A Couple Of Toronto Area Music Figures Pass On

Michele Tafts; Drummer for 1990's and 2000's Hamilton All-Girl Garage band The Girl Bombs. They recorded a couple of singles and opened for The Cynics, Fleshtones and Midways.

THE GIRL BOMBS ~ "FRUSTRATED";


Brian Miller ~ 60 ~ Guitarist with 1970's and early 80's Toronto Prog-Rock band Zon, dies of cancer. Zon were formed in 1977 as a Prog-Rock counterpart to the far more stripped down Punk revolution. They recorded two albums with the 1978 debut, "Astral Projector" being nominated for a Juno award for Most Promising New Group and they opened for Styx and Foreigner at CNE Stadium. Zon broke up around 1980 after bad reviews and a notorious concert opening for Alice Cooper at CNE when Alice refused to go on and Zon volunteered to play a second gig after announcing his cancellation. Miller later worked as tech at local guitar store the 12th Fret.
ZON ~ "BACK DOWN TO EARTH";


ZON ~ "ASTRAL PROJECTOR" (full album);


NEWS FOOTAGE OF THE 1980 ALICE COOPER RIOT;

Band Profile; Dock Walsh & The Carolina Tarheels

The Carolina Tar Heels were a short lived but notable Old Time Country String Band who made a series of respected and highly collectible recordings from 1928 to 1932. They were led by Dock Walsh "The Banjo King of The Carolinas" who was born in Lewis Fork North Carolina in 1901 and included veteran musician Clarence Ashley, a guitar/banjo player originally from Bristol Tennessee (born 1895) and on harmonica and guitar either of the brothers Garley or Gwen Foster.
Walsh was a noted pioneer of the "clawhammer" banjo picking style and was also one of the first to record in the three-finger style. He is also believed to have invented a style of playing in a blusier slide style by placing pennies under the bridge and using a knife blade similar to that of blues guitar players like Robert Johnson and Son House. All of which earning the title "Banjo King Of The Carolinas". He was already playing (but not recording) with Gwen or Garley foster as the Carolina Tar Heels since 1925 when Columbia Records talent scout Ralph Peer put them together with Clarence Ashley for some recording sessions in 1928.

CAROLINA TAR HEELS ~ "GOING TO GEORGIA";


Clarence "Tom" Ashley was already an experienced performer who had toured with medicine shows and blackface minstrel show since 1911 and had played with well known fiddler G.B. Grayson. He had done recordings in 1928 for Gennett Records with the Blue Ridge Entertainers with Clarence Green on fiddle and Garley Foster on harmonica.

The Recordings ~ The records made by the Tar Heels are notable from others of the era for not having a fiddle player. The songs range from spare slower numbers like the classic "In the Pines" (sung by Walsh) to ensemble numbers sung by all three and played at a breakneck speed. All featured the banjo as the lead instrument. "In the Pines" was a folk ballad of unknown authorship with the version done by Walsh believed to be the first commercially recorded release. The song became a classic and would later be recorded by Leadbelly, Bill Monroe, Peg Leg Howell, The Louvin Brothers, Osborne Brothers, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Doc Watson, Roscoe Holcomb, John Phillips, Long John Baldry, Dave Van Ronk, The Greatful Dead, The Four Pennies, Ralph Stanley, Dolly Parton, Odetta, Gene Clark, Link Wray and more recently Mark Lanegan and Nirvana.

CAROLINA TAR HEELS ~ MY HOME'S ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS";


Dissolution ~ After making the Peer recordings the band seems to have essentially ended with Ashley moving on to other projects while the great depression brought an end to much of the industry devoted to rural music. Walsh and the Fosters would continue to perform but Ashley would be the one to have the greatest impact with his rediscovery during the folk revival of the 1960's when he would make several recordings for Smithsonian/Folkways and playing the folk circuit. Walsh would also record for Folkways during the 1960's folk revival. Walsh and Ashley both died in 1967 while Foster died in 1968.
Members;
Dock Walsh ~ Banjo/Vocals, Clarence Ashley ~ Guitar or Banjo/Vocals, Garley Foster ~ Harmonica or Guitar/Vocals

CAROLINA TAR HEELS ~ "THERE'S A MAN GOING ROUND TAKING NAMES";

Coming Live To CIUT This Month!

Next Thursday at 1pm July 16 Ginger St James brings her Honky-Tonkin'-Rockabilly self on down to CIUT for a live session in our Map Room Sessions for a live-to-air recording. Any and all cheering sections are cordially invited. At the low, low price of absolutely free. Full 45 minute show starts at 1pm sharp. In the Map Room at Hart House in the University Of Toronto.

GINGER ST JAMES ~ "TRAVELING BAND";


GINGER ST JAMES ~ "FOLSUM PRISON BLUES";


GINGER ST JAMES ~ "HONK TONK BLUES";


GINGER ST JAMES ~ "TENNESSEE WALTZ";


Also coming up in August;

Old Time Country with Pigeonhawk Stringband ~ Thursday Aug.13
PIGEONHAWK STRING BAND ~ "EVA'S LULLABY";


Surf's Up with Luau Or Die ~ Friday Aug.14
LUAU OR DIE ~ "HAVING AN AVERAGE WEEKEND";


LUAU OR DIE ~ "PIPELINE";


LUAU OR DIE ~ "GEEK USA";


As always listen online at www.ciut.fm

Offbeat Instruments In Old Time Music

We have a certain image of the instruments used during the 1920's birth of the Blues and Country music. Guitars, Banjos, Fiddles, Harmonicas, Pianos, Mandolins and the occasional Autoharp, along with whatever jerry-rigged instruments Jug Bands cobbled together, and that's pretty much it. But that's quite wrong, a trip through the Sears & Roebuck Catalogs of the age which were commonly used to order instruments even in most rural areas show pages of Zithers, Harp-Guitars, Cellos and Harmoniums for sale. And we know that some rural folk did indeed play them. Then there were locally produced instruments such as the Mountain Dulcimer, Washboard, Washtub Bass, Musical Saw and the Quills. I've even seen an old photo of a stringband standing in front of a saloon proudly showing off their full size concert harp. Lord knows what they played on it.

The problem was that in the early days of recordings many instruments simply did not record well given the crude technology of the time. Banjos, Fiddles and Pianos recorded quite well from the start, they were loud, clear and distinct. In fact the banjo, which had been around for over a century as a African-American instrument, became wildly popular in the Ragtime Age when white, tuxedoed players like Fred Van Epps and Vess Ossman had numerous hit records with their rapid fire instrumentals. Guitars by comparison, now seen as the archetypal blues, folk and country instrument, took longer to catch on, they were too quiet to record well at first. It's noteworthy that the first big selling rural artists like Eck Robertson, Fiddling John Carson, Uncle Dave Macon and Papa Charlie Jackson played fiddle or banjo. Soon enough the guitar pushed it's way in and took over. Of course it was sexier than the weedy fiddles or clanging banjos. On the other hand there's the autoharp. They had been around since the 1900's and sold well enough since they were relatively easy to play, however they did not record well and might have been largely forgotten if it were not for the fact that two of the biggest names in country music, The Carter Family and Ernest Stoneman used them on their hit records. By comparison take the Mountain Dulcimer. Like the autoharp they are easy to play and in fact have obvious advantages in that since they only have three or four strings they are a lot easier to tune. They are also louder. Due to the vagaries of taste however they were never very popular as recording instruments and never had a hit-maker like Stoneman or the Carters to champion them. The instrument might have slipped into complete obscurity if folk revivalists like Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Richard Farina and Mike Seeger hadn't championed them in the 1950's and 1960's. The mandolin is another example of the vagaries of taste. They had been subject of an odd fad in the 1910's when large all-mandolin orchestras briefly became all the rage. The dawning of the electric Honky Tonk era might have pushed them to the sidelines if it were not for Bill Monroe's bluegrass bands and various brother duos like the Louvins and the Stanleys. Now it is literally impossible to have a bluegrass band without one. I think it may actually be a bylaw. By contrast the bodhran, a hand-held drum common in folk music of the Celtic Fringe of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands and the Isle Of Man would have been a perfect addiction to Bluegrass, Country Stringbands or Jugbands. However the numorous immigrants from these Gaelic lands did not move to Appalachia and the Ozarks so this never happened.

There were also the commercial decisions made by record companies. Once certain instruments and genres sold well record companies rushed to sign up more of the same while more regional and eccentric tastes fell by the wayside. A few oddities still managed to slip through;

THE QUILLS ~ RAGTIME HENRY THOMAS:
RAGTIME HENRY THOMAS ~ "FISHING BLUES";


Henry Thomas (1874 - 1950's) was a Texas based bluesman who recorded in the twenties. He was actually a full generation older than other 1920's bluesmen which was reflected both in his repertoire, which ranged from standard blues to rags and minstrel tunes, as well as his use of the quills. A crude instrument known since ancient times, the quills were simply a set of several short flutes cut from hollowed out reeds and attached to a rack. The ancient Greeks referred to a similar instrument as the Pan Flute. Since the quills were easy to play, compact, and could be made by any handy craftsman they were quite popular amongst black slaves as well as poor white farmers, sailors and other rural folk, including children, going back to colonial times. They were not considered a respectable instrument however and their reedy sound did not record well and by the turn of the century they had been superseded by the harmonica which had the advantage of being a far more versatile instrument, not to mention louder, as well as being sturdier and more compact. Thomas, a singer/guitarist, was the only notable recording artist who used the quills, which he played using neck mounted rack similar to the ones later used by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. He recorded some twenty three sides for Vocalion throughout the twenties. The quills add a distinctive touch to his fairly upbeat tunes as the perfect counterpart to his equally reedy tenor voice.



Thomas was best known for his classic "Bull Doze Blues" later covered by Canned Heat. Thomas was a mysterious figure about whom little is known in fact exact dates for his birth and death are not confirmed. Besides Thomas a few other rural artists would be recorded playing the quills in later years by John and Alan Lomax.

