Who turns down an opportunity to play with Rick Derringer in White Trash – three times – when Edgar Winter pleads with him to join his band?

Who has the nerve to play – at former Mississauga resident George Clinton’s personal request – in Parliament/Funkadelic when that band already included Bootsy Collins, one of the best players on your instrument in the world?

Who tells Mike Bloomfield he’d be glad to back him at The Colonial, but it’ll have to wait till after he and drummer Whitey Glan have finished watching the Maple Leafs playoff broadcast?

Who cringes every time he hears the bass line on Van Morrison’s Moondance, because he could have been the guy playing bass and not a guitarist — it could have been so much better.

If this is your blooper reel – you know you’ve had a truly remarkable career.

Prakash John was not only a key component in the development of the seminal Toronto sound, along with his Bush bandmates, Whitey Glan and Dominic Troiano, but he and Glan exported their funkified GTA brand of R&B to studios and turntables around the world. Prakash has been keeping that sound alive for the past four decades by way of leading Canada’s longest-standing, unchallenged #1 R&B band — The Lincolns.

When musicians who’ve been in and out of that band over the years refer to attending “Lincoln University”, they’re paying tribute to Prakash and that fundamental, pulsating, groove-centric sound.

Prakash provided foundational work on the landmark recordings, ‘Chocolate City’ and ‘America Eats Its Young’ by the Parliament Funkadelic; ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ by Alice Cooper (both artists recorded in Toronto) followed closely by the now legendary live recording of ‘Rock n Roll Animal’ in New York City – the latter with the trademark “Toronto Sound” provided by the Glan & Prakash tandem, resulting in the magnificent ‘Intro to Sweet Jane’.

That’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame resumé in a single sentence.

It all began one magical day when the tone wheel on an abandoned radio rescued from the curb mercifully slipped off CHUM 1050 and landed on 1080 – Buffalo’s famous WUFO where soul music poured out.

Ray Charles was singing ‘Drown in My Own Tears’ and a whole new world of music opened for Prakash. He has never looked back.

The lure to live music performances began while witnessing one of Canada’s most dynamic bands of the late ‘60s… ‘The 5 Rogues’ (later better known as ‘Mandala’) with Dominic Troiano on guitar and Whitey Glan on drums. They were performing at Club 888, wailing on a heart-wrenching number by Wilson Pickett (‘Ninety Nine & A Half Just Won’t Do’…gotta’ have a hundred), an underground r&b classic whose message still remains the driving force for Prakash’s intense performances to this day.

The ferocity of the Mandala’s R&B based music with spectacular delivery hooked Prakash. Formerly steeped in the majestic music of the church as a boy soprano, the high school violinist from Bombay resolved right then to abandon the violin and convert to the bass guitar. (All this of course behind his parents’ back.) Not having a record player at home, Prakash would call up his good friend and radio music authority, DJ John Donabie, at 1430 CKFH right after the hockey broadcasts to request tunes to play alongside whenever they aired on each night’s show.
Two years after hearing the Mandala and continuing to teach himself the bass, Prakash found himself in LA playing in Bush.

How Canadian is it that the “Toronto Sound” was kick-started by three kids — one born in India, one born in Italy and one born in Finland? That’s a bountiful return on Canada’s immigration policy.

The training in LA with Bush prepared Whitey Glan and Prakash for the decade long partnership in the rhythm sections of Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, recording ‘Lou Reed Live’, ‘Sally Can’t Dance’ and ‘Rock N Roll Animal’. With Cooper, they recorded ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ in Toronto as part of a 5-and-a-half-year stint that included three platinum albums and two world tours.

In 1979, Prakash decided to come home.

Since then he’s balanced touring and recording with The Lincolns, launching the burgeoning career of his son Jordan, (who attended Cawthra Park Secondary School for the Performing Arts) and dabbling in numerous national and international projects mainly in Europe and the USA.

That could mean doing a scene in a Blues Brothers movie with James Brown and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave), playing with Dr. John & The Night Trippers at the 4,200-acre Blackberry Farm in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, flying to Oakland at Prince’s request to oversee his concert series or just sitting around in a circle at the Trailer Park Boys’ Halifax Sound Studios showcasing Canada’s R&B stars for a Netflix music series…and not least of all, landing the most coveted gig in the history of coveted Canadian gigs – the gala reception at the 1988 wedding of Janet Jones and Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton.

Through it all, Prakash has been the down-to-earth loyal band member who did most of the driving because he hadn’t partied the night before… the price one pays for not indulging in ‘stimulants.’

On one US tour, the Alice Cooper band was set to play the Hartford Arena, directly across from their hotel. While the others took limousines around the block so they could arrive in style at the venue, Prakash simply put his bass on his shoulder, looped his stage pass around his neck, and walked across the street directly and was at the backstage door 60 seconds later.

