MISSISSAUGA MUSIC WALK OF FAME

A group of some of the most seasoned professional musicians in Canada once played through a new arrangement — written by Ron Harrison — of the classic Québecois folk song Un Canadien Errant.

When they finished playing, they looked at each other in awe — and then stood collectively as one to give him a standing ovation.

That doesn’t happen very often among professional musicians. But then, Ron Harrison has a talent that doesn’t happen very often among professional music writers.

Harrison was in the front ranks of Canadian composers for many decades, largely because of his ability to seamlessly match music with visual images on the screen, somehow creating a third dimension — one that speaks to the emotional core of the viewer.

In retrospect, it almost seems Harrison was genetically and culturally pre-disposed to become a film composer. His father Harold was a big band leader in Britain before he emigrated to Canada and played piano in silent movie theatres in Hamilton. When talkies killed the industry, the elder Harrison became a film projectionist.

“I was brought up on music and film my whole life to the point where I could look at a film and know exactly what kind of music it needs,” Harrison says. More than one of his employers has told the self-effacing Mississaugan that he was the most talented film composer they’d ever worked with. One even told him “You hit the nail on the head every time.”

Harrison has scored more than 750 television series, specials and films and was recruited by Disney Corp. when they came looking for, quote/unquote “The Best Composer in Canada.” He was subsequently nominated for a Grammy for his writing for the How The Grinch Stole Christmas CD-ROM.

He demonstrated his ingenuity and adventure in that project by showcasing Silent Night in a minor key, highlighted by Black Sabbath-style guitar played by his son David.

Harrison’s legacy will endure most profoundly in the vocabulary of the music that accompanies nature films. He was originally commissioned to do four wildlife film scores. He proved so adept at it that it “snowballed” into a whole industry and many him a very much in demand commodity for a great many years.

In the Audubon Wildlife series of more than 100 films that was sold in 60 countries around the globe, Harrison pioneered not only a style of sound for wilderness productions but what amounted to a new language.
“He won’t take credit for it,” says his daughter Anne, who heard much of that language being developed as her father worked at the piano. “But if you listen to what they’re doing now, you’ll hear his influence in those long-held notes and extensions.”

A lifelong learner, Harrison had his own band at 15, studied with fellow Mississauga Music Walk of Fame inaugural inductee Oscar Peterson in his 20s, attended the Eastman music school in Rochester, took film composition at UCLA and studied with the famed Canadian composer and music theoretician Gord Delamont for seven years.

Perfectionist that he is, Harrison was finally shown the door by Delamont who told him “there’s nothing more I can teach you.”
After he’d finished putting together a project, Harrison would always ask the question: “Who shall we get to conduct this now?”
The answer was almost always the same – he’d be told he should do it himself.

Reluctant though he was, he always handled the job with skill and aplomb and — as usual — he proved to be the best man for the job.

The Mississauga Music Walk of Fame Committee is delighted to welcome a very deserving Ron Harrison to its ranks.

After watching a student talent showcase at Mount Carmel Secondary School in the spring of 1993 featuring three school bands, English teacher David Rogers had an idea.

What if the three standout guys who were in the band called To Each His Own hooked up with the standout guitarist in the band Dragonflower? He planted the idea with them and, sure enough, over the summer Ben Kowalewicz (Ko-wall-a-witz) Aaron Solowoniuk (Sol-won-ee-yuk) and Jon Gallant got together with Ian D’Sa to see what would happen.

What happened was an instantaneous musical bond. The energy and mutual admiration were immediate. One of the first songs they played was a Neil Young’ cover. It was supposed to be practice, but Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World turned out to be prophecy.

Even though it was a mixed marriage — two of them were from Meadowvale and two were from Streetsville — the guys made it work. There was no punk-pop scene in Mississauga at the time, so they all but created one themselves, turning Friday nights at the Masonic Lodge in Streetsville into a pilgrimage for every angst-ridden teen in town with a sense of musical adventure. And they gained a reputation — which they’ve never lost — for delivering the real goods onstage.

Whether it was upstaging the headliners at Jingle Bell Rock 4 at Mt. Carmel or playing for a few friends and family at a billiards joint in Lakeview, the guys in Pezz — which became Billy Talent to the rest of the world — were totally committed to the energetic execution of their musical vision on stage.

They wanted desperately to get better and better — and they did. That they played with the same energy and commitment and edge in front of 100 kids in the basement of the Masonic Lodge in the late 1990s as they did in front of 100,000 people at the Rock Am Ring concert in Germany last year, is a mark of their high personal standards of excellence.

Their songs have evolved rhythmically, lyrically, melodically and harmonically over the years, but the nuclear musical fission at their core remains intact.

After a decade of hard-slogging, they became “overnight” successes. While they can now measure their success in terms of millions in sales, and international tours, and media coverage, and awards (seven Junos and nine MuchMusic video awards and counting), they prefer to measure it in terms of their own musical evolution. Which is ongoing.

In introducing their Mississauga forerunners, Triumph at an induction ceremony last year, Ian said “as artists they showed the world time and time again how to give bigger-than-life performances. And they showed the value of really connecting with their fans.”

He might just as well have been speaking of Billy Talent. Despite their huge successes, the band members are very much still the same Toronto Maple Leaf-loving, neighbourhood pub types that they were when they started out. They’re a “friends and family” band for the punk set. From their first gig in Ian’s parents’ basement in Meadowvale to their appearance yesterday before thousands at Riot Fest in Downsview Park, Billy Talent has rocked the talk.