RAGTIME HENRY THOMAS ~ "BULLDOZE BLUES";


THE HARP-GUITAR ~ ALFRED KARNES;



The harp-guitar was one of the many odd hybrid instruments that was briefly popular in the late Victorian era. A large and unwieldy instrument the harp-guitar was a guitar with a extra large body topped with several extra strings that could be strummed to add extra body to the melody picked out or chorded on the fretboard. The harp-guitar was so large and bulky that shorter players actually had to prop it up on a stand. They were not an instrument that came from rural America but were instead a modification of the lutes used in Europe since the Renaissance. They probably made their way to rural audiences via vaudeville where odd instrumental acts were not unusual. A few photos from this era show the instrument. Too awkward and bulky to be really popular they could however be easily be bought through the Sears & Roebuck mail-order catalogs even in remote rural areas and they can occasionally still be found in antique shops.

ALFRED KARNES ~ "I'M BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND";



Alfred Karnes was one of the artists recorded at the legendary Bristol Sessions set up by producer Ralph Peer in 1927 which included such major figures as The Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers and Ernest Stoneman. Karnes was a singing preacher who had never recorded before. He showed up with his harp-guitar which he played using a distinct slapping sound while picking out the guitar melodies and using the harp strings to strum a backing. This gave his records the illusion of playing two guitars, an effect also made by Maybell Carter's innovative duel picking and strumming style. He also sung his gospel songs in a ringing stentorian baritone far removed from the nasal twang of the likes of Jimmy Rodgers or Charlie Poole. His best known songs were the rousing "I'm Bound For The Promised Land", "To The Work" and the mournful "Where We'll Never Grow Old". At the Bristol Sessions Karnes is believed to have played and sang backups with another singing preacher from Corbin, Kentucky named Ernest Phipps who recorded songs like "I Want To Go Where Jesus Is" backed by a stringband. However the details are sketchy and the audio evidence is unclear.

ALFRED KARNES ~ "TO THE WORK";


Given the excellence of his recordings Karnes could have single-highhandedly popularized the harp-guitar if he had chosen to seriously pursue a serious musical career. However unlike the stars of the Bristol sessions like Rodgers, Stoneman and the Carters, Karnes had little interest in doing so and after his promising start Karnes made a few other recordings before returning to preaching for the rest of his life. He died in 1958 just a few years to soon for the folk revival of the early sixties which would lead to the rediscovery of contemporaries like Maybell Carter, Roscoe Holcomb and Hobart Smith and it certainly would have done the same for Karnes and his harp-guitar.

ALFRED KARNES ~ "WHERE WE'LL NEVER GROW OLD";


Another more obscure group to use the harp-guitar was The Gibbs Stringband who recorded six sides for for Paramount Records in 1927 and six more in 1930 for Vocalion. The Gibbs Brothers were Bob (banjo), Joe (guitar) and Hugh (harp-guitar) with James Jackson (fiddle) and Sam Spencer (vocals). Their records are standard stringband fare, well done and lively, especially on "I'm Going Crazy". However, as with the Ernest Phipps records, in a group context it is difficult to tell the difference between a harp-guitar and regular guitar. Clearly the harp-guitar really shined as a solo instrument in the hands of someone with the power of Alfred Karnes. The Gibbs Band made no further records and dropped from sight.

THE GIBBS STRING BAND ~ "I'M GOING CRAZY";


THE GIBBS STRING BAND ~ "CHICKEN REEL";

As it was the instrument, too bulky to be truly popular, fell into obscurity. As an added note there exists an old photo of what appears to be old time country gospel group (note what appears to be bible in the older man's hands) named Leigh & Frieda Northrup and John & Maude Montgomery, featuring a fiddle and harp-guitar with a vocal duo. This clearly shows that at least a few other rural groups were using the harp-guitar at the time. Unfortunately the Northrup & Montgomery group apparently did not record so thus missing another chance to preserve this peculiar instrument.



UPDATE; After I posted this someone did some research on these folks and discovered they were indeed preachers who lived in Tillamook County, Oregon where they built Bethel Mission Church around 1916 which is probably when this photo was taken judging by the clothes. They probably never saw the inside of a studio or radio station sadly.

THE ZITHER vs THE DOLCEOLA; WASHINGTON PHILLIPS;

WASHINGTON PHILLIPS ~ "I AM BORN TO PREACH THE GOSPEL";


The zither is a multi-stringed harp-like instrument having a hollow wooden body to act as a sound box (unlike a true harp which has no body at all) having anywhere from a dozen two dozen strings. Unlike most folk instruments used in North America which came from the British Isles (except the banjo, which is African in origin), the zither came from central Europe. Specifically Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland and Scandinavia and was brought by the waves of immigrants who came from these lands starting in the mid-nineteenth century. There were numerous different types of zither each with different names, shapes and numbers of strings but the German type would become the standard with it's harp-like shape, usually around a foot and half by fourteen inches in size, with anywhere from 25 to 35 strings. They were invariably painted black with a floral design. These zithers were quite common and any Sears & Roebuck catalog of the 1900's and 1910's will always have a page or two of these models. They can often still be found cheaply in antique stores today. By the 1920's however they had fallen out of fashion.

A STANDARD MODEL ZITHER FROM THE 1910's;


A MORE ELABORATE MODEL FROM THE 1890's;
The zither's downfall can be traced to some of the usual suspects. It's gentle sound did not record well. It's delicate and intricate finger picking, while suitable for slow ballads, was completely unsuited to accompany the more aggressive dance tunes, rags and fiddle breakdowns that became popular. With their multiple strings they were also difficult to keep in tune. Essentially the zither was made obsolete by the invention of the autoharp, which kept the basic shape and size of the zither while adding the distinctive tonebars which allowed the instrument to be chorded and strummed vigorously enough to accompany other instruments. It was also therefore easier to play. Zithers were also victims of the xenophobia of World War One when all things German became taboo.

Washington Phillips was one of the most enigmatic Gospel/Blues singers of the 1920's. For decades little was known about his life and death, and nobody knew what he looked like. This is true for other figures like Blind Blake (of whom one photo exists, but little else is known) but Phillips is unique in that for decades nobody was even sure what instrument he played. The Texas based singer recorded a series of sides in 1927 and again in 1929 for Columbia records, and then dropped out of sight. On these unique records he sings in a gently drawling, somewhat quavering, tenor accompanied by an oddly chiming zither-like instrument which gives him an almost ethereal sound. Originally it was insisted that he was playing an odd instrument called a dolceola, an equally enigmatic and rarely recorded instrument of which few examples exist. The dolceola was basically a zither with a keyboard attached which made it sound like a tiny piano or harpsichord. They were only made for a few years and then discontinued and were seen mostly as a novelty instrument. Virtually the only person who is known for sure to have occasionally played around with one is fellow Texan Leadbelly so it's possible for Phillips to have had one. However the only real evidence he did so was the producer's notes for the original recordings. However eyewitness reports seem to indicate a zither and the issue became a matter of heated debate for years. However in the 1980's a photo surfaced in a Columbia Records catalog which showed Phillips holding two instruments which are clearly zithers. That should have ended the debate. But of course it did not and the powerful dolceola lobby is quite stubborn. Audio evidence is completely subjective as everyone listening to scratchy old 78's tends to hear something different. Some hear keyboard strikes, some do not. I can't tell but personally I prefer the zither theory on the grounds that;

WASHINGTON PHILLIPS ~ "KEYS TO THE KINGDOM";


1) The zither was a fairly common instrument in the turn of the century (albeit not amongst black musicians) and easy enough to find. Whereas the dolceola was always an obscure novelty instrument only available for a few years. It's always possible that Phillips could have found one of course, Leadbelly obviously did, but the odds are definitely with the zither.
2) All the eyewitness accounts about Phillips that have surfaced (of which there are admittedly only a few) consistently describe a zither type instrument played by strumming and plucking, not a keyboard instrument. That's not a mistaken impression anybody is likely to make. The only real evidence for a dolceola is that notation in the Columbia Record's files, which could have been made later and might indeed be a mistake.
3) Listening to the Leadbelly track, which everybody agrees is definitely a dolceoa, sounds quite different from the Phillips records.
4) Then there's that photo. After all what are the odds that Phillips happened to be sitting around when a photographer handed him two zithers, said "Here hold these and say cheese!" and then snapped a quick photo? And even if he did why would Columbia Records then choose that photo for their catalog if he played a completely different instrument?
Washington Phillips did not record after 1929 and for years it was assumed that he died in 1938 after being committed to an insane asylum. However recent research revealed that he actually returned to preaching and died in 1954, outliving the far more famous Leadbelly who died in 1949. Phillips' recordings represent a gentle and charming contrast to the Hellfire and Brimstone more commonly associated with rural gospel music. Some of his songs were later covered by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

WASHINGTON PHILLIPS ~ "TAKE YOUR BURDENS TO THE LORD";


Although not normally used by rural musicians (at least those who recorded) there is one other example of a group who clearly did use a classic German style zither. The Perry County Music Makers were Nonnie Smith Presson on zither and vocals, her brother Bulow Smith on vocals and guitar and occasionally a harmonica player, Nonnie was apparently the main songwriter. They recorded four sides for Vocalion Records in Knowville in 1930 in which Nonnie's zither is the main instrument and can therefore be compared to Washington Phillips. Nonnie and Phillips do playing the same basic instrument although she is much more fluid, not to mention louder. Unlike most of the other artists here Nonnie and Bulow. although never very successful in the 30's did live long enough to be rediscovered and and recorded two albums in the 1970's before she died in 1970.

