Stompin' Tom has died at 77

[charlene]

I think Tom was a common man with a super patriotism for his country. His life from birth was tough-he 'slogged' his way through, never forgetting what a blessing it was, despite those hardships to be a Canadian. He truly wore his heart on his sleeve. He breathed and lived that thankfulness every day and in every lyric.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...he_legend.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...-tom-obit.html

[jj]

Originally Posted by niffer

RIP Mr. Connors.

I regret that I had never heard of him outside of this forum

niff, most traditional canadians know of him and his music (unfortunately, just mainly bud the spud and the hockey song) but not of "him" ...myself included

i hope bid ini doesnt take the liberty to write some speculative book about him

two days ago, a Target store (first in Canada) opened 20 minutes away from Connors farmhouse and my place... a neighbour commented, "maybe Tom figured it was time to move along"

[charlene]

instead of the red and white Tarjay bullseye:

[niffer]

I wish we had a like button for these last two posts

[Robby Lake]

It seems sad that as an American citizen, I had never been exposed to Stompin' Tom ; I don't remember anyone, including the snowbirds, utter his name, even just in passing.
At an early point in Gords' career, he was convinced for a time that..
"people won't know of my songs until after I've passed away." He wasn't even 25 yet.
But he knew that original talent and great songwriting doesn't guarantee anyone stardom.
Tom was successful at his craft and a true Canadian. He stook up for his root values and so, it seems, never forgot where he came from; setting a fine example for others who'll follow in his foot steps.
Thanks for the info, Charlene.

[lighthead2toe]

A very sad feeling with this lighthead2toe guy today.

The loss of a friend with such an iconic stature has left a huge impact.

I got the news late last night so needless to say I didn't sleep too well.

I met Tom shortly after I arrived in Toronto in the early sixties and we've remained friends all along the way.

He would invite us to his place for parties etc. and he loved a good sing song.

Sorry I can't find the headspace to write more. This is quite difficult.

Best,

RJ.

[charlene]

The National Arts Centre in Ottawa has lowered their flags...

[charlene]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...rticle9432076/

video links and pics a link above

Stompin' Tom: Canada’s rough-cut bard leaves behind a rich folk-music legacy


Brad Wheeler

The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Mar. 07 2013, 3:36 AM EST

Last updated Thursday, Mar. 07 2013, 12:27 PM EST

The singer is the voice of the people,

and his song is the soul of the land.

So, singer please stay,

and don't go away,

with so many words left to be said.

For a land without song,

can't stand very long,

when the voice of its people is dead.

Stompin’ Tom Connors, the Popeye-jawed, true-patriot troubadour, died on Wednesday. He leaves behind a legacy as rich as could ever thought be possible for a folk-music composer. The American badass Johnny Cash boasted that he’d been “everywhere, man,” but Connors was his country’s rough-cut bard of song, nonpareil – his Canadian content extraordinary and independent of CRTC stipulations.

It was big news in the summer of 2009 when Canada Post slapped the Bud the Spud singer’s likeness on its 54-cent sticker. Of course Connors, responsible for The Singer (The Voice of the People) and more than 300 other songs, had left his stamp on the landscape well before then.

In his rock and roll chronicle On a Cold Road, the musician, author and sometimes homesick Dave Bidini wrote, “Tom’s voice drew me back across the ocean, and the songs about bobcats and Wilf Carter that I’d once been embarrassed to listen to anchored my identity in a culture where nationhood was everything.”

Bidini’s embarrassment was not uncommon; the canon of Connors was seen by many as hokey and homespun compared to other country-conscious songwriters such as Gordon Lightfoot or Robbie Robertson. Connors was the uncool stubby in world turning Heineken green – a throwback rube to a once unsophisticated country that had grown cosmopolitan. Connors stayed the course though, and his song-of-place material and sing-along historical markings eventually gained back appreciation.

