- JOHNNY JAMES (DOWSON)
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Yonge Street 50s
When Tommy Danton was at the Zanzibar and Joe King was at the Derby and Alex Lazarof was at the Edison and Hawkins was at the Coq D'or and Lighfoot was at Steeles.... we use to go there sometimes for a beer between sets. The beer was too expensive so we settled for 10-cent beer in the mens draft room at the Edison, with old man Rotenberg touting the joint on the street rain or shine. Come to think of it, the Coq Dor was trying to set up a downstairs room and Hawkins got Gord Joisey to book a friend of his named Jerry Lee Lewis, who had just married his 13 year old cousi n. It didn't go over well. Three pieces that's it with Lewis wailing on the Piano!
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What a memory John has ! Gord Josey who later managed The Friars told me to get my band into the Zanzibar and work my way up to The Friars.
ReplyDeleteHe was sort of right. I did house gigs for the Coopers for years. When we were ready for The Friars, it went broke ! Oh well ! I remember I saw Roy Drusky at a Sat. matinee at The Edison. Myself and Wayne MacKenzie were the only people in the room. I was amazed because he was such a big country star at that time.Memories ! Still working on some gigs for us. Cheers........Ronnie Russel.
Gord (Josey) and his son own the Simcoe Arms pub and restaurant at Jackson's point.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to tell you that Hawkins brought another rock singer from the states up to Canada. He was at the Brass Rail in London when we were playing the Iroquois he had a big hit " Only make believe" Conway Twitty, he later worked all of Harold Cutletts houses the Lounge in Hamilton and the CoqDor before heading back south for a country music career.
When I worked at the Edison we were the house band "Alex Lazaroff and the Rebels" and the owner Harold Rotenberg had a policy to bring in
what were top acts some who were on their way down. We started at 7.30 pm at 8 pm the featured act or band would come on they did an hour set and we can back on at 9 pm the featured act came on 10 we did a final set 11 to 11.45 and went home it was a good gig. We also did a set at the Saturday matinee.
Alex was there for about four years when I joined him. We had Myself on bass and vocals, DT Thompson on sax, Norm amadio on piano, Alex on
drums, and Kenny Hepburn on guitar and Tommy Ambrose on vocals, and later on Katie Murtagh, great band. After Kenny left we had Donny
Steele on guitar, when I left the band Johnny Stockfish took my place on bass.
The featured acts would be signed up for a two or one week stay. Some of the featured artists were Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman and his big
band, The Everly Brothers, Dwayne Eddy, Bill Haley and the comets, they showed film clips of the movie, Stan Kenton, Trummy Young ( from
Loius Armstrong band) Gene Krupa and his band, Buddy Rich orchestra these are all I can remember, but it was a great era.
Oh yeh Roy Orbiston was also there, he booked some great acts in the place and all the time Hawkins was playing next door at the Coq Dor
and Joe King and the Zaniacs were at the Brown Derby and the Four
Fables at The Friars club. I was with Alex from Sept 1960 to March 1961 when I left to go into the "insurance business" .
In Februrary 1961 we did a one day gig at the Kingston Pen, talk about a captive audience, the guys went wild. Katie always did a annual gig at the Big House in Kingston. Tommy Ambrose was on the bill along with he girl friend Bonnie, who he later married. There were plenty of guys in the audience that I knew from the Strip and two guys from Willowdale. I asked the guy what are you doing here, he said "time". .
The drunks in the front row at the Edison finally got to me so I left to join Vic Costentino in Vancouver in the Insurance business. Yonge Street had more people walking on the street at 12 am that at 12 pm going from club to club.
- JOHNNY JAMES (DOWSON)