THE PERRY COUNTY MUSIC MAKERS ~ "I'M SAD & BLUE";


THE REED ORGAN AND HARMONIUM;
The organ is the oldest mechanical instrument known to man, having existed since the late middle ages. These early organs were massive, honking monsters powered by large bellows operated by separate assistants. Clearly they were not portable and were limited to large churches and the occasional palace. By the late renaissance smaller, more portable models had been invented using hand bellows, basically like an accordion. The reed organ was the last pre-electronic organ developed and some were small enough to be reasonably portable, at least if you had a car. The harmonium was even more portable, being about twice the size of an accordion and operated much the same way. They were reasonably affordable and commonly sold through mail order. They took a while to catch on as recorded instruments however. Their sound, while easily loud enough, did not record well at first. Their rather blaring honk tended to overwhelm everything else and the notes seemed to blur together. By the 1920's these technical problems had mostly been worked out, however their were still cultural issues to restrict the use of organs in secular music. The organ had always been seen, at least in popular tastes, as a church instrument. Using the organ for blues, country, jazz or ragtime would have been seen almost as blasphemy. Fats Waller would make some jazz recordings in the 1940's but it was not until the 1950's that figures like Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff would score commercial hits using the organ, and even then there was controversy. Prior to then it was mostly limited to some gospel recordings, at least those denominations which allowed musical instruments at all. The harmonium was made obsolete by small electric organs although oddly they did catch on in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal (presumably brought by missionaries) where they are still quite common.



The Jubilee Gospel Team were a black trio from Georgia who made a series of recordings in 1928. Like most gospel groups at the time (and now for that matter) their repertoire is fairly limited. Basically they have two tempos; slow and slightly faster. Structurally the songs are typical call and response. They are fairly lively though and the organ adds depth to the records. A couple of records like "Dry Bones In The Valley" have an urgent string-of-consciousness sound. Little else is known about the group and what happened to them other than the probability they were from Virginia.

THE JUBILEE GOSPEL TEAM ~ "DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY";

Luther Magby was a gospel singer from from Georgia who made only two recordings in 1927. He used a harmonium in a fast paced rhythmic style that was well suited to his sharp, slurring voice. He is also backed by a single anonymous tambourine player. The results make for a lively and upbeat single although once again the songs do sound very similar and one wonders if Magby had any other more varied material in his repertoire. Unfortunately he made no more recordings and little more is known of him.

LUTHER MAGBY ~ "JESUS IS GETTING READY FOR THAT GREAT DAY";


One of the few non-religious groups to use the instruments were the obscure Reeves White County Revelers from White County, Arkansas and made up of three Reeves Brothers; Ike and Ira on fiddle, Lloyd on piano and vocals and Fred Rumble on guitar. Pianos were already somewhat odd in stringbands but not unknown, however when they arrived at Chicago in 1928 to record they discovered that the studio amazingly did not have a piano so Lloyd had to make do with a reed organ. The resulting singles are highly unusual in combining traditional stringband fare like "Arkansas Traveler" and "Shortning Bread" with the fiddles battling their way through a fog of blaring organ. Purist collectors of stringband 78's find this cacophony difficult to wade through but they do have a distinctive sound that somehow sounds even more out of time than other stringbands in spite of their more "modern" flourishes. They were brought back to the studio six weeks later to record a second series of more standard stringband tunes. The Ramblers then returned to Arkansas and made no further recordings although they remained active into the sixties.

THE REEVES WHITE COUNTY REVELERS ~ "RATTLER TREED A POSSUM";




THE LUTE-DULCIMER ~ JOHN JACOB NILES;
John Jacob Niles (1892 - 1980) is not normally seen as a rural performer, he was a serious musicologist with a degree from Cincinatti University as well as studying in France who did an extensive study of traditional ballads. However he had genuine rural southern roots having been born in Kentucky, who had been performing traditional ballads since childhood. He played an odd version of the Mountain Dulcimer he made himself. The Mountain Dulcimer was a simplified version of various strummed zithers brought to America by immigrants from The British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia. These instruments had various numbers of strings and names like the hummel (Swiss), kantele (Finnish), langleik (Norwegian) and the scheitholt (German). The Mountain Dulcimer came from Appalachia and had either three or four strings grouped in sets of two, similar to the German scheitholt. Held in the lap or on a table and played with a vigorous strumming motion, the first set of strings were fretted like a guitar using a wooden slider while the second set of strings were unfretted and acted as drones giving the instrument a buzzing echo effect. Easy to play and tune it was also useful to accompany a ballad singer or a string band although it lacks the complexity for a good solo. In spite of these advantages it was never popular as a recorded instrument, partly for cultural reasons. The Dulcimer's very ease of play made it popular with women singers but thus not popular with men who preferred the more flashy fiddles, banjos, guitars or mandolins.

JOHN JACOB NILES ~ "GO AWAY FROM MY WINDOW";


From childhood John Jacob Niles designed and built his own unique instruments which combined a body based on the old European lute with the basic string setup of the Mountain Dulcimer for a unique instrument that was at least twice the size of the usual dulcimer. The lute was an old European stringed instrument that dated back to the Middle Ages when it became the choice instrument of minstrels and troubadours. It had a large oval body and a thick neck and a distinctive bent head and multiple strings played with intricate finger plucking creating a delicate sound. The lute was fiendishly difficult to play or keep in tune and not suitable to play fast dances or accompany a string band. By the late restoration period it was falling out fashion to be replaced by far more versatile and user-friendly guitars and mandolins. Paintings of the era often show a musician happily playing a guitar while a lute sits unused in a corner, dusty and forlorn. They were never common in America but the studious Niles could have easily seen pictures of one and used it as a model for his homemade version of the smaller mountain dulcimer.
Niles researched old Anglo-Celtic ballads popular in his Kentucky home and sang them in a breathless, ghostly tenor that seemed enveloped in the mists of time beyond the mountains of Appalachia to the foggy Highlands of Scotland, the sunny meadows of England, the hills of Wales and the fields of Ireland. His dulcimer playing was rudimentary at best, often little more than fragmentary strumming that could barely be heard. By the time he started recording in 1938 his style was already so archaic as to be positively prehistoric, even in Appalachia, and his small audience was mostly made of young, university educated urban folkies in the late 1950's and early 60's folk revival. Too offbeat and weird to have ever found a larger audience he nonetheless influenced the next generation of folkies like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Jean Richie, the latter of whom would popularize the dulcimer with a far more dexterous style. He continued playing up his death.

BLIND MAMIE FOREHAND & HER HAND CYMBALS ~ "I WOULDN'T MIND DYING";


Mamie Forehand was a gospel singer along with her guitarist husband A.C. who recorded two singles (along with a couple of out-takes) in Memphis in 1927. They were apparently rather elderly and their origins are unknown but were presumably from Tennessee or neighboring Arkansas or Missouri. Tamborines were quite common in black Baptist and Pentecostal churches but somewhere along the road Mamie Forehand found a pair of hand cymbals, an instrument known from the Orient and rarely, if ever, used in rural music black or white. The cymbals were small, delicate and tuned to a specific pitch and were played like Spanish castanets. They are not used with the same staccato urgency however and instead used with a softly played simple rhythm that is barely audible on the tracks sung by A.C., especially given his guitar and harmonica playing. The tracks sung by Mamie are softer and with less backing from A.C. and thus her cymbals are more clearly heard. The Forehand's records are gentle and intimate and like those of Washington Phillips are reminder of the softer side of gospel. Unlike Phillips their records were, and remain obscure and the Forehand's subsequent whereabouts are unknown but it's safe to assume they're long gone.

THE KAZZOO ~ JAMES WIGGANS;
Normally seen as a child's toy, the kazzoo was occasionally used by blues and country musicians,both black and white, as a sort of novelty version of the harmonica. It recorded reasonably well and unlike the harmonica it required no skill and could be played hands free. It quickly fell out out of fashion to be replaced by the far more expressive, and far less goofy sounding, harmonica. James Wiggans was a piano playing bluesman who recorded a few records for Paramount Records including the original version of "Keep A Knockin" later covered in a classic version by Little Richard. Kazoos were also used by a few other black artists particularly on Paramount Records.

JAMES "BOODLE IT" WIGGINS" ~ "KEEP A KNOCKIN";


THE STOVEPIPE;
Jug Bands and other rural songsters, black and white, were known for making use of a number of improvised and Jerry-rigged homemade instruments as the iconic Moonshine Jugs, Washboards, Washtub Bass, Musical Saw, and Spoons. In fact all of these are still in some use today in some form. One of the oddest improvised instruments to have a brief heyday was the stovepipe. In spite of it's rather intimidating name which suggests something to be used by Cabaret Voltaire or S.P.K, the stovepipe was simply a length of stove pipe tapered at the ends which the player hummed, blew, whistled or stuttered into rather like a combination of the jug and kazoo. The results were the limited, monotonous and downright silly sounding, it's even less expressive than the kazoo. Still at least two black songsters chose to not only specialize in the instrument but made it their trademark. Sweet Papa Stovepipe who recorded for Paramount Records (of course) in 1926 and his rival Stovepipe Number 1 who recorded for Paramount, Columbia and OKeh in the 1920's. Both were older than the usual bluesman and their materiel suggests they started out in the 1910's which is probably when the stovepipe had it's day, such as it was. Stovepipe Number 1 (real name Sam Jones) was fairly versatile recording not only solo but also with a band from 1924 to 1930.

STOVEPIPE NUMBER 1 ~ "A WOMAN GETS TIRED OF THE SAME MAN";

Lesser Known Artists From The Bristol Sessions

The 1927 recording sessions for Victor Records in Bristol, Tennessee are legendary as the single most important event in the history of Country Music, no less than Johnny Cash once referred to them as "The Big Bang Of Country Music". These sessions did indeed lead to the discovery of the two most important figures of Old Time Country Music; Jimmy Rodgers and The Carter Family. The small city of Bristol is a now major music shrine on a par with the Ryman Auditorium, Sun Studios or Motown Studios. Calling the sessions the beginning of Country Music is a complete oversimplification of course. By 1927 Fiddling John Carson, Eck Robertson, Harry McClintock, Uncle Dave Macon and Ernest Stoneman were already successful recording artists and Vernon Dalhart had already sold a jaw-dropping seven million copies of "The Prisoner's Song", still one of the biggest selling records of all time.