Music’s not about awards or ostentation for him. It’s about playing with virtuosos like the great Freddy Keeler, Paul Shaffer, Whitey Glan, Dick Wagner, Steve Hunter, Murray McLachlan, Gene MacLellan, Steve Cropper, Pinetop Perkins, and Junior Wells.

Respect doesn’t come from accolades. It comes when The Lincolns opened for James Brown at Lulu’s and Soul Brother Number 1 emerges from his dressing room to stand side-stage, drawn to the band’s riveting rendition of “‘Ninety Nine & A Half Just Won’t Do’.” Then Mr. Brown gives you a generous personal fist bump on the way off the stage… what higher tribute can there be?

It’s “playing in the damn band” that Prakash says is most important to him.

And all the brilliant bands in which Prakash John has played were all the more amazing for his presence.

What Brian Smith remembers most about the fledgling Malton rock ’n roller he met while they played lacrosse together as teens in the mid-1960s was that “he had a hell of a scream on him.”

Smith, a guitarist, lived in Westwood Village. Jim Tovey, a singer, lived in Victory Village. Smith had a band called The Soul System.

Tovey had a band called The Grass Impact.

The bands would get together to jam. Eventually they would join forces.

“The reason we got Jimmy in the band – which was renamed The System –  was because we heard him scream one night,” says Smith.

Tovey was doing his best James Brown and really struck a nerve with his future bandmates. “We knew that anyone who could scream that good would give us a great added attraction,” Smith laughs.

Tovey’s next door neighbour, Bert Mellen, played bass, Al Cairns was on drums, Smith was on guitar and Mike Whitham, the only one who from Brampton, was on keys.

Anyone who knew the enthusiastically independent Jim Tovey will enjoy the thought of him fronting  “The System.”

The band played Malton’s two community halls, local high schools and shows at Bramalea Civic Centre where they were often double-billed with another young group named Rush.

Rush bassist Geddy Lee often sat in the front row while The System played, keeping a sharp eye on the work of Bert Mellen to see what he could pick up.

The System’s repertoire of Rhinoceros and Steppenwolf covers, mixed with originals by Smith and Tovey, earned them a spot on the CBC-TV summer show Drop-In, where they played three originals.

Tovey auditioned to host another CBC show but lost out to some guy from Hamilton named Martin Short.

Jim at first appeared headed for a career as a visual artist – his primary arts passion in high school – before the magic of the music carried him away.

He quit high school to play full-time, a decision that didn’t sit well with his parents.

A farmhouse in the country on Airport Rd. where Jim and Bert lived was where the band rehearsed, partied, wrote, rehearsed, partied and rehearsed, not necessarily in that order. Smith stayed there on weekends because his parents wouldn’t let him live there full-time.

“We played every weekend, then went back to our families,” says Smith. “That was the start of it all.”

Jim was a natural showman, who could contort his body in strange ways. He had a confident stage manner, loved to lean out into the audience, swing the mic out and pull it back in and use his very loud voice to full advantage.

Smith, who did imitations of other band’s singers to warm up audiences, couldn’t imitate his own band’s lead singer because he was always changing his approach.

“He was born to be a frontman,” says Smith, who runs his own music promotion business in London, Ont. “He could quickly get people in the palm of his hand.

In a premonition of his future career as a carpenter, Jim cut up chunks of wood before one show, had The System’s name stamped on them and got the audience to play percussion, getting  everyone involved — a collaborative style he favoured in all his careers.

He’d studied voice at the Ontario Conservatory of Music and made his singing debut around age 10 in the Christmas Eve concert at Our Lady of The Airways Church.

He would prove to be a much better singer than altar boy.

After The System broke up, Jim was in several groups, including the regularly rotating membership of Bond.

His late brother-in-law Dave Cooper recalled on his blog that “Jim had this idea for a show band called the Alpha String Band. We played Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, that type of classical-inspired rock. We had these coloured suits,  pink, blue and white, a different colour for each set.”

The group formed after Tovey met John Oglivey in the subway, lugging a huge case in which he carried his cello.

One can just imagine the conversation:

Jim: “What’s in the case?”

John: “A cello”

Jim: “Cool. Want to be in a band where you get to wear different-coloured suits?”

In his blog, Dave Cooper explains that Jim later lured drummer Paul Nixon  – best known for his drumming on  Downchild’s original “Flip, Flop & Fly” — to join him, Brian Smith, and “Shady” George Bland in Rockit-88. Most of the band lived together in a house in Westwood Village.

It was a bluesier band that morphed into a group called Live Jive and then transformed into Hott Roxx, the band which survived the longest and for which Jim is probably best remembered. It featured guitarists Dave Harrison and Papa John King and toured extensively showcasing the music of The Rolling Stones.

That ended abruptly when an explosion and fire at a Thunder Bay bar destroyed their uninsured equipment.

Their many friends in the business held a benefit concert — but Hott Roxx never recovered.

Jim, with his wife Lee’s assistance, crafted a second career as a carpenter. They moved to Mississauga in 1989 and he started another career as Ward 1derful councillor in 2010.

Music remained a powerful force in his life.

