHUM Chart their music bible.

Music BITE!

Paul Anka, with his hit song “Diana,” was the first Canadian musician to top the CHUM chart back in august 12, 1957. he was also the top canadian in terms of songs charted, with 38. the next best Canadians were the guess Who, who had 22 charted songs.

Each week music buffs would pore over a listing of the top songs, which showed their position relative to the previous week and how long they’d been on the chart. In 1957, Toronto’s CHUM became the first 24-hour-a-day hit parade station in Canada, and on May 27 of that year issued its first CHUM Chart. The simple folded “pocket charts” listed the top 50 songs of the week but by 1968 had reduced that to the top 30. In 1975, the pocket charts were ended and listings appeared in newspapers.

The first chart had a “white background, with black and orange highlighted areas,” says Brad Jones, program director at 1050 CHUM. “The ‘disc jockey cat’ Clementine appears on the very first chart and every weekly chart for the next three years or so. The concept of the weekly hit parade was just an extension of the on-air presentation of the songs.”

Topping the chart on May 27, 1957, was “All Shook Up” by Elvis Presley, and according to The CHUM Chart Book by Ron Hall, Presley would go on to have 85 charted songs by the time the station ended its listings in 1983. The last chart topper in December 1983 was “Say Say Say” by Paul McCartney, who coincidentally had the second most charted songs ever on CHUM (including his recordings with The Beatles and Wings), with 76 hits.

The station, which is playing oldies to this day, has that original CHUM Chart in its archives along with a full set of every one since. “As for how many of the original charts are out there is anybody’s guess and for a value, no idea,” said Jones. “An item is only worth something when someone is willing to pay for it.”

Every generation has its favourite clubs and bars for hanging out, drinking, and listening to great tunes from musicians on their way up or who have attained some level of stardom. For those of us lucky enough to have heard great music from the 1960s and 1970s in the following venues, the memories linger even if the clubs do not.

A Vancouver fixture in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the Cave featured a wealth of American and Canadian talent. The Righteous Brothers, the Supremes, Duke Ellington, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and James Brown, to name a few, played there. Today nothing is listed in the Vancouver city directory for the 626 Hornby Street location just west of Georgia, but the HSBC bank office tower occupies the place where that address used to be. In the area is the entrance to the underground parking lot of the HSBC building — a cave of a different kind, perhaps.

One of Montreal’s hottest spots in the 1960s for jazz and blues musicians. Some of the biggest names in the biz, such as Wilson Pickett, performed there. Today, the Esquire’s old Stanley Street location, just south of Ste-Catherine, houses a strip club called Chez Paree.

They Said it!

On the Cave: “It was my dream to perform in the club one day, and I eventually did in the early 70s. It closed down a few years later as nightclubs became less in vogue but people still talk about the Cave and remember the multitude of wonderful performers who came through. In my opinion, there hasn’t been a place since that offers the same variety and quality of good entertainment.”

— Susan Jacks, multi-hit singer with The Poppy Family and as a soloist.

Upstairs from the equally legendary Le Coq d’Or on the Yonge Street strip in Toronto, this rocking club was home to Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins and his many band members. Dancing go-go girls and some of the greatest music from the 1960s were featured here. These days the 333 Yonge Street address is home to the main HMV music store in Toronto.

Le Hibou, Ottawa’s legendary Ottawa coffee house, is an integral part of Canadian folk music history. And according to one of its former owners, the club played a role in the formation of one of America’s supergroups.

Le Hibou opened in 1961 on the second floor of a two-storey house at 544 Rideau Street, serving coffee and French pastries to customers who took part in chess tournaments, poetry readings, and hootenannies. A year later, co-owner Denis Faulkner moved the club to a commercial building at 248 Bank Street above a paint store where there was more space for entertainment and room to serve more elaborate meals.

It remained there for three years before moving to 521 Sussex Drive, a short stroll east of the Parliament Buildings.

Before Le Hibou closed in 1975, the Sussex Drive location was the gathering place for live music in Ottawa and attracted some of Canada’s folk greats, including Joni Mitchell, Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, and Buffy St. Marie. Many American music legends, including John Prine, T-Bone Walker, and Ritchie Havens, also performed at the club.

They Said it!

On Le Hibou: “Before The Beatles there were several young fellas at high school who had long hair, not real long, just slightly over the ears. One of the lads was Sandy Crawley, a folkie guitarist. He was also responsible for DRAGGING me to the Le Hibou Coffee House on Bank Street in Ottawa. It changed my life forever, not the drugs, but the music, with lyrics that told stories, none of this moon in June stuff. It was serious.”

