Demo Kid Home Demos Volume 3 CD 2010

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Band: Demo Kid (Shawn B.)
Release: Home Demos Volume 3
Released: Dec 24th 2010
Year: 2010
Genre: Rock, Country, Dance
Home: Chatham Ontario

Tracks
01 Drink (with J. Verleye) (Free Download)
02 Just Kids (with J. Verleye) (Free Download)
03 Just In Case (J. Ross) (Free Download)
04 123
05 The Big Dirty
06 The Switch Song (J. Verleye)
07 Laughing At Her (J. Verleye)
08 Wish me Luck (R. Johnston)

Notes: During the past few years, Demo Kid has begun collaborating with many local artists. This release includes performances from Julie Ross, Rob Johnston, Jesse V., & Rene Brosseau.
Demo Kid has done 3 tracks with Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo. Turning Up the  Radio just made it onto Weezer’s latest record ‘Death To False Metal’ released this year. The original version contained efforts by many along with Demo Kid, and directed by Rivers.
 

Visit Demo Kid online here.


If video does not show, watch it here.

Demo Kid  – 2010 – CD Preview (Home Demos Vol. 3) on You Tube

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Lou Hooper Piano

Name: Lou Hooper (Louis Stanley)
Release: Piano
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Year: 1973
Genre: Jazz
Label: Radio Canada International
Catalog#: RCI 380

Role:  Pianist, composer
Home: Chatham Kent (North Buxton)
Life: May 18th 1894 – Sept 17th 1977

Album Track List
A1   Blame It On The Blues 
A2   In A Mist  
A3   Canadian Capers  
A4   South Sea Strut   
A5   Russian Rag   
A6   Scene From An Imaginary Ballet (SC. 4) 
B1   Scene From An Imaginary Ballet (SC. 2)  
B2   Black Cat Blues  
B3   Spring Fever 
B4   Cakewalk 
B5   Alaskan Rag 
B6   Uncle Remus Stomp

  His father took him at three to Ypsilanti, Mich, where he sang solos in church and at 12 played the trombone in the Hooper Brothers Orchestra.
  While he was studying piano 1911-21 at the Detroit Cons, he played in various local dance and theatre orchestras.

  He lived 1921-7 in Harlem (New York), studying 1923-4 at the Martin-Smith Music School (a subsidiary of the Damrosch Institute – later the Juilliard School). He recorded with Elmer Snowden (banjo) and Bob Fuller (clarinet) under several names, eg, the Three Jolly Miners, the Three Monkey Chasers, for Vocalion, Columbia, etc and also backed the trumpeters Johnny Dunn and Louis Metcalf, the singers Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and other leading jazz and blues performers of the day. Hooper accompanied Paul Robeson on tour in 1926 and travelled as a member of Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1928.

Hooper returned to Canada in 1932, living first in Toronto – he performed at the 1932 CNE – and then, as of 1933, in Montreal, where he joined Myron Sutton’s Canadian Ambassadors, an all-black dance band active in Quebec and Ontario. Hooper formed and conducted a male choir, the Hooper Southern Singers, in concerts and on CKAC radio. He also played in local dance and jazz bands and taught piano. Oscar Peterson was one of his pupils. After a term in Europe during World War II with the Royal Canadian Artillery in which he served mainly as a pianist and entertainer in charge of Canadian concert parties, Hooper returned to Montreal, playing and teaching in increasing obscurity.

In 1962 he was rediscovered by Montreal jazz enthusiasts and subsequently celebrated as a surviving link to the early history of recorded jazz. He was honored by the International Association of Record Collectors in 1973 and by the Canadian Congress of Collectors in 1977. A new recording, the LP Lou Hooper (1973, RCI 380), a collection of ragtime pieces, included his own Black Cat Blues, The Cakewalk, South Sea Strut, and Uncle Remus Stomp. According to Tex Wyndam in Coda (March 1976): ‘Although slightly on the academic and restrained side, the solos have a firm, bright rhythm, are cleanly executed, and generate a mood of confidence and good cheer’. Other Hooper rags date to as late as 1975, the year in which he joined the faculty of the University of Prince Edward Island. He also wrote a ballet, Congo, staged in 1976. In the summer before his death he was a regular performer on CBC (Halifax) TV’s ‘The Old-Fashioned New-Fangled Vaudeville Show’.
Source.