In 1994, Jim got up on stage with a band at the Grosvenor Exchange bar.

From the moment he nailed a Jaggeresque straight overhead kick to start off Chuck Berry’s “Oh Carol,” Andrew Dixon knew he’d found a fellow-traveller. It took about a month of convincing but Tovey joined the band known as The Primitives. It included Dixon on lead guitar, David Smith on rhythm guitar and backing vocals Bob Heinrich on bass and Dan Hill, later replaced by Stuart Hull, on drums.

They’ve played together since, across the GTA but especially up-and-down Brown’s Line.

His political career slowed the band down a bit, but Tovey continued to co-write songs and the band performed periodically, including backing him at the Waterfront Festival for the song he wrote to celebrate Hazel McCallion’s 40th year in office.

The chorus he wrote perfectly captured the intersection of a disaster and a political coronation:

“When the train it went flying

and the tankers were torn

That was the moment

the legend was born”

In the last few years whenever he felt people were giving him too much credit for one of the numerous projects he’d gotten rolling, Jim was fond of saying that nobody accomplishes anything alone.

It’s true that it often takes a community of people convinced to believe in a good cause before it can be achieved.

But there’s usually a main instigator – somebody who hears “no” and translates that into “there’s still a chance.”

The truth is that Mississauga Music Walk of Fame would not exist except for Jim Tovey’s love of music and his insistence that local players – be they musicians or singers or promoters or composers, be celebrated in – and by – the community that fostered them.

When Jim and Lee visited a music walk of fame in Philadelphia, which was then recreating itself as a city of the arts, Jim saw many names he didn’t recognize. He realized that enshrining names in stone in a local park would educate the public and celebrate many worthy Mississaugans – famous and not so famous – at the same time.

He suggested a “pilot project” that – like so many of his temporary ideas – has turned into something pretty permanent. He recruited a committee and cajoled staff and council on board – using the charm that made his mother say that, even as a child, he could sell anything to anybody.

The rest, as they say,  is history — our collective musical history celebrated.

He even helped install the stones the first couple of years.

Jim Tovey was a dynamite package of passion, plans and persistence.

Take, for instance, his idea to have some kind of physical recognition in Port Credit’s streetscape of the village’s rich music and festival culture.

He had the bright notion of having the pedestrian crossing at a major intersection marked in the shape of piano keys.

In the city that Tovey’s piano hero Oscar Peterson called home for the last 35 years of his life, it seemed most appropriate.

But the official answer was no.

So Tovey went home and figured out  – to scale – how it could be done, then went to the works yard to chat with the template maker.

The next week he got a call to visit the works yard to see the test strip of piano keys that had been painted on the parking lot.

When they were installed at Hurontario St. and Lakeshore Rd., a  photo of the “piano keys” intersection taken from on high from a nearby condo went viral on the Internet.

That was the Jim Tovey that people in the musical and political communities shared –  a man bursting with ideas from his hyperactive imagination with an infectious way of expressing them — so everybody sang along when it was time for the chorus.

The piano keys were just a quirky little dab on our landscape but they spoke volumes about the talent of the City of Mississauga’s musical frontman – James Michael Tovey.

We welcome him into the place that clearly wouldn’t exist without him: Mississauga’s Music Walk of Fame.

Ronnie Hawkins has a way of landing in the middle of everything. From being born two days after Elvis Presley, to recording at the legendary Sun Records studio in Memphis in the 1950s, to anchoring the wave of rock and roll that swamped the Yonge St. strip in the 60s, to hosting John Lennon and Yoko Ono at his Mississauga Rd. farm as they launched their Peace Campaign in 1969, to playing Bob Dylan in Bob Dylan’s own movie, to acting in Heaven’s Gate — one of the biggest box office flops of all time — to dancing the Last Waltz with the boys in The Band — the Hawk has seen and done it all And quipped about it every step of the way.

He was born in Huntsville, Arkansas in 1935 — and reportedly did his first Camel Walk at the age of two.

He studied phys. ed at the University of Arkansas but really majored in rockabilly on the chitlin’ circuit. When his friend Gordon Jenkins, — stage name Conway Twitty — told him about how they loved southern-fried music in Canada, Ronnie was on his way north.

Turned out he was sentenced to be up here for 40 Years — and counting. He met and married Wanda and found a home on Yonge St. He mentored several generations of musicians in the best rock and roll finishing school of all time — Mr. Dynamo’s Nightly Bar-by-Bar World Tour.

Bob Dylan called Ronnie his “hero “ and said he was “the guru of rock and roll.”

He’s on Canada’s Walk of Fame and in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and has won a Juno but his real claim to fame is that he’s never stopped believing in the hard core music he loves.

Through innumerable ups and downs, career breakthroughs and fallbacks, from disco to rap and back, Ronnie Hawkins has never wavered. He has remained true to the music he loves — old-school kickass rock ‘n roll.

So, Who Do You Love? How about the guy from down south who taught the Northland how to rock?