Fito Blanko was about to go on stage with Elvis Crespo to sing before 20,000 people at American Airlines Arena in Miami and 5 million more watching the Spanish People’s Choice Awards on television.

Pacing back and forth, he spotted superstar guitarist Alejandro Sanz, who’d won many Grammies, warming up.

“Señor Sanz, you have no idea who I am. I’m a little nervous – any advice you can give me?

“You’re performing right?” replied Sanz. “You’re here for a reason. You’re a professional – now go out and do what you love to do.”

Fito says it was the most inspiring thing anyone’s ever said to him.

“This guy who recorded with Beyoncé and is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time just called me a pro. Why am I questioning myself? Whether you’re performing for 10 people or 10,000, the energy remains the same.”

It’s the energy to perform that has always driven Fito, who remembers performing in Panama before his family moved to Canada when he was five.

Music is in his DNA. His heroes remain the many Panamanian legends whose names are not well known outside their own country.

In high school at John Cabot, Fito used the record collection he’d carefully curated to create a DJ experience no one else could offer.

“All the signs for music to be part of me happened early in my life,” he says.

Like freestyling at the Square One transit terminal with friends and having Brampton musician LaSol cruise by and hear him.

Or being at the 21 Tavern in Panama City and spotting Grammy-award winning singer Emilio Estevan and getting his phone number after an impromptu audition.

Or travelling to Miami with close collaborator Sensei Musica during Grammy week and connecting with Estevan and record company executives there, even though he was too young to legally attend the parties he talked himself into.

“I believe everything happens for a reason,” Fito says. “God puts you in certain situations that leads your path and will open doors for you.”

His “under the radar” Mississauga springboard opened doors for Fito that have led to singles on numerous Latin charts, collaborations with Drake, Crespo, Cardinal Offishall and Pitbull , an appointment as youth ambassador for the 2015  Pan American Games and a song in the Furious 7 film and soundtrack.

His music is played in clubs around the world. Fito now co-owns and leads his own music company.

It’s a cliché but it’s true – music is the international language of communication.

There were few role models in Canada for Fito growing up but he is showing others how a Latin kid who grew up in the GTA can have an international impact in a genre many Canadians don’t know well enough.

“It’s like a dream come true but I had to figure a lot of it out on my own,” he says.

It all started with the will to get up and do what he loves to do.

“I make music for people to enjoy themselves. I want to provoke some sort of motion and vibration through sound.”

His good vibrations have earned Fito Blanko a home on Mississauga’s Music Walk of Fame.

Rob Wells has been in the studio with some of the most famous musicians in the world, but it’s the tinkling from behind Westacres Public School that really get his musical motor running. It may not be the Justin Bieber or the Ish or the Nelly Furtado or the Olivia Newton-John or the Selena Gomez product that he’s shaped for the public – but it cuts to the heart of what music is really all about.

Over the past few years, Rob has hosted a Songwriters’ Circle where some of his musical playmates, like Randy Bachman and Matt Dusk, drop by to play at an annual concert. The proceeds go to his local school in Applewood Acres to support and sustain its music program. Rob’s personal interest has helped support, sustain and inflame students’ passion for the pursuit that is his life’s work.

“Music is related to so many different aspects of life,” he says, noting that Albert Einstein, who played violin and piano, insisted that the theory of relativity was a “musical thought.” He’s not the first one to notice that “math, patience, focus, listening skills, give-and-take, and response” all seem to be intimately connected to music. That’s why walking by West Acres and hearing kids banging on bongos or pummelling the xylophone gives him such a thrill.

Some of those kids would be thrilled themselves to know that Wells and his engineering co-conspirator Chris Anderson worked with Justin Bieber not far away from the school to produce My Worlds Acoustic, an unplugged album of songs from Justin’s first two albums.

Rob was a mild-mannered computer animator, writing songs for himself in his spare time until he attended a game-changing one week songwriters’ course with 40 other would-be musicians at Metalworks Studio in 2001. He went from “incredibly nervous” the first day to “depressed” on the last – not because his dream was shattered but because the course was over.

The rest, as they say, is history. Wells, like his brother Rob, is a highly sought-after writer, producer, player and collaborator who works with many of the best-known contemporary acts in the business.

He thrives under the pressure of going into the studio in the morning with an idea and, in collaboration with the artist and lyricist and the rest of the band, emerging with a completed product. “By the end of the day you have a track and people are freaking out about it – that’s the best.” The writing is still the best part of the job. “It soothes my soul… lowers my blood pressure. It’s the best therapy of all time.”

