Posts with the Bob Dylan tag

Barris Beat

A winter tale of music lost and found

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment

It happened sixty-four years ago tonight. Their tour, “the Winter Dance Party,” had just finished a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. But several of the rock ’n’ roll performers were suffering under winter conditions on the road in the U.S. Midwest.

Singer J.P. Richardson, a.k.a. Big Bopper, had the flu. Drummer Carl Bunch had frostbite in his feet from travelling on a frigid tour bus for 10 days. Bass guitar player Waylon Jennings was suffering too. A long bus ride in the cold to Moorhead, Minn., lay ahead.

Waylon Jennings – back in 1959 a very fortunate sideman for Buddy Holly.

“Buddy (Holly) told me he had chartered a plane for me and him and (guitarist) Tommy Allsup,” Jennings said in a YouTube interview 10 years ago. “But the Big Bopper had the flu real bad. He asked if he could have my seat on the plane. I said OK.”

Meanwhile, Tommy Allsup and Ritchie Valens met backstage, Allsup explained. “And Ritchie said come on (Tommy), let me fly. So, I pulled a half-dollar coin out of my pocket and flipped it. He called ‘heads’ and it came up ‘heads.’” (more…)

Barris Beat

The price of renaming

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment

Just over a year ago, some of our Centennial College student reporters were assembling the latest edition of the East York Observer newspaper. One reporter had been assigned to cover a media conference at the regional hospital in the area. She returned to explain that the hospital, which for probably half a century was known as the Toronto East General Hospital, was now going to be called the Michael Garron Hospital, in honour of the son of long-time hospital donors, Myron and Berna Garron. Michael Burns, the chair of the old TEGH, explained it to our reporter this way.

“If you’re lucky, once in a lifetime a truly extraordinary philanthropic gesture transforms an institution and care for thousands of people,” he said. “We are humbled and beyond grateful that our hospital is in receipt of such a remarkable and historic gesture.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Summer is music to my ears

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Drummer and Lighthouse band leader Skip Prokop epitomized music in the summer in Canada with 1972 hit song/album “Sunny Days.”

I have lots of thoughts associated with this time of year. Most are memories of the beginnings of summers past. The smell I most relate to this time of year is that of a high school locker; this time, it had to be cleaned out right to the bottom. The sight I most associate with early summer is an open road. It seemed with the first of July we drove to a cottage, a farm, maybe a campground. And the sound? Yes, mosquitoes, but mostly…

“Sittin’ in the sun and listenin’ to rock and roll,” sang Skip Prokop. “Sunny, sunny, sunny days…”

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