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Mike Francis Bio 2010

 

 

Musician: Mike Francis” (Pepe)
Year: 2010
Home: Chatham-Kent Ontario (Grande Pointe)
Resides:  Moved away to pursue carreer choice in the Toronto area.
Son of the late Ray Francis (Ray Francis and the Whippoorwills etc)

MIKE FRANCIS – Biography
Extraordinary Anonymous Guitarist
Mike Francis has been a professional musician since the age of 17. The first several years of his professional career was spent playing the regular club circuit before Mike discovered his ability to perform well under the pressure that is the recording studio. The past 22 years he has worked as a first call studio guitarist in the Toronto recording scene, as well as being a musician first an foremost, he is also a writer and producer.

He is mostly known for his commercial jingle or session work.

  Versatility is key to a session musician and his session credits include most of the commercial jingles heard regularly on TV and radio. Mike’s clients include some of the busiest advertising agencies and jingle writer / producers working. Some of his more identifiable performances are heard commonly on O/V, Budweiser, McDonalds, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Harvey’s commercials. He’s also the guitar player on any Miller, Molson Ex, Labatt’s, 7-Up, Coors, Blacks Cameras, GM Trucks, Esso, Ford Trucks, Pontiac, Pizza Pizza, Chrysler, Toyota, Canadian Tire, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Swiss Chalet, The Bay, Canadian Pacific or Sears commercial you may have heard.

  Also as a session player, Mike has performed on and / or written material for a number of television shows and movie soundtracks over the years. Some of the more visible projects he’s been involved with include Beverly Hills 90210, Street Legal, Due South, Beetlejuice, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and the Jim Henson Hour.

Canadian productions such as Traders, E.N.G, Legacy, Black Harbour, The City, Nothing too Good for a Cowboy, Scales of Justice, Rita & Friends, Corey Hart Special, Elvis Stoyko Special, Canadian Country Music Association Awards Show and the Juno Awards have also used Mike as the first call guitarist.

Album projects are all in a day’s work for a session veteran, and the list of recording artists and album projects Mike has been involved with is a testament to his skill and versatility as a guitarist. He has recorded with artists like Alanis Morissette, Shirley Eikhard, Liona Boyd, Dan Hill, Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot, Enrique Iglesias, Kim Mitchell and George Massenberg. He’s also been on albums with Harem Scarem, World On Edge, Rita McNeil, the Rankin Family, Terry Kelly, Ron Hynes, and Roger Whittaker, Cassandra Vasick, Susan Aglukark, Natalie McMaster, Michelle Wright, John McDermott, Bruce Gruthro and Tim Thorney.

In addition to playing on sessions, he has also been active as a producer in the studio. The Mavericks, Jeff Healey, Dallas Harms, Dick Damron, Terry Carisse, Carroll Baker, Matt Minglewood, Joan Kennedy, Anita Perras, The Good Brothers, Joel Feeney, Don Neilson, Robert Armes and Ken Harnden.

Mike does get out of the studio on a regular basis, and over the years his involvement with live radio and live television broadcasts has meant that he has played with some of the best and brightest stars the industry. Versatility as a player is a key to his success as a session player, so he has been called to support a diverse group of artists on stage. His live performance credits include performing with Shania Twain, Terri Clark, Chet Atkins, Buddy Emmons, Jesse Winchester, and Ronnie Hawkins. He’s also performed with Ronnie Milsap, Liza Minelli, Harry Connick Jr., Dr. John, kd lang, Smokey Robinson, Paul Schaffer, David Clayton Thomas, Jeff Healey, Hiram Bullock, Chris DeBurgh, Hal Linden, Michael Burgess, Dr. Music, Ricky Skaggs, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Paul Brandt, Ronnie Milsap, Charlie Pride, Dolly Parton, Roy Clarke, Jerry Reed and Charlie McCoy.