Accordingly when Victor Records scout Ralph Peer set up operations in Bristol, Tennessee, a small but important city in the area bordering Virginia and within easy driving range to West Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky and sent out advertisements announcing auditions, he already assumed he would find some potential hits. One of the featured artists, Ernest Stoneman had already seen some recording success while the Carter Family had already auditioned once before only to have A.P.Carter walk out in a dispute after it was suggested that they should add a fiddle player. Jimmy Rodgers was part of a group called the Tenneva Ramblers who had a local reputation but had not recorded. As it happened the Ramblers broke up just before the sessions and Rodgers ended up recording solo. The Carters, Jimmy Rodgers and Stoneman would each score million selling hits and help establish country music as a serious business rather than a series of novelty hits. The fates of Jimmy Rodgers and the Carters are well known; with Rodgers dying of tuberculosis in 1933 and the Carters having an influential career into the 1940's (Maybelle carried on into the 70's after Sara and AP left) and beyond for Mother Maybelle. Ernest Stoneman is now less well known but he would actually have the longest career of all, recording well into the 1960's by which time he was known as Pop Stoneman and was backed by his beautiful daughters. He died in 1968. Henry Whitter was another well known country music veteran who had been recording successfully as early as 1923 with a number of hits including the original version of "Wreck Of The Old 97" and "Lost John". After the Bristol sessions he teamed up with blind fiddler BG Grayson for some successful singles including the classic "9 Pound Hammer" until Grayson was killed in a car wreck in 1930. After that Whitter would slow down and not record again. He died of complications from diabetes in 1941.

But what of the other artists who recorded at the Bristol Sessions? Here are some personal faves;

ALFRED KARNES ~ "BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND";


ALFRED KARNES ~ Not all of those artists were full-time musicians. Karnes was a singing Baptist preacher from Corbin, Kentucky who drove down to Bristol with his harp-guitar and some gospel songs. The harp-guitar was an odd and unwieldy hybrid instrument built on a large guitar body with a second set of strings which were unfretted and could give the illusion of two guitars.



A CONTEMPORARY PHOTO OF A RURAL STRINGBAND WITH A HARP-GUITAR

The harp-guitar had a brief vogue in the early twentieth century along with all sorts of other stringed instruments of various shapes and sizes. It was too bulky to be truly popular however (it was so large that some shorter players had to use a stand to prop it on) and it was already archaic by the time Karnes showed up to record. Karnes played with a distinctive string snapping style which gave a percussive drive to his soaring, stentorian baritone. He recorded thirteen sides, all gospel, and all excellent, including the rousing "Bound For The Promised Land" (later covered by Hank Williams sr) and "To The Work" and the soaring ballad "Where We'll Never Grow Old". He also sang and played backup to Ernest Phipps on his Bristol recordings. More on Phipps in a bit

ALFRED KARNES ~ "TO THE WORK";


Karnes certainly had the talent and a distinctive enough sound to have made a real name for himself. However Karnes was simply not interested in a musical career, preferring to return to the pulpit where he would remain for the rest of his life. He died in 1958 just a few years too soon for the Folk revival of the early sixties which certainly have led to a rediscovery of his work as it did for others of his era.

ALFRED KARNES ~ "WHERE WE'LL NEVER GROW OLD";


B.F. SHELTON ~ When Karnes drove down to Bristol he brought with him Shelton, a singing banjo playing friend who worked as a barber in Corbin, Kentucky and had reportedly served time in a prison where Karnes had preached. B.F.(Frank) Shelton recorded a few songs including "Oh Molly Dear" a version of a popular song already recorded as "East Virginia Blues" as well as a version of another well known song "Pretty Polly" which was later covered by Clarence Ashley, The Stanley Brothers, The Byrds and The Sadies among others. Shelton played in a stark modal style quite different from the rapid fire failing of the likes of Uncle Dave Macon, an effect enhanced by his ghostly tenor. Shelton made some other recordings but preferred to stay in the area rather than become a full-time musician. He did some more recordings a few years later which were not released. Like Karnes he also died just prior to the Folk Revival in 1963.

B.F. SHELTON ~ "OH MOLLY DEAR";


BLIND ALFRED REED ~ Unlike Karnes and Shelton, Reed was a professional singer who had already built up a local reputation before Ralph Peer invited him down to Bristol. Reed was fiddler and singer from Princeton, West Virginia who sang a mixture of songs traditional gospel, topical and protest songs he wrote himself. Reed usually had a few back-up musicians and brought a guitarist named Arthur Wyrick to the sessions. Musically Reed's songs are pretty conventional string band fare and not especially noteworthy, unlike those of Karnes and Shelton, however Reed did have a strong voice and good songs. The songs at this session included "Walking In The Way With Jesus" and "Wreck Of The Virginian".

BLIND ALFRED REED ~ "WALKING IN THE WAY WITH JESUS";


Reed would return to the local circuit and made further recordings including the better known protest songs "How Can A Man Stand Such Times And Live" (later covered by Ry Cooder) and "Why Do You Bob Your Hair Girls". This combination of conservative Christianity and political populism may seem strange now, but in the era of William Jennings Bryan, who was very popular in the region, such politics were quite common. Like many other rural artists Reed's recording career ended when the Great Depression hit and he was reduced to becoming a street corner preacher until banned by city bylaws around 1937. He died, reportedly of malnutrition, in abject poverty in 1956. Like Karnes, Reed also just missed the Folk revival that certainly would have helped him.

BLIND ALFRED REED ~ "HOW CAN A POOR MAN STAND SUCH TIMES AND LIVE";


ERNEST PHIPPS ~ Another singing preacher from Corbin, Kentucky, but unlike Karnes, Phipps was more of a full time musician with a backing band. Phipps sang with a Hellfire and brimstone style and included backup singers along with his backing stringband, which (at least at these sessions) included Alfred Karnes. This partnership is a little odd since Phipps was a preacher in a Pentecostal Holiness Church while Karnes was a Baptist. While the rest of Phipps band on these sessions are unknown it's also possible BF Shelton played with him as well since he is known to have driven down with Alfred Karnes. Originally from Gray, Kentucky, Phipps was probably not too different from other white Southern Gospel groups of the era although they are praised for the power of his singing. His recordings are also notable since such music was rather under-recorded. His Bristol sessions included the rousing "I Want To Go Where Jesus Is". Phipps continued on with his career including more recordings until he died in 1963.

ERNEST PHIPPS ~ "I WANT TO GO WHERE JESUS IS";


THE JOHNSON BROTHERS ~ An early example of the brother duos that would become a fixture in country music with names like The Carlisle Bros, Delmores, Monroes, Louvins, Stanleys, Lillys, and ultimately the Everly Brothers. Paul Johnson sang and played steel guitar while Paul backed him on guitar. Their songs are slow mournful ballads based on traditional sentimental Victorian themes like "A Passing Policeman" (based on an 1894 song) and "The Jealous Sweetheart". On the latter song they are accompanied by an unknown musician playing the bones, a simple percussion instrument used since ancient times, particularly with black musicians. It is assumed that this was El Watson, a black harmonica player who Charles Johnson would in turn back on his own single, a harmonica showcase called "Potlicker Blues" which was recorded the same day. The Johnsons, from nearby Happy Valley, were actually well known entertainers in the area having been regulars on the local vaudeville, minstrel and medicine show circuit and had already attended a recoding session in New York so they were known to Peer before the showed up in Bristol. However their singles were not notably successful("A Passing Policeman" was not even released at the time) and the Johnsons would drop out of sight with their ultimate fates unknown. El Watson is even more obscure. Although he is assumed to have been black, it is not even known for sure if he was. After Bristol Watson disappeared from the historical records entirely.

THE JOHNSON BROS ~ THE JEALOUS SWEETHEART";


THE ALCOA QUARTET ~ While the rest of the musicians at Bristol played various types of rural music both religious and secular, the Alcoa Quartet were a slick professional singing group from Alcoa, Tennesse made up of the brothers J.E and J.H. Thomas and W.B. Hitch and John Wells, who were already well known as professional musicians who performed at state fairs and conventions as well as on the radio. Like some of the other Bristol performers they had already recorded as well. Their repertoire was mostly religious in nature like "I'm Redeemed" and is a good example of a vocal tradition that had been popular since Victorian times. They would go on to a long career performing on radio as well as later backing the young Roy Acuff among others, becoming an inspiration to future quartets like The Blackwood Brothers, The Jordinaires, The Oak Ridge Boys and The Statler Bros (who later covered "I'm Reedemed").

THE ALCOA QUARTET ~ "I'M REDEEMED";

Prof. Kitzle's Time Machine Profile; Wilmer Watts

Wilmer Watts (1897 - 1943) Was a an Old Time Country Music singer, player and bandleader who recorded a series of 78 records for Paramount Records in the 1920's. Although not as well known as fellow North Carlina singer/banjo player Charlie Poole, who has undergone a revival over the last few years, Watts is for my money a more interesting artist with a crude but distinctive style.




Born in Mount Tabor (now Tabor City) a market town in Columbus County, between 1896 and 1898. After he moved to the city of Belmont where he worked as a worker in textile factories. Having learned several instruments including banjo, fiddle, guitar, dobro, autoharp, harmonica, musical saw and drums he became a semi-professional musician around 1921 and made his first recordings in January or Feburary 1927 as a duo with local guitarist Charlie Wilson (1900 - ?) with a single entitled "The Sporting Cowboy" which was not released at the time although it was later rerecorded. With a new trio under the name of Wilmer Watts and His Lonely Eagles they recorded six sides for Paramount Records in 1927 using a line-up that included Charles Freshour (1900 - 1959) on guitar and the then unusual steel guitar which was played by Wilson. In 1929 he returned to Paramount's New York studios. This time Wilson was replaced on steel guitar by Palmer Rhyne (1904 - 1967), a fellow factory worker friend of Watts. These sessions resulted in fourteen sides.