Nowhere was his idolization more vital than in the minds of younger Canadian songwriters. As noted in the landmark book Have Not Been the Same: The Canrock Renaissance, 1985-1995, Bidini and the artful folk-rockers the Rheostatics, partly empowered by Connors’ unwavering home-country boostering, in 1991 released Melville, an album that included Saskatchewan, Northern Wish and a cover of Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The foreword to Have Not Been the Same is a poem by the Tragically Hip singer-songwriter Gord Downie, who wrote, “Sensitivity happens, and the idea is the more it happens the more it happens more.” And so the Rheostatics lead was followed by Downie and others, including Maestro Fresh Wes, the rap star responsible for the cocky maple-blooded declaration, “Because I’m from Canada, don’t think I’m an amateur.”

In a posthumously released letter, Connors wrote that he was passing torch, “to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.” Connors is gone, but not really at all – the land is strong with song and northern pros, no small credit to him and his dogged heavy lifting.

[charlene]

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/03...medium=twitter

DAVE BIDINI
Stompin’ Tom Connors lived an impossible life; a life born from an impossible fiction where a single man affects so many despite having been raised with so little. As a toddler, Tom begged for change with his unwed teenage mother on the dirty St. John streets. Later, he was orphaned out to a family in Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I., but ran away a few years later, barely a boy, with no sense of where or why or how. For the first twenty years of his life, he was a lonely spirit drifting through the crushing nowhere of Canada in the fifties and sixties. He worked in the mines; he rode in the boxcars. Then, one Manitoba afternoon — at least I think it was Manitoba; with Tom, the stories blur into each other because there are so many of them — he met two school teachers. He’d started to play a little guitar — mostly American songs and some British, Irish and Scottish traditionals — and the school teachers asked him, “Why aren’t there any songs about Canada?” Tom had no good answer, so he wrote one. Then he wrote another. 61 albums later, the street urchin who never knew his father — knowing his mother barely more — would pass into the ether as the single most devoted Canadian artist of all time.

As a figure in contemporary pop music, no one dared risk expressing defiance and anger the way Stompin’ Tom did; this coming at a time when it was all about ‘making it’ and ‘wooing American radio’

In a final message to fans released after his death on Wednesday night, Canadian country music star Stompin’ Tom Connors issued an appeal for Canadians to “keep the Maple Leaf flying high.”

“It was a long, hard, bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world,” said Mr. Connors in the message, which was posted to his website. “I must now pass the torch, to all of you, to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.”

Mr. Connors died in Peterborough, Ont., at the age of 77 from “natural causes,” according to spokesman Brian Edwards.
.
There are few comparisons to Tom as an artist; even fewer to him as a person. As a musician, he was important in the way that the Ramones or the Velvet Underground were important. He was deeply original; his songs were easy to play; and his work triggered the awakening of a people. In Canadian terms, he was more punk rock than punk itself. In 1978, he burned the remaining copies of Gumboot Clogeroo and gave back his 6 JUNO awards as a protest against the greater Canadian music industry’s treatment of Canadian artists; pandering, as they did, to American and British soundalike bands and encouraging groups to supplant Canadian place names with American locales. As a figure in contemporary pop music, no one dared risk expressing defiance and anger the way Stompin’ Tom did; this coming at a time when it was all about “making it” and “wooing American radio” and getting to the Grand Old Opry. Tom stuck his neck out, and it got stepped on. Or stomped on. But these strong bones we used to build the music of a young nation.

As a person, Tom was strong-willed, funny, driven, tough, playful and giving, if not forgiving; an Ontario cowboy with humble roots and an ego that needed feeding. As a young musician in awe of his talent, he had his sport with me while telling me to keep going. After writing about my encounter with him during his self-imposed exile at the musician’s secret 50th birthday party in Balnifad, Ontario, I saw him a few years later at an EMI music event (he’d signed with the label to record a handful of comeback records). I wasn’t sure whether Tom had read my piece — turned out he’d laminated it and hung it on his basement wall — so I was relucant to see him, fearing the worst. Before leaving the event, I passed by his table. He took one look at me and said: “Bidini, you’ve had to take a lot of s–t from me over the years.” I wasn’t sure how to react. Then my hero came over and hugged me. Tom liked to play both ends, and because we loved him, we let him.