Anyone with info or pictures, please email:
chatham_music_archive@hotmail.com

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That Whaling Band Release Jacks Gallery

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Band: That Waling Band
Release: Live – Jack’s Gallery
Year: 2008
Genre: Rock
Home: Chatham

Members:
Ray Whaling – Guitar, Vocals
Andy Martin – Bass, B. Vox
Daryl Denault – Guitar, B. Vox, Percussion
Joel Laprise – Drums

Tracks:
01. Jeckyll Meets Hyde
02. Quarter Mile Straight
03. Lookin’ For A Girl
04. Black Ryder
05. Rock Me
06. Get back Tomorrow
07. Rainen
08. Wheelz Of Fire
09. Shine

Recorded at Eyre Space Studios by: Bob Hiltz & Ray Whaling
All songs written by Ray Whaling.

That Whaling Band record a new release’ live off the floor’ in the studio.
Visit them online here.

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Bethune Murray (1928)

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Composer: Bethune Murray
Instrument: Piano
Famous Song: No One Knows What a Two Cent Stamp Can Do
Style: Snappy Fox-trot Music.
Home: Chatham Ontario
Year: 1928

Bethune Murray, Chatham musician and composer who earned success in Chicago.

  Bethune, the youngest of the children, is probably the best known of the family. He was one of the first blacks in the Chatham area to receive the A.T.C.A. (a music degree) from Toronto Conservatory of Music and he was also an excellent artist.

  Prior to his move to Chicago, Bethune played the piano for one of the theaters in Chatham in the days of silent film. When he moved to Chicago he met and married Louise Ann De Loache. He had a short-lived, but good band in Chicago called The Canadian Ginger Snaps. The problems of being a bandleader became a burden to Bethune so he began to play solo at the better nightclubs in the Chicago area. He also played regularly at the Chicago World’s Fair (Ida Murray Burks also performed at the World’s Fair with the William Henry Smith Chorus.)

  Bethune was also a songwriter. His most remembered song was “No One Knows What a Two Cent Stamp Can Do.” He wrote the lyrics and music and had it published in 1928.

Source: Ida Murry Burk.
Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society,  177 King Street East, Chatham On. Canada.

Note: The foxtrot is a ballroom dance. In the beginning the foxtrot was originally danced to ragtime performed by a ‘Big Band’.

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Jamie Hillman (2009)

Jamie

Name: Jamie Hillman
Year: 2009
From Chatham-Kent

Note: Catch Jamie live Nov.20th 2009 at the Kiwanis Theatre in Chatham.

  Jamie Hillman is an award-winning singer, pianist, composer, and conductor. He holds an ARCT diploma (Piano Performance) from the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Bachelor of Music degree (Honors Music Education with concentrations in both voice and piano) from the University of Western Ontario, the Master of Music degree (Choral Conducting and Literature) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as certificates from Conservatory Canada. His list of teachers include Kevin McMillan, Tina Yanchus-Hibbard, Dr. Chester Alwes, and Dr. Ollie Watts Davis.

  As a tenor soloist, Mr. Hillman performed Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation with the Laudate Dominum Choir and Orchestra and Shuetz’s St. Matthew Passion with the Prairie Masterworks Chorale and Red Deer College Chamber Choir. He can be heard regularly on the Sunday morning radio show “Songs for the Heart.”

  A highly sought-after collaborative pianist, Mr. Hillman has shared the stage with many singers, including the internationally-renowned baritone, Kevin McMillan. In 2004, he worked as Apprentice Accompanist at the Berkshire Choral Festival in Massachusetts.

  Mr. Hillman’s choral compositions have been premiered and performed by a number of ensembles. His well-known composition, Who Would Have Thought?, was recorded by Les Choristes (University of Western Ontario), and garnered praise and discussion in an article in the International Journal of Education & the Arts. His Psalm was given its European premiere by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale.

  A noted conductor, Mr. Hillman recently served as Assistant Conductor of both the University of Illinois Concert Choir and Black Chorus. His tenure with the Concert Choir included conducting the ensemble at numerous venues while touring Hawaii where he also copresented a lecture-recital at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. He is the founder and former director of the award-winning Chatham-Kent Treble Choir.