RECORDINGS AND MUSICAL STYLE;




Wilmer's banjo playing was quite simple and repetitive, staying to mid-tempo songs and quite different from the more complex ragtime influenced picking of Charlie Poole or blues singer Papa Charlie Jackson or the fast choppy style of Uncle Dave Macon. Unlike most of his contemporaries Watts' musical influences seem to be based mostly on traditional Anglo-Celtic sources along with blues, ragtime, or minstrelsy and his songs have a distinctive droning modal quality compared to those of his North Carolina contemporary Charlie Poole. In his lyrical themes (at least in his recorded works) Watts largely avoided traditional folk songs and focused on more modern themes ranging from blues to a few political protest songs usually in a mocking vein similar to those of song writer Joe Hill collected in the "Little Red Songbook" of the I.W.W.




Among Watts' best known recordings are;






"Cotton Mill Blues"; a bluesy protest song about the plight of factory workers, based on a 1900 poem "A Factory Rhyme" by George Stutts.

"COTTON MILL BLUES" (an explanation of the song with cover versions, done by a descendent of Posey Rorrer, who played with the better known fellow North Carolina singer/banjoist Charlie Poole )


"Been On The Job Too Long"; a murder ballad later covered by such artists as Leadbelly and Bob Dylan under the title of "Duncan and Brady".

"BEEN ON THE JOB TOO LONG";

"Walk Right In Belmont"; the first known recorded version of "Midnight Special", a later standard later covered by Leadbell>, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Mac Wiseman. This single was originally released under the name "Watts & Wilson" and later through Paramount's subsidiary label Broadway Records under the name "Watts & Wiggins". Note this song is not to be confused with the Gus Cannon song "Walk Right In".

"WALK RIGHT IN BELMONT";


"Banjo Sam"; an especially repetitive modal song with surrealistic lyrics later covered by Pete Seeger.

"BANJO SAM";


"Knocking Down Casey Jones"; a version of one of the many tribute songs then common to famous train engineer Casey Jones. This song is notably more heroic than Joe Hill's I.W.W. version.

"KNOCKING DOWN CASEY JONES";


"Fighting in The War With Spain"; an anti-war song mocking the Spanish-American War in which Watts makes light of the war and portrays himself as a deserter.

"FIGHTING IN THE WAR WITH SPAIN";


"The Fate Of Rhoda Sweetin"; A murder ballad sung and reportedly written by Charles Freshour about his own sister. This single was credited to Charles Freshour and The Lonely Eagles.

"THE FATE OF RHODA SWEETIN";


"She's A Hard Boiled Rose"; A version of a Tin Pan Alley song later used in another version by stripper Gypsie Rose Lee.

"SHE'S A HARD BOILED ROSE";


"Charles Guitaw"; A ballad (with a misspelled title) about Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield. This song was also covered by Kelly Harrell.

"CHARLES GUITAW";


"CHAIN GANG BLUES";





LATER CAREER;

After the 1927 sessions Wilson left the group and was replaced by Palmer Rayne for the 1929 sessions. The Great Depression ended the recordings of many rural artists and Paramount Records went out of business in 1935 so Watts made no further recordings. He returned to Belmont were he continued working as a textile worker, tenant farmer and gas station owner as well as a part-time musician albeit without the Lonely Eagles who broke up. Watts often gigged as a one-man-band playing as many as five instruments at once. In 1931 Watts won a talent contest for his act awarded by Uncle Dave Macon. Later from the mid nineteen-thirties he formed a Southern Gospel group with his daughters as the Watts Singers who performed two regular shows on the radio but did not record. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer and retired in 1939 dying in 1944 at the age of approximately 47. His daughters continued as the Watts Singers with one of their husbands replacing Wilmer into the 1960's but did not record.

OTHER MEDIA;




The only photo of Watts commonly known (showing him holding a fiddle rather than his usual banjo) was reproduced by the artist R. Crumb for a collection of trading cards of old time country musicians.

Music At The 1963 March On Washington

2014 marked fifty years since the Freedom Summer which followed the iconic March On Washington. This year brought the release of "Selma" about the only slightly less iconic Freedom March To Selma. So to wrap up Black History Month I thought I'd take a quick look at the musical artists that played at the March On Washington. Martin Luther King's speech is the one thing everybody remembers but there were also a few singers who added their voices to the day.

Joan Baez ~ Baez had been the star of the Folk scene since her breakout at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 including a coveted "Time Magazine" cover. Besides her musical success she was also a committed supporter of the Civil Rights Movement having gone down, by herself, to Clinton, Tennessee to escort black students seeking to integrate the high school there, protecting them from an angry mob with her very presence. The mob backed down even though she was alone. She more than earned her stripes and her presence at the march made sense. She was the first singer to perform and helped the crowd to settle down and set the proper mood for the rally to come. Baez would never waver in her commitment to social justice, including going to jail for protesting the Vietnam War and Apartheid several times and putting herself in the line of fire, literally, in Bosnia. At the March she sang "We Shall Overcome" and "Oh Freedom" along with a duet with Bob Dylan.

JOAN BAEZ ~ "WE SHALL OVERCOME";


Bob Dylan ~ Dylan was considered a bright young star and the romantic foil to the Folk Princess Baez who he often sang with. Baez probably insisted on bringing along the often remote and diffident Dylan to the rally for his own good. In later years he would distance himself from the folk scene, both musically by plugging in and embracing Rock & Roll, and politically flirting with Christianity, Judaism and apolitical cynicism. At the March he sang "When the Ship Comes In", as a duet with Baez. Dylan also performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game",

BOB DYLAN & JOAN BAEZ ~ "WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN";


Peter, Paul & Mary ~ Although they are best remembered today for "Puff The Magic Dragon" they were major crossover stars of the early to mid sixties with several hits. Considering their safe, all-American image and friendly songs it's a little surprising that they were considered rather controversial among folk purists for what some considered their overly polished versions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger songs. Besides their star power they were also vocal supporters of the Civil Rights Movement and played at other rallies so their presence here to help keep the crowd happy was an obvious move. They would continue to have hits well into the Psychedelic Sixties even though by end of the decade they were considered distinctly conservative in musical terms. At the March they sang "If I Had a Hammer" and Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".

PETER, PAUL & MARY ~ "IF I HAD A HAMMER";


Odetta ~ A respected figure in the folk scene as well as a vocal supporter of the movement, and one of the few politically oriented black folk singers. Active as a recording artist since the mid-fifties she was cited as an influence by white artists like Baez, Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary. She did the classic version of "Take This Hammer" but at the rally she sang "I'm On My Way". She had a long career dying in 2008 at the age of 77.

ODETTA ~ "WATERBOY";


Mahalia Jackson ~ The Queen Of Gospel was a powerful figure in the Civil Rights Movement with it's roots in the black churches, and was the favorite of Martin Luther King in particular. She sang at many of his speeches to warm up the crowd with her powerful voice and he would have wanted her there to set the mood for her speech. She sang "How I Got Over". She then in fact stood behind him during his speech, goading him on as in a sermon in a black church. She would continue to play the role of warm-up for King at other rallies in years to come. Jackson was a huge influence on soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight. She died in 1972.

MAHALIA JACKSON ~ "HOW I GOT OVER";


Marion Anderson ~ A respected opera singer for many years Anderson was at the rally as a nod to historical symbolism. In 1939 Anderson gained natural attention when the Daughters Of The American Revolution banned her from singing at one of their functions at Constitution Hall . An outraged first lady Eleanor Roosevelt then responded by inviting her to sing at the Lincoln Monument to far more attention than she would have had if the DAR had not banned her. Anderson later became a Civil Rights Ambassador for the United Nations while continuing her career as an opera singer at the Met. She was awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 1963. Although she was an opera singer at the March she sang the gospel standard "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands". She died in 1993.

MARION ANDERSON ~ "MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE";


Josh White ~ A blues and gospel singer from the 1930's to the 40's, White was considered a possible cross-over star in the 40's and early 50's. He was handsome and charming with a smooth voice capable of making the blues palatable to the larger white mainstream. However his political activities harmed his career. Like Paul Robeson (and Leadbelly, who died in 1949) White became a vocal supporter of left wing radical causes including civil rights, he also became a supporter of the Communist Party. Like Robeson he became a target of the FBI and McCarthy's Red Scare. He found himself largely banned from radio and TV with shows cancelled in the prime of his career. Unlike the defiant Robeson, White caved in the pressure and largely avoided controversy and was allowed to eventually continue performing as the Red Scare petered out in the late fifties. By that time however White's style had been surpassed by rock and roll and smoother singers like Nat King Cole. White moved to Britain where he hosted a TV show. He returned to America and his defacto blacklisting was ended in 1963 when President Kennedy invited him to perform on a televised show.

JOSH WHITE ~


The Freedom Singers ~ Unlike the other musical artists at the March the Freedom Singers were not actually a professional singing group but rather a group of black students who were part of the Student Non-Violent Co-Coordinating Committee who often sang at rallies with a mixture of gospel songs with political undertones. As such they were quite familiar to Martin Luther King who was a fan. Their performance at the March was one of the highlights of their short career. They sang "We Shall Not Be Moved". After the March they sang at the Newport Folk Festival (with Dylan, Baez and Peter, Paul & Mary) and recorded a well reviewed album before breaking up although a reconstituted version calling itself The New Freedom Singers continued on.

THE FREEDOM SINGERS ~ 'WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED"


Note that while Harry Belefonte was a prominent organizer of the rally and in the movement in general as well as being a highly successful singer he did not sing at the rally.

Somewhat predictably there has since been some criticism of the rally for not having enough black singers present (notably by Dick Gregory) but as we can see there was a five-to-three ratio, that's assuming Dylan was originally invited by organizers rather than by Baez. Such carping leaves aside two questions; firstly the issue of time. As a condition of allowing the rally in the first place organizers had to promise to be in at sunrise and out by sundown, no excuses. And they kept to that schedule tightly. Although music, both gospel and folk, were long considered important parts of the movement there was not the luxury to have much time set aside for music at this rally.