His music has appeared in countless TV shows, film scores and too many CDs to count. He’s doing the new Katharine McPhee album in Hollywood and writing for the new Degrassi series on Netflix. If you walk into the new dinosaur museum in Calgary and catch the epic chase scene that greets you, listen carefully to the chase music. That was written by Rob.

From dinosaurs to Daisy Dares You, Wells has it covered.

It was 2003 when Rob first heard one of his songs on the radio. It was Craig Smart singing What Went On. That’s when he says he first thought, “Wow, I can do this.” Wow, can he ever.

Welcome to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame Rob.

Trust and the music business are too often mutually exclusive things. Many bitter artists would say that the concept of “ trust in the music business” is an oxymoron — like truth in advertising. Yet a man we honour here today built a long and fruitful career based on that enduring concept.

Charlie Camilleri was a pivotal figure in the Canadian music business during his exemplary 30-year career at CBS Records. Rejecting a chance to manage American pop star Gene Pitney in the 1960s, Camilleri stayed home with his young family in Mississauga and, instead, paved the way for several generations of performers to make their marks in this country.

From Mississauga Music Walk of Fame inaugural inductee Ronnie Hawkins, to Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tony Bennett, rock group Chicago, Tom Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen and Wynton Marsalis — on to Celine Dion who he helped introduce to an English Canadian audience through one of the many Variety Club telethons he helped organize — Charlie Camilleri was a key go-to guy if you wanted a musical career in this country.

He knew everyone in the business and he respected and worked with them to foster their careers. Larry LeBlanc, the veteran music writer who won an honourary Juno last year, says Camilleri was a musical “Everyman” in the 60s and 70s when the industry was relatively small. He did print and radio promotion for artists, visited retailers, picked up the acts at the airport and got them safely to the hotel.

He was also the artist’s surrogate family when they were in town. Camilleri’s gregarious personality and his common touch meant he became very close to the artists. “Charlie seemed to know everybody,” says LeBlanc. “Other people showboated. Charlie did things quietly, but he did things.”

When the extraordinarily talented and extraordinarily eccentric Glenn Gould was on CBS, there was only one man at the record company he would regularly talk to. As as happened with so many of the artists he handled, Charlie’s business relationship turned into a personal one. Every Christmas, a call would come into the Camilleri household in Lakeview from Gould and there would be a long conversation about everything under the sun.

Many of the artists dropped into the Camilleri household to have supper, often before they worked the CNE summer shows. And Camilleri’s personal service often included hitting the road with the artists. He travelled the Canadian circuit with Johnny Cash, one of many who became a close friend.

But it wasn’t just the big name international stars Camilleri promoted. He helped build homegrown careers for artists like Kelly Jay and Crowbar, Larry Gowan and Burton Cummings.

When he retired, CBS named a major internal award for Charlie. CBS Nashville honoured him. Legendary promoter Michael Cohl gave him a lifetime backstage pass for any Concert Productions international show. The founders of the Juno Awards Walt Grealis and Stan Klees of RPM Magazine made Camilleri the first inductee into their planned Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.

At the same time he built his legendary professional career, Camilleri was creating a volunteer profile that was almost as impressive. A lifetime supporter of local sports and community projects, Camilleri coached Cawthra baseball and hockey and partnered with Eve Petrescue to build the local human infrastructure in Lakeview that made them work.

His charity of choice was Variety Club. He personally sponsored Tony Bennett into the local chapter and he raised millions of dollars in more than 25 years of involvement with Variety Village. Camilleri made Variety Club the charity of choice for the music industry for many years.

His work earned him the highest honour he could receive from the International Club and the highest he could receive from the Canadian organization, its Heart Award. On the inscription, the group said the award proved that contrary to Leo Durocher’s belief, nice guys can finish first.

Along the way, he also won Grey Cups in 1946 and 47 with The Toronto Argonauts and won the 1950 Canadian softball championship. After his retirement, he was a pivotal figure in keeping the Argo alumni club active.

When you think about the giants of the Canadian music business, Charlie Camilleri’s name won’t be the first you come up with. Or the second or the third.

But his name belongs among the elite. He used his talent for promotion and friendship to foster a fledgling industry and help build it into the powerhouse it became in his time. And he did it all with charm and grace that belied the reputation of the industry he worked in.

It is our pleasure today to add his name to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame.

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.