  A young, enthusiastic pedagogue, Mr. Hillman has held appointments at several institutions, including Prairie Bible College, where he currently teaches. His students frequently win awards at competitions and have gained admission into post-secondary music programs in both Canada and the United States. In the summer of 2006, he served as a Faculty-Artist member at StudiO: the Ollie Watts Davis Vocal Institute and as Vocal Director at Camp-of-the-Woods in New York. Recent adjudicating engagements have taken him to music festivals in Lacombe and Sherwood Park, Alberta. Mr. Hillman is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, and Chorus America.

Fred S. Stone – Ma Ragtime Baby(1893)

Fred S. Stone  (1873 ~ 1912)
Home Town: Chatham Ontario
Year: 1893

   Fred S. Stone was a relatively prolific composer of ragtime music. Stone was born in Chatham, Ontario, nine years before Geoffrey O’Hara.. The fact of his Canadian birth is not well known since the (relatively few) references to him in the ragtime literature is as an “African-American” composer.

  The remarkable Stone inherited the musical leadership of Detroit from the equally remarkable “Old Man” Theo Finney. The latter had started a music business in the Michigan city during the Civil War, and from that beginning had built up a formidable musical dynasty. Finney’s – and then Stone’s – orchestras monopolized the Detroit Entertainment and social world to the almost complete exclusion of white performers.

  Fred S. Stone and his stalwart colleagues . . . unionized the Detroit musicians and built the fine headquarters and club that are still in use. It was the white players who had to petition for admission to the union, apparently the only local in the country where this was the case.

  Jasen and Jones (2000:320) give 1912 as the date that Stone died; however, Blesh and Janis (1966:105) state that “Fred S. Stone died in the middle 1930’s.”

Fred S. Stone

  Note: Ragtime music: the jaunty, toe-tapping music that captivated American society from the 1890s through World War I, forms the roots of America s popular musical expression. But the understanding of ragtime and its era has been clouded by a history of murky impressions, half-truths, and inventive fictions.

   First use of the word Ragtime appears in the song title “Ma Ragtime Baby” by Fred Stone in 1893.

   Fred S. Stone was a cross-border phenomenon in the music world, famous in both Detroit and Canada. In fact, in spite of his dominance in music circles in early 20th century Detroit, Stone was actually born in Chatham, Ontario, making him Canadian by birth, and technically not African-American. He owed a lot of his early success to violinist Theodore Finney, sometimes referred to as “Old Man” Finney. Mr. Finney had done fairly well as an orchestra leader in the latter part of the 19th century in Detroit, and one of his star players was W. “Jack” Johnson, a cornetist. Johnson himself had been in the Detroit City Band with Finney, then spent some time touring the south in the late 1880s with the Georgia Minstrels. When he returned, he started the Johnson Cornet Band which provided a training ground for many young black musicians in Detroit, including Stone who had come across the border by the mid 1890s with his brothers.

   Fred started composing pieces for publication in 1895, mostly dance numbers, but hit it big in 1898 with Ma Ragtime Baby, further increasing sales when his brother Charles added words for a song version. The following year he made a splash with Bos’n Rag. Between this and his considerable musicianship he quickly gained the respect of musicians throughout Detroit.

     In Stone’s capacity as an arranger and leader in Finney’s orchestra, the group became one of the earliest in the country to play ragtime. The old man did not favor this newer music, and whenever they played in some of the downtown establishments where ragtime was popular, he usually chose to not participate.

  Finney died in 1899, and very soon Stone took the group over by some acclaim from the members. He then hired a replacement for Finney, violinist Jack Shook. While the two co-conducted the orchestra mutually for some time, eventually they ended up in court deciding who would be able to use the well-established Finney name for the groups each of them ended up leading, with Shook finally taking the prize. Stone continued to lead his own groups, and recorded several pieces of ragtime and other genres for some of the earliest popular records. A few his own compositions were also recorded by other groups, including the Edison Concert Band who did Belle of the Philippines.