— Richard Patterson, drummer, The Esquires and 3’s A Crowd

Harvey Glatt, who co-owned Le Hibou when it was located on Bank Street and Sussex Drive, says Ottawa and Le Hibou were at the genesis of American band Crosby, Stills and Nash.

In 1966, Graham Nash and his English pop group the Hollies were appearing at the Capitol Theatre in Ottawa. After their show, Glatt took Nash to Le Hibou, where Joni Mitchell was performing. Later, Glatt, Nash, and Bruce Cockburn visited Mitchell at her Château Laurier hotel room, where the three musicians talked into the night and swapped songs.

“It was clear something was happening between Graham and Joni … there were sparks, so Bruce and I left,” recalled Glatt.

Shortly after, Nash left the Hollies, moved to California, and continued his relationship with Mitchell, who introduced him to her good friend David Crosby. Nash and former Byrds member Crosby hit it off, and the rest is history.

Le Hibou’s original Rideau Street location is now an Indian restaurant. The Bank Street venue is a hairdressing salon above a submarine sandwich outlet, and the Sussex Drive location is a clothing store.

Located at 134 Yorkville Avenue in Toronto, the Riverboat was arguably the best-known coffeehouse in Canada. During its years of operation from 1964 to the late 1970s, the Riverboat featured a who’s who of folk music stars, including Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, and Murray McLauchlan. Legend has it that Mitchell’s “Clouds” and Phil Ochs’s “Changes” were composed in the club’s backroom.

The Riverboat is now long gone and is the site of the Hazelton Hotel and Private Residences, 18 condominium units above a five-star hotel. Before construction began in October 2004, this location was a series of brownstone buildings made up mainly of shops.

Located on Grosvenor Avenue at Oak Street in the upper-middle-class south Winnipeg neighbourhood of River Heights, this popular music venue opened in the early 1950s and served as a weekend dance hall until the late 1970s.

They Said it!

On the Riverboat: “It’s why I’m in Toronto to this day. [Music producer and Riverboat manager] Bernie Fielder hired us sight unseen and we came in ’65 to play the Riverboat, we got the bug, went home, got our stuff and that was it. The Riverboat in this region was the Mecca.”

— Brent Titcomb, folksinger and actor

It was one of about 50 community clubs throughout the city but was seen as the “plum gig” for budding and big-time acts, said John Einarson, a Winnipeg author, broadcaster, and music historian.

Marquis events were always held on Saturdays, often featuring bands like Chad Allan & the Reflections (later The Guess Who, who also performed at River Heights), The Deverons with Burton Cummings, The Fifth, The Sugar & Spice, Neil Young & the Squires, and Gettysbyrg Address.

They Said it!

On Neil Young performing at the River Heights Community Club: “The Squires were one of the most popular bands at River Heights. Neil didn’t move around much on stage. His best friend was his amplifier, which he kept close by … you could tell Neil had confidence in himself as a musician. It wasn’t ego or contrived, he was very into the music.”

— Diane Halter, a member of the teen council that booked dances at the River Heights Community Club (taken from Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied
— The Canadian Years by John Einarson.)

Lineups often formed at five o’clock for a dance that would start three hours later, hosted by such popular deejays as Doc Steen, Ron Legge, Jim Christie, and Bob Burns, host of the TV program Teen Dance Party. The club’s capacity was 400 people but more than 500 sweaty teens would often be shoehorned into the place.

The club also had indoor and outdoor hockey rinks, soccer pitches, baseball diamonds, a football field, and a playground area.

Still in operation today as the River Heights Community Centre, the facility is used for socials and pre-teen dances and a variety of other community-related activities.

Known in its final incarnation as the Change of Pace, the renowned folk club in London, Ontario, began inauspiciously in the early 1970s as Smales Pace in a converted Bell Canada garage at 436 Clarence Street between Dundas Street and Queens Avenue. Founded by John Smale, the Pace quickly developed a reputation for entertainment and fine food. Several folk musicians such as Stan Rogers, David Wiffen, Doug McArthur, David Bradstreet, and others made their mark there. Rogers was supposed to have written a few songs at the club. In 1976, Smales Pace moved to an upstairs location at 355 Talbot Street, eventually modifying its name to Change of Pace. As of 2009 the original location was the site of Nooner’s restaurant while the Talbot Street spot was a beauty salon.

They Said it!

On Smales: “I was no stranger to intimate, outspoken audiences. But Smales Pace was special. The performers were always treated to appreciative audiences and for that, we would have virtually played for nothing, but we always were paid well. It was like coming home each time I was privileged to play there.”

— David Bradstreet, Juno Award–winning singer-songwriter