More interesting is the question of exactly who they would have otherwise invited if they had the time. Some obvious possibles include;
Paul Robeson ~ A towering figure of the civil rights movement since the 1930's, Robeson also had a devoted black following. Robeson had been an international star as a singer, actor and football player who's had a long and very active involvement with political causes for which he had paid a heavy price. Long a vocal supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, Peace Movement, Labour Unions, Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and freedom of speech Robeson became a supporter of the American Communist Party (although never actually a member) and remained so even at the height of the Red Scare. He had been the target of brick throwing mobs, police harassment, targeting by the FBI and Joe McCarthy, had his passport cancelled, shows cancelled, blacklisted by Hollywood and Broadway and banned from TV and radio. He had played for hundreds of rallies over the years, including some in defiance of Jim Crow laws. He would have been an obvious, if not the obvious person to speak and sing at the rally. However what he had suffered a complete nervous breakdown a few years earlier along with panic attacks and a suicide attempt, by 1964 he was in total seclusion at his home from which he never left, certainly not to perform. Although the public would not have known much of this rally, organizers certainly would have. He watched the rally on television from his room. He died there in 1976.

PAUL ROBESON ~


Nina Simone ~ The jazz/soul singer known for her deeply personal and political songs and her mournful voice, Simone was a vocal advocate of civil rights who performed at several rallies but she sometimes she dismissed non-violence as a tactic and called for revolution and self-defense which would have been enough to get her dis-invited to sing at this particular rally where the organizers had promised the White House there would be no incendiary rhetoric. Like some other jazz figures she was happier in Europe and in 1970 she had moved to France (escaping a possible arrest for tax evasion after she refused to pay taxes in protest of the Vietnam War) having spent much time there so she may not have been available even if she had been invited which she probably was not. She continued on with her career, focusing mostly in Europe until her death in 2003.

NINA SIMONE ~ "TO LOVE SOMEBODY";


JB Lenoir ~ A blues singer from the 1950's and sixties and one of the few to sing political songs. Having a light tenor voice, was a talented guitar player and possessing plenty of style and stage presence Lenoir had recorded for Chess Records and had a small but devoted following in Europe but he was never a major success in America and was not a real activist so it's doubtful the rally organizers ever considered him. He died suddenly in 1967.

JB LENOIR ~ "THE WHALE HAS SWALLOWED ME";


Louis Armstrong ~ Modern Jazz historians like to claim Jazz as a force for progressive social change and it's true that Jazz probably did play a role in encouraging racial integration, as did Rock & Roll. However revisionist histories notwithstanding the blunt truth is that most Jazz performers were studiously apolitical or indifferent and played little role in the Civil Rights battles. Pretty much the only public exceptions (which Jazz historians always point to) were; Billie Holiday's anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit", Charles Mingus' "Fables Of Faubus" and few more oblique instrumentals by Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and later Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders and The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (on the other hand Stan Kenton would actively campaign for Barry Goldwater and George Wallace). Besides these there were some very direct public statements by Louis Armstrong calling out the government for allowing segregation. In spite of this Armstrong was not considered a major Civil Rights figure and mostly stayed away from controversy. His usual public personal as a grinning, shuffling, sweating, eager-to-please entertainer offended many activists as an embarrassing throwback to earlier times. The workaholic Armstrong also toured heavily and was probably not easily available even if he had been considered.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG IN AFRICA;

The SUN Never Shines On TV

It's schadenfreude time as SUN TV shut down for good this past Friday morning at 5 AM when the screen suddenly went dark and was then replaced with the Sun logo and the caption "Sun News Network is no longer available, at the discretion of the programmer. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you will continue to value all the channels included in your package." The station's website has also been replaced with the Sun logo and the links are broken. There was no public warning that this shutdown was imminent, some Sun staff actually found out by news reports from other networks, some of whom couldn't resist a few tactful choruses of "I told you so".

LAST MINUTES OF SUN NEWS;


(NOTE; This was probably a prerecorded segment as it makes no mention of their impending death knell and even has promos to two shows which will never see the light of day)

Setting aside old enemies like the CBC and the Toronto Star, even the conservative leaning press were not terribly sympathetic. The Globe & Mail piled on with "Five fatal flaws that led to the Sun News Network's demise" and The National Post's Jonathan Kay chipped in with "Why Sun News never had a fighting chance". Kay blamed the network's out-of-touch far-right demagoguery and did not offer many excuses for their failure but did ask for sympathy for the staff, but more on that later. First the facts ma'am;






SUN News started up in April 2011 with the stated intent of offering a right-wing "alternative" to the supposedly "liberal media bias" with "hard hitting commentary", (a.k.a. "bloviating, blowhard assholes") like Ezra Levant, Micheal Coren and Krista Erikson. The network quickly attracted plenty of attention with their often wildly, and at times comically, slanted reporting and the hysterical and paranoid race-baiting, from Ezra Levant in particular, as well as for the Network's never ending jihad against the CBC and arts funding in general. SUN News quickly earned itself the derisive name FOX North. However while SUN TV got plenty of attention one thing they did not get was viewers. The ratings ranged from the embarrassingly anemic to the laughably pathetic, averaging a mere few thousand a day, even during prime-time. That's less than a decent Campus/Community radio station (as long as it's not run by Ryerson University). Literally the only two shows they ever had that got decent ratings was a celebrity boxing match wherein an audience of horrified Conservatives watched as Justin Trudeau pounded the snot out of Conservative bully boy (and future probable felon) Senator Patrick Brazeau and the abortive Ford Brothers Show which was cancelled after one episode. No viewers means no advertisers which means no money and SUN TV reported (according to CRTC documents), loses of $17 million in 2012 and $14.8 million in 2013.

Right from the start there were problems. To begin with the whole thing just looked ugly. The studio was a garishly eye assaulting blast of neon and dayglo, like an episode of a "Sports Center" shot from the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise in a 1970's casino slot-machine floor. Harsh lighting made everybody look like mannequins in a Young Conservatives K-Mart store. They managed to achieve the look of a student amateur production with none of the charm.

The ugliness of SUN TV's very appearance was nothing compared to the ugliness of it's content. All of their onair talent was at best made up of smug blowhards reciting boilerplate right wing talking points, like FOX News's Sean Hannity in a cheap suit. But the need for SUN News to get attention by saying outrageous things or to create a "star" to be Canada's Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, Glen Beck or Anne Coulter led the likes of Krista Erikson to make a complete fool of herself with that infamous Margie Gillis ambush interview. Worse it led to the misguided attempt to build their foundation on the reckless, cynical, hateful, narcissistic pile of rancid trollshit that is Ezra Levant. SUN TV clearly counted on him being their marquee name but he was so over-the-top offensive and repellent that he quickly became more trouble than he was worth. His increasingly nasty rantings led to numerous complaints to the CRTC and Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (two of which SUN lost), a libel suit (which he again lost), and even a police investigation for hate crimes, which, rightwing paranoia notwithstanding, is quite rare. That one forced Levant to issue a reluctant apology after first bravely vowing he would never back down. In 2013 Levant aired a report (one of many) attacking Native protesters including some by name who turned to not even be in Canada at the time. Once again he refused to back down until losing yet another CSBC complaint. This past fall Levant did a typically unhinged personal attack on Justin Trudeau and his family which provoked a full Liberal Party boycott of the network until SUN News did a humiliating backpeddle and issued another apology. Levant topped himself after fatal the Lac Megantique train crash when he blamed "Native or Environmental Protesters" for derailing the train and committing mass murder. And what was the source of this gripping news flash? The shit between his ears. Most recently Levant followed that up with a rant claiming that Muslim students were boycotting Remembrance Day cuz they hate Canada and Freedom based on a memo (sent by one of his patriotic "sources") from a school board in Essex County. This memo actually tried to deal with parent's concerns about safety after the Ottawa attack and had nothing to do with any Muslim boycott. That led to yet another CSBC complaint that SUN would have most certainly lost if it had been heard before they went belly up.

To make things worse SUN lost it's free over-the-air signal within a year when it turned out they hadn't properly applied for such a signal in the first place. That was entertaining. That also left them relying purely on cable access.






So what do you do if you are a rabidly right-wing corporation who is morally opposed to "big government picking winners and losers" or "bailouts"? Why; blame the CRTC of course and demand a bailout for themselves. Duh.

Accordingly in 2013 SUN TV shocked many of their ideological soulmates when they applied to the CRTC to demand "mandatory carriage", a complicated scheme whereby all cable subscribers would be forced to buy (and pay for) SUN TV whether they wanted to or not. "Mandatory Carriage" is usually given to channels that serve a public interest such as the Weather Channel or described video for the blind, or for channels that reach under-served communities like aboriginal, multi-cultural or francophones. Most people who are not right wing assholes have no problem with this. But it certainly was never intended to bailout a for-profit corporation. And that's not even taking into account the embarrassing fact that SUN News had a loud and well documented history of opposing the very idea of "mandatory carriage" from their very inception. In fact during their initial license application process SUN News had explicitly denied that they ever had any intention of applying for such a socialist program. SUN TV head Kory Tenekye went so far as to state that any suggestions to the contrary were "slanderous lies". Once SUN TV had gotten it's license they went on a slash-and-burn campaign against such subsidies and arts funding, notably with ambush interviews such as Ezra Levant inviting an obscure indie band called Living With Lions only to browbeat them for accepting a small arts grant. The shell-shocked teens sheepishly returned the grant, so score one victory for "The Little Guys" I guess. This led Krista Erikson to up the ante by inviting on award winning modern dancer Margie Gillis on the pretext of discussing her work only to harangue her about arts funding (an issue Gillis is not an authority on, much less in charge of) in a bullying interview full of ad-homminum attacks and right-wing soundbites. That one so disgusted people that they filed a record number of complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. After these appetizers SUN TV upped the ante and went on the warpath against their real enemy; the CBC, in a series of attacks on the CBC's funding. This even leading to Teneyke testifying in government hearings on the CBC. Finally having enough of these attacks the CBC responded with an expose of it's own on the fact that SUN News through it's parent company Quebecor was the beneficiary of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies every year, far in excess of the penny-ante grants given to the hated artists SUN TV targeted. That one hurt SUN News where it would hurt any media organization; attacking their basic integrity and honesty. Kory Tenekye reacted with outrage, threatening a lawsuit, but then quietly backed down. By that time he must have known that SUN would be applying to the CRTC for mandatory carriage and this would not be good time to be having that particular fight, especially since they would lose. Rather than spend more time on this here you can read the article I wrote at the time here and here and here. (My; I have bashed them a lot haven't I? I am a terrible person. More on that later)

Speaking of jihads against big government boogie men; there was their crusade against the CRTC itself. "Big Government Overeach" doncha know. All good conservative regularly rail against CRTC regs in general so when the CRTC finally pulled the plug on the notoriously inept Ryerson station CKLN in 2011, Ezra Levant took the opportunity to attack the CRTC with a laughably slanted and blatantly dishonest report that claimed that CKLN was shut down for "playing too much hip-hop" and slyly playing the race card. It was the kind of snide hatchet job only a professional activist could like. Accordingly in an example of breath-taking cynicsm the sneeringly far-left marxist CKLN spokesman Andrew Lehrer who would normally be reduced to posting smirking tweets calling Levant a racist (which he is) gleefully tweeted and re-posted Levant's article like garlic to ward off the CRTC during CKLN's predictably fruitless appeal. When it comes to politics weasels of a feather flock together. Naturally when SUN TV discovered they would need to suck up to the very same CRTC in 2013 this principled campaign suddenly dropped out of sight.