  During this period he also turned out a number pieces that were as intriguing and varietal as that of one of his Detroit counterparts, Harry P. Guy, including a lovely set of waltzes titled Silks and Rags, and a lively almost-rag title, Belinda. He was so busy with the union and playing engagements that little was composed or published after that time, perhaps only existing as band arrangements. Stone died in 1912 at approximately 39-years-old, although the cause of death and a concrete determination of the date have been hard to pin down. His contributions to ragtime performance and music in general in what would become the city of “Motown” were significant, and even may have prompted Harry Guy’s comment that “you might almost say that Ragtime was born in Detroit.” Not quite, but it did thrive there for some time.
Compositions

1895 – The Indian: Two Step –  [w/Edward Liggett]
1896 – La Albecite: Spanish Waltzes – Mackinac March
1898 – The Cardinal March – A Lady of Quality (Waltzes) – Ma Ragtime Baby
              Ma Ragtime Baby (Song) –  [w/Charles H. Stone]
1899 – The Bos’n Rag –  1900 – Elseeta
1901 – Silks and Rags (Waltzes)
1902 – Sue
1903 – Belle of the Philippines – A Kangaroo Hop
1905 – Belinda
1908 – Melody at Twilight – Stone’s Barn Dance

Sources:
http://www.ragtimepiano.ca/rags/can2.htm
http://www.perfessorbill.com/ragtime4_alt.shtml

2009 – Below Video of Ragtime Skedaddlers performing “Ma Ragtime Baby” by Fred S. Stone

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Geoffrey O’Hara Writes Huge Hit Song ‘K-K-K-Katy’ (1918)

Geoffrey O’Hara, composer, singer and lecturer (1882-1967)

   ‘Geoffrey O’Hara’ was a Canadian American composer, singer and music professor.
O’Hara was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. He initially planned a military career. O’Hara entered the prestigious Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario at age 18 and he trained with the 1st Hussars. He had to abandon his military career upon the death of his father, Robert O’Hara.

   He moved to the USA in 1904, the same year he began performing in Vaudeville. He began recording for Edison Records in 1905. In 1913 O’Hara undertook the recording of traditional Indian songs on behalf of the American government.
  During World War I he was a singing instructor of patriotic songs for American troops. In 1919 he married Constance Dougherty from Massachusetts, and together they had two children; the same year, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
  O’Hara lectured on music and songwriting, and held positions at Teachers’ College of Columbia University (1936-37), Huron College and the University of South Dakota, where he later received and honorary Doctor of Music degree in 1947. He lectured for the remainder of his life. In 1920 O’Hara helped organize The Composers’ and Lyric Writers’ Protective League. He also was a board member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), was the president of the Composers-Authors Guild, and served in the United Service Organizations (USO).

   O’Hara composed over 500 popular and patriotic songs, and hymns. He had some moderate popular music hits in the 1910s with songs such as ”Your Eyes Have Told Me What I Did Not Know” (1913) and ”Tennessee, I Hear You Calling Me” (1914) and one huge hit with his song K-K-K-Katy (1918), one of the most popular tunes of the World War I era.

Reference: ”Popular American recording pioneers, 1895-1925” (2000)

Source 2,3.

From Larry Bryant’s collection of Edison Amberol Cylinder recordings is this selection of one of the most popular songs during World War I, K-K-K-Katy, written in by Geoffrey O’Hara (From here, Chatham Ontario) and sung by Billy Murray for Edison Records.

If video does not appear, watch it here.

Below Notes from here. 

  Born in 1882. A well known Chatham native back in the early 1900’s was a song writer who wrote over 300 songs, and one well known one was “K-K-K-Katy my Beautiful K-K-Katy” sung in the trenches of world war one. He wrote some religious tunes of which “I walked Today Where Jesus Walked” and “Prayer For Peace“. O’Hara was credited with creating “Tin Pan Alley” the stage production.

  His school years in Chatham were at McKeough Public School, where he had many leading rolls in the musicals. He was a choir boy at the Holy Trinity Church, graduated from the Chatham Collegiate Institute (CCI) in music. He left the city to further his career, and went on to teach music and song writing at University of South Dakota and the Columbia University. O’Hara appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show several times. He passed away in 1967.

More Notes: According to the entry for him in the online Encyclopedia of Music in Canada he joined Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels and went on to sing light opera as a baritone at Daly’s Theater in New York. Later O’Hara travelled the Lyceum and Chautauqua vaudeville circuits as a singer, lecturer, and community song leader. Apparently, he wrote two of his hit songs – “Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride” (1917) and “K-K-K-Katy” (1918) – while he was visiting in Kingston, Ontario.

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