And — now that they’ll have their very own stone — they’ll be able to rock the walk on the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame.

Congratulations Aaron, Ben, Jon and Ian!

Despite what some people might tell you, the Southside Shuffle was not born 15 years ago at the St. Lawrence soccer fields at the foot of Hurontario St., where Downchild and Fathead held forth for a small but enthusiastic crowd.

It actually started many years before that, in a house at the foot of Mississauga Rd. — in what is now J.C. Saddington Park — the house where Chuck Jackson’s grandparents lived. That’s where the ritual gatherings of the clan took place, often on Sunday afternoons. Everyone grabbed an instrument and took a featured spot on the musical bill of fare.

Brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, parents, and grandparents played various instruments, mostly guitars — Chuck probably plucked away on his first bass purchased from the Dixie Music Centre in Dixie Mall — and his grandfather played spoons.

It was a musical mishmash full of mayhem and fun and a lesson in the collective joy of making music which Jackson tucked away in his fertile Credit River delta memory banks.

In fact, it could have been the inspiration for a memorable song he wrote many years later called “Dew Drop In.” There was another ritual that took place at Jackson homestead every fall — a giant family corn roast. When Chuck started the Shuffle in 1999, he made sure it was scheduled for September, in honour of his grandparents. This twin divinity of family and music is what the Southside Shuffle has always been about and what it remains about today.

Chuck Jackson lived the first 56 years of his life in Lakeview and Port Credit. His musical education got a big boost in Grade 5 at Forest Ave. Public School when the regular music teacher took a leave of absence. The substitute just happened to be the guitar player in a great Toronto band – Robbie Lane and The Disciples.

It wasn’t long before Chuck and four of his buddies formed a band they called Barewires. A couple of years later they hit the big time – playing the afternoon school dances in Grade 7 and 8. Port Credit Secondary School brought more bands – Full House, the Madison Street Walkers – and a new awakening.

At 16, he had the life-changing experience of seeing Buddy Guy in the flesh at the CNE. In 2007, Chuck would bag one of his biggest catches ever for Southside when he got Guy to agree to be in his lineup.
The same year that he saw Buddy play at the CNE, his buddy Angus McKie (Mac-Eye) went on holiday in England and returned with two records more precious than gold — an album by John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers and a song that had yet to be released in North America called Sunshine of Your Love by some new group called Cream. That really solidified Chuck’s love of the blues.

Pretty soon he hit the road — Dixie Rd. At a talent show at Dixie Mall in 1971, the judges — the well-known local group of Edward Harding and McLean — placed Chuck’s band first. They won a recording contract with Stop 8 Music and the resulting album, Get On Up with Dancer, captured the first-ever appearance of a Chuck Jackson vocal on vinyl. If you have a copy — or even better if you have it on eight-track — Chuck will be happy to sign it for you later!

Greater glory awaited on Dominion Day in 1972. Chuck and the band headlined at the A & W drive-in on Lakeshore Rd. at Front St. – near where the Starbucks now stands. The sound and light man for the show, by the way, was a kid from Erindale Woodlands named Gil Moore.

Jackson earned his stripes on the road with an r & b tribute band that played on the east coast before he joined the Cameo Blues Band in 1978. Two-and-a-half years as the house band at the Isabella Hotel refined the vocal and harmonica styles.

You pretty well know the rest of the story. He joined Canada’s premier blues band Downchild 24 years ago and is now their longest-serving vocalist.

He has flipped, flopped and flown his way to three Juno nominations, three Maple Blues Awards, the Toronto Blues Society’s Blues With a Feeling lifetime achievement award and innumerable other industry markers. Last year he was enshrined in Festival and Events Ontario’s Hall of Fame for his work founding and directing the Shuffle.

As brilliant as he has been over his long career as an artist, his work as artistic director of the Shuffle may be Chuck’s greatest achievement. He has created a vibrant, elastic, living/ breathing blues and jazz festival that has stood the test of time.

He has “borrowed” liberally from the best of the ideas he has seen playing festivals around the world and brought it all back home. The festival has changed with economic times. The big ticket main stage draws have been refined to a much more democratic, and much more accessible, regime.

For $10, you get a front-row weekend seat to the best musical entertainment that Chuck Jackson’s imagination can find. Some of the kindest words that ever fall on Chuck’s ear come from visitors who say, “man, those guys are good. I’ve never heard of them before.” That’s a tribute, of course, to his keen eye for talent.

Whether he’s singing for thousands of people at a festival or doing his weekly Sunday afternoon gig at Roc n Docs, Chuck Jackson “sits right down and cries the blues” with the same fervent commitment. When Chuck sings the blues, they stay sung. And when he founds a blues festival, it stays sound.

Memorial Park has always been central to Chuck’s life. He played ball here as a kid. He hung out with the hippies here in the 60s and he first learned to play the harp on a bench here. It’s a big part of who he is and through his efforts it’s now part of who we ALL are as a city and as a musical community. Chuck says that the Shuffle has now taken on a life of its own. In his words — “ the event itself has become the star.” Perhaps so. But if that’s so, it’s largely because of Chuck’s passion, his persistence and his perspiration.

The Southside Shuffle only became a star because one man had a vision of what it could become. It’s only fitting that Chuck Jackson’s name should find a permanent home in the park that shaped his life so vividly. He changed the park and the town forever when he first called the blues home to Port Credit — and made Port Credit the home of the blues.