When SUN TV made their CRTC application for "mandatory carriage" they sound found out that karma's a bitch when even most conservative pundits reacted with open disdain. To say nothing of the legions of enemies SUN had been busy making since going on air; Muslims, Aboriginals, Gays, Francophones, Roma, Greens, Unions, feminists, atheists, artists, all the groups SUN TV had targeted for insult and abuse for the past three years pounced on SUN like a pack of jackals on a wounded wildebeest in an blizzard of letters to the CRTC opposing the application. I actually fired off one myself and wrote a blog urging others to do the same which some did. It turned out the CRTC probably didn't need much of a push, the SUN's application was pretty flimsy on it's face, even setting aside it's blatant hypocrisy. During the hearings SUN executives got a rough ride with Kory Tenyeke reduced to saying that SUN TV would be forced out of business without the subsidy. The CRTC was not sympathetic; pointing out that when SUN had applied for the license in the first place they had swore they would not need such subsidies and it was not the CRTC's job to bail them out now. The answer was no. However the CRTC did allow that there might be a need to reassess some of their policies around the bundling and placement of news channels. Leading to another round of hearings last year.



Looking to slap lipstick on a pig SUN TV grabbed at this like a drowning man and pushed their way into the hearings to urge some sort of bundling arrangement that might force cable companies to carry SUN in a solid bundle of news channels thus once again forcing at least some customers to buy the wretched channel. I considered writing again but after carefully reading the CRTC's terms of reference for the considered revisions I decided against it. The suggested changes seemed reasonable enough and certainly not worth opposing just to torment SUN News some more. Besides I also couldn't see anything that would actually save SUN TV anyway despite their whistling-past-the-graveyard bravado.

It turned out that the CRTC did indeed make several changes to their rules which would incidentally lead to including SUN TV in more packages, and group the Canadian news channels together to make them easier to find. It would also make SUN TV available in areas where it had not been. Much of this was pretty obvious stuff but that didn't stop SUN TV from doing a victory lap. However my reaction was a shrug. Making your product more available is irrelevant if you have a shitty product that nobody wants. You would think that rabid free enterprise capitalists would get that. As for the areas of the country that SUN was previously unavailable; that was mostly in areas where SUN TV's patented blend of rightwing paranoia, race-baiting, war mongering and oil company worship would be least likely to find a friendly audience; Quebec, The Martimes and the Far North. SUN TV's problem was never that people couldn't find it, it was that they didn't want it.

Accordingly SUN TV's ratings did not improve but then things got more complicated when the owner of Quebecor, SUN News's parent company, Pierre Karl Paladeau announced he was going into politics as a high profile candidate then leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois. That was weird. One of the defining characteristics of the SUN Newspaper and TV empire was it's strident federalism and disdain for Quebec nationalists so the revelation that Paladeau was a separatist all along came as quite a shocker showing just how cynical the whole enterprise was. The damage that might have caused to to the credibility of SUN News was somewhat lessened by the fact that Paladeau would have to divest himself of his business holdings. Accordingly an offer came from Post Media (who own conservative news paper The National Post) to buy out SUN Media. However after SUN TV lost their bid for mandatory carriage Post Media took a look at the numbers and decided SUN TV wasn't worth the trouble. Post Media would buy the publishing arm of SUN but left SUN TV out of the deal. Then stepped up radio exec Moses Znaimer, founder and former owner of Much Music, Bravo, CITY TV, CHUM and current owner of ZOOMER Radio to make a bid for the channel and save the day. Znaimer has a successful record in TV and might have been able to save the floundering network somehow. Ezra Levant certainly thought so and issued an asskissing statement welcoming his new master, although I suspect that if he had bought SUN TV one of Znaimer's first jobs in re-branding would have been to fire Ezra Levant. As it turned out the deal fell through when Levant's current bosses demanded too much of a cash payout in severance. That's right; in a fine example of twenty-first century capitalism the thoroughly inept management of SUN News, after losing millions of dollars, demanded so much money to fuck off that they ended up sinking the whole deal. Next to these clowns the idiots behind Target Canada look like Andrew Freaking Carnegie.

There would be no other suitors and so this Friday SUN TV put up the white flag. In a masterpiece of understatement Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of Media Group and Sun Media Corporation. Said; “This is an unfortunate outcome; shutting down Sun News was certainly not our goal.” No Shit, Captain Obvious. They naturally took absolutely no responsibility for their own failure. Of course.

Besides the earlier mentioned articles from The Post and Globe listing some reasons for the spectacular crash and burn of SUN TV and with which I have no dissent I'd like to add a few more;

BAD PRODUCT + POOR PLANNING = INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT;
As I've already detailed SUN News was a truly crappy "News" channel. It looked ugly and it acted worse. Canadians simply didn't want it. Being fervent "free market capitalists" the management of SUN News should have taken steps to improve their product. That's the way business is supposed to work right? However Kory Tenekye (unlike Moses Znaimer) is not an experienced TV or radio exec, he was a Conservative Party political hack and clearly out of his depth.
(as an aside I can't resist pointing out; I've noticed that most of the most strident "free market" crusaders have no actual business experience; Stephen Harper, Mike Harris, Paul Ryan, Preston Manning, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ezra Levant, Kory Teneyke, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, have spent their entire lives in right wing politics, think-tanks or media. Rather like how most of the most bellicose warhawks have no military experience)
I'm not suggesting that SUN TV would drop their conservative slant, distasteful though I find it. Their reason for existence was to promote the Conservative Party after all and The National Post was also started by Conrad Black for the express purpose of defeating the Liberals and electing a Conservative government. However the Post was able to look and act like a real newspaper and keep professional standards. But SUN's focus was so narrow, strident and mean-spirited that even many conservatives found them unwatchable, let alone having any crossover potential. However instead of making any changes to either the look or content of the channel, they stubbornly kept trying to push that boulder up the hill of indifference and hostility, with predictable results. SUN TV started out shabby and nasty, and they went out the same way.

TWO WORDS; EZRA LEVANT;
Nothing better illustrates the utter failure of SUN News management than their decision to build their brand around the dubious charms of Ezra Levant. Clearly they thought he was going to be their star as Canada's version of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck. Clearly Levant thought so too, but then Ezra Levant has never suffered from a lack narcissistic self-regard. However setting aside that Levant is a terrible person, he is also a terrible broadcaster. With his flat, nasally sneer and smug smirk that just begs to be punched, Levant is truly obnoxious in any context, even if he hadn't made a career of being a total asshole, which he has. Although SUN TV had some other "names" like Micheal Coren, Charles Adler, Brian Lilly, Pat Boland and Krista Erikson (until she quit), it was Levant who got top billing, as "Canada's Freedom Fighter" no less. With all the focus on Levant it's worth noting that he actually had little practical broadcast experience. Coren, Adler, Lilly, Boland and Erikson all have had extensive careers, mostly in talk radio, but Levant had not. His prior experience was as a right wing newspaper columnist, where people wouldn't have to actually see or hear him, and where he wouldn't have to hold anyone's attention for longer than a half dozen paragraphs once a week. As for his rather short political career Levant showed a consistent inability to be a team player. His vicious personal attacks and careless disregard for the facts led to many Conservatives to distance themselves and at least one embarrassing back-down after a lawsuit threat. The biggest fiasco came when Levant decided to run for office, in the same riding Stephen Harper had chosen for himself. This led to an embarrassing showdown until party power brokers convinced Levant to pull his head out of his ass long enough to step aside with all the transparently fake humility he could muster. The notoriously touchy Harper was not amused and Levant's brief, if entertaining, political career was over. So all the warning signs were there. Nothing that happened after that should have come as a surprise.



The grind of a daily show was simply to much for Levant's meager talents which is one reason why he spent so much time in the same unhinged hysterical tirades about the various brown people who are ruining civilization. It's also a reason why he did not bother to research or fact check before going on the air with his latest easily debunked anti-muslim rant. Levant's cartoonish behavior quickly went from being hateful to farcical. Much as SUN TV saw itself as FOX North I seriously doubt that Roger Ailes would have given Ezra Levant a show of his own, much less built his network's reputation on such shaky foundations. True, Ailes did briefly give a show to Glen Beck, but dumped him as he became an embarrassment and Rush Limbaugh has been kept at arm's length. Even FOX has some standards, or at least a sense of self-preservation, but not SUN TV. I can easily see FOX hiring Krista Erikson, they always have a gaggle of bottle blonde harpies and Erikson couldn't possibly be any dumber than Elizabeth Hassleback or Gretchen Carlson. But not Levant. But Hiring Levant was one thing. We'll call that a gamble. But keeping him is inexcusable. After it became obvious that Levant was only generating complaints and the occasional lawsuit while picking stupid fights with the regulators that SUN needed to work with, but not getting ratings, he should have fired. Keep in mind other networks cancel shows and fire hosts for far less reason all the time. Political activists may see such stubborn refusal to admit a mistake as admirable courage and steadfast leadership, but for alleged businessmen it's just pig-headed stupidity. Rather like if during the Ford Edsel or New Coke fiasco those companies had responded to their miscalculations by saying "Fuck it; We spent a lot of money on promoting this lemon so you commie are going to buy it and like it".

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE MARKET PLACE;
When SUN set out to be FOX North they never stopped to consider that Canada and America are in fact completely different nations with different cultures. FOX works in America because of historical demographic trends in racial politics, urban vs. suburban conflicts, regional rivalries, cold war disputes, religious extremism, a corporate media environment, and celebrity worship. Not mention slavery and a civil war. There is obviously a sizable built-in audience of resentful, older, poorly educated, whites who live in small towns and suburbs ready to believe in the conspiracy to take their hard earned tax dollars and give it to lazy black and brown people, gays, rude teenagers, uppity women, union thugs and greedy teachers while "surrendering to terrorists". Not that we don't have some Tea Party types here of course, Hell I assume even Iceland has their share. However much of what passes for political discourse in America is viewed by most Canadians as outlandish, bizarre, distasteful or downright offensive. A TV network dedicated to shrill rants about the dangers of big government, union thugs, environmental fascists, feminazi's, multiculturalism, creeping sharia law, lazy Indians, greedy gypsies, and parasitic artists, was never going to find much of an audience here.
But then again most if not all Conservatives and Libertarians in Canada worship America and secretly (or not so secretly) despise Canadians as weaklings, enfeebled by decades of big government Liberalism and Socialism, held back by Quebec, Multiculturalism and the lack of recent military glory. They also deeply believe that Canadians, at least the white, anglo variety, secretly want their very own Thatcher to subject them to a tight-fisted rule of austerity, tax-cuts, law & order and and a good shooting war, preferably against some dirty Muslims. They saw the victories of Stephen Harper and Rob Ford not as odd aberrations caused by specific events but permanent majorities and as confirmation that their time had come, in spite of the fact that public opinion polls consistently show otherwise. SUN News bought into this self-delusion harder than most. To admit mistake would call into question their entire reason for existence so they continued to live in their right-wing fantasy world. It's one thing for politicians to live this way, but not supposedly hard-headed businessmen are supposed to be able to distance themselves from personal emotions and change course when their product isn't connecting. SUN TV was selling a product that even if it had been of a higher quality, would have had little demand. Once again SUN News execs showed they had no business running a business.

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN AUDIENCE;
Levant may have embarrassed most respectable conservatives but the campaign for mandatory carriage showed that SUN TV was out of touch even with much of their own obvious audience. Even many conservatives were disgusted with such blatant hypocrisy and said so publicly. Most conservatives were happy to applaud SUN TV's attacks on arts subsidies, "tax payer bailouts", the CBC and mandatory carriage, so asking them, no begging them, to help SUN TV get the very same subsidies was a bridge too far. Rather like when a family values crusader gets caught with underage prostitutes. Even conservative politicians and pundits have some standards. At least in public. Not many mind you, but a few. Hatred in right wing circles for arts subsidies of any kind is deep, for SUN TV to cross that line, after spending so much effort in stirring up those very resentments was just too much for many self-respecting conservatives to hide their disgust. In America, where politics is more tribal and the pundit class more shameless they might have gotten away with this. But not here. SUN ended up having to play up a crude politics of tribal, us-vs-them, resentment against the "liberal elites" that were conspiring against them because SUN TV "Stands Up For The Little Guy". Rob Ford built a career around such rhetoric but a corporation can't really pull that off. Especially since they aren't promising to build a free subway to your front door.





In the end the only real base audience they had was made up of a fringe of poorly educated, paranoid, angry, older, white, English speaking bigots, conspiracy theorists, Islamophobics, and xenophobes. Not enough to build a respectable nation-wide brand on. At least not here. Yea team!

FAILURE TO WORK WITH REGULATORS;
Like all good far-right conservatives the execs at SUN TV held regulators like the CRTC, CSBC, Industry Canada in contempt. But they forgot they have to actually work with these people, and in the end they fundamentally did not understand the CRTC's role. As I pointed out during the CKLN fiasco; They are a regulatory agency, they are there to make sure to make sure everybody follows the rules. They are not there to bail you out of your own stupidity. When SUN TV first applied for a license they promised that they would never need mandatory carriage and submitted a business plan that they swore would work. The CRTC takes these promises seriously even if SUN TV did not. For SUN to come back just a few years later and basically say; "Remember all that bullshit we shoveled last time? Um..Yeah; Fuck that." showed a complete misreading of the CRTC's likely response. Then there's the issue of the numerous complaints to the CSBC.
A word of explanation here; contrary to what many people believe, the CRTC and CSBC (Canadian Broadcast Standards Council) are completely unrelated. In fact the CSBC is not even a government agency, it is a industry run watchdog to deal with complaints so the CRTC doesn't have to micro-manage them. However the CRTC certainly keeps track of serious complaints and serial offenders and takes that into account when license renewal time comes around. With it's record number of serious complaints and their dismissive attitude towards them SUN was not helping themselves. To have any hope of getting mandatory carriage SUN would have to argue that they were offering a service important enough to subsidize. A history of open hate-mongering, race-baiting, lying and slander hardly qualifies.
Once they belatedly realized they would have to crawl back to the CRTC to beg for their largess SUN TV execs acted like the political hacks they were by looking for a Conservative bagman to lobby the CRTC for them. Enter Mike Duffy, Canada's current favorite cartoon villain, who got into the act by getting caught lobbying the CRTC on SUN's behalf. The usefulness of this was somewhat compromised when everybody found out what a corrupt lying sleazebag Duffy The Hutt is. Leading to SUN News desperately firing off a press release that basically said "We did not have sexual relations with that corrupt Senator". You may have even caught some mention of this on by watching SUN NEWS, in between the never-ending, panting plugs for SUN NEWS. The CRTC must have been so pleased to find themselves dragged into a corruption scandal that had nothing to do with them. It also once again called into question SUN TV's basic competence not to mention their integrity.

DUFFY THE HUTT & KRISTA ERICSON;



As an additional CRTC related fuckup was the comical spectacle of SUN News initially going on the air with an over-the-air signal that they did not realize required a separate license. Leading a no doubt annoyed CRTC to issue an order to shut down which they did with amusing suddenness. There was little advance warning and with Ezra Levant literally in mid-rant. To quote William Hurt in "A History Of Violence"; "How do you fuck that up?!".
Another word of explanation. An application would have to first go to Industry Canada to check on the viability of the proposed signal and to make sure it doesn't interfere with any existing signals as well as to confirm the corporation is legally registered. Next it goes to the CRTC for a more in depth review of the programming and business plan. I have no idea where SUN fucked up but there's no excuse for this. It's worth remembering that rinky-dink community stations manage to get this right the first time so what's SUN's excuse? Too many Muslims in the way? Later SUN were reportedly planning to reapply for an over-the-air signal but apparently hadn't gotten around to doing so. I haven't seen such jaw-dropping incompetence since the good old days of CKLN circa 2010, but while CKLN's management were arrogant idiots, at least they were amateur idiots. SUN TV were high priced professional idiots.

MANAGEMENT GREED;
Just to recap something already mentioned, but it bears repeating. There were two offers on the table to rescue SUN TV; once when Post Media bought out the entire SUN Newspaper chain and again when that deal excluded SUN TV Moses Znaimer offered to buy the network itself. That deal fell through specifically because of the greed of SUN News execs who demanded such a rich payout that Znaimer walked away and no other offers came. Znaimer may be a egomaniac but he's not a fool. If he thought the license had some value and he could make a news network succeed he probably had good reason to give it a shot, and unlike the SUN TV execs he has the track record to make that plausible. With his breezy style and eye for talent Znaimer would have no doubt re-branded as "Zoomer News", aimed at seniors (like his current radio station) with lot's of friendly life style news and some commentary. I could see him keeping Charles Adler, business editor Pat Boland and his old-timey handlebar mustache and possibly even Coren. But definitely not Levant. He would be toast. Of course the first thing Znaimer would want to do is fire all the old, inept management and put in his own team. Hence the need for a payout. Not surprisingly they got greedy enough to scuttle the whole deal. Not surprising that is in an economic system where even the most corrupt or stupid executives are expected to get bonuses no matter how much money they loose or how much damage they cause to their own company.



A few, probably well meaning people, like Jonathan Kay, have expressed sympathy for those staff who are now unemployed, with Kay saying if you gloat over their job losses "You are a bad person". I don't think so. These "talented young news staffers" (as some have put it) were perfectly happy to be working for a hateful propaganda machine that regularly targeted marginalized groups like Muslims, Roma and Natives who could not fight back. They happily used sleazy ambush interviews, often on the the flimsiest pretexts, sometimes on obscure figures who have no media experience on subjects they had little knowledge. They were quite prepared to broadcast blatant lies without bothering to do basic fact checking, and when they got caught they simply brushed it off until they were forced to back down in the face of a CBSC complaint or lawsuit. They regularly used ugly graphics showing blood or bombs over Muslim faces. They learned that it's OK to use vicious personal attacks, race-baiting, lying and slander as long as it suits your political agenda. If you think that's OK then you are a terrible person and a worse journalist and you are no loss to the profession. I know you would argue they were just following orders but I wouldn't go there if I were you. The best you can say about these people is that they were collateral damage and I notice that conservatives have no problem brushing off collateral damage in any other context so I'll not shed any crocodile tears over them.

As a final tribute I scanned through a few remarks in the comments section of one of the news stories about the crash and burn of SUN TV. Most were of the "good riddance to bad rubbish" variety but there were a couple Ezra Levant fans out there to send SUN off with a touch of class. One read "This is a great victory for radical Islam" (yeah those damn Muslims over at the CRTC) and another more hopeful stating; "Wouldn't it be great if this freed up Ezra to run for Prime Minister or Premier of Ontario?"

Great? That would be FUCKING AWESOME!!!