Tom smoked one hundred cigarettes a day and loved to drink beer. On tour, he had to drive the lead truck, and could never be the last person to go to bed. This meant that his band took turns staying up with him. Once, the drummer– a lightweight who’d been given a pass by the rest of the band– was approached by the other players, who told him: “You’ve got to relieve us for a night. We can barely make it through!” The drummer said okay, he’d take one for the team. The morning after his night with Tom, he was admitted to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Tom went hard, even harder if you were young.

There are so many stories about Tom, maybe half of them true. What we know is this: like the greatest tree in the most majestic forest, the thing we don’t see is the roots. And that’s what Tom was: this country’s roots. People under 30 — heck, under 40 — might not have lived at a time when the tree was a bud, a sapling, a single waving leaf. But this tree was pushed into life by Tom’s devotion to his remarkable and singular craft. Explaining the singer’s legacy to my blank-eyed kids on the morning after his death, I explained: “You know: the guy who does the hockey song!” Soon, they were walking around the room singing it. And so there was no finer a tribute to no finer a man.
.

[charlene]

at the National Music Centre - Stompin Toms stompin board - 1971 given to CKRR radio.

[jj]

Originally Posted by Robby Lake

It seems sad that as an American citizen, I had never been exposed to Stompin' Tom ; I don't remember anyone, including the snowbirds, utter his name, even just in passing

very nice of you and others across the border(s) to acknowledge his passing, Rob

not stereotyping all Snowbirds (i was one for a few days this year actually!), but they are not typically of the mold that would have Stompin Tom cd/LPs in their collections

tom, the guy who did the hockey song
gord, the guy who did the sinking boat song
anne, the snowbird gal

i hope these folk's legacies broaden in scope

note to brad wheeler.... gord downie is not a follower, lol

Ron, I'm sorry for your loss... you guys were cut from the same red & white cloth ...you have consistently paid tribute to Tom in your decades of performing

that's a wonderful flag, char... it's now been much shared today

[jj]

Originally Posted by charlene

at the National Music Centre - Stompin Toms stompin board - 1971 given to CKRR radio.

wonder how many worn Stompin boards are out there... doubt they lasted long

i missed any hype about the 2012 opening of this arts centre

we've still only a virtual hall of fame, even though talk of a 'place' lingers

one day there will need to be a place where Gord's capo(s) can be exhibited

[charlene]

They haven't built it yet..it's in Calgary.Anne Murray was out for the ceremonial shovel in the dirt event a few weeks ago.
http://www.nmc.ca/
pics - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=8efc5048ce

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.../photos_stream

LOVE the guitar shaped shovels!

[jj]

comment from a close musical colleague:

"gord and tom, both so clever with the pen...huge catalogues...albeit, their compositions are miles apart musically...on the other hand, no disrespect to lightfoot, but while he is very much admired, tom was and is very much loved"

[jj]

Originally Posted by charlene

They haven't built it yet..it's in Calgary.Anne Murray was out for the ceremonial shovel in the dirt event a few weeks ago.
http://www.nmc.ca/

oh, lol... the address and marker appeared on a google map... if i would have street-viewed it then i guess i would have realized that, eh

so the Stompin board is just laying in dirt in the foundation? lol

edit: WAIT, WAIT... it sure seems to exist already..check this out

http://www.nmc.ca/our-collection/

.

[jj]

Originally Posted by jj

this was the most authentic 3 minutes of Conan's week in Toronto years ago

Conan saw a uppity downtown Toronto theatre turn into a small town saloon

Stompin' Tom Conners The Hockey Song - YouTube

like Gord fans, a Stompin Tom audience has off-meter, very white rhythm? lol

[charlene]

Anne Murray: RIP Stompin' Tom Connors...a writer of real, grassroots Canadian songs that have had us singing along and tapping our toes for decades.

[charlene]

Originally Posted by jj

oh, lol... the address and marker appeared on a google map... if i would have street-viewed it then i guess i would have realized that, eh

so the Stompin board is just laying in dirt in the foundation? lol

edit: WAIT, WAIT... it sure seems to exist already..check this out

http://www.nmc.ca/our-collection/

.

more pics - http://nmc.pastperfect-online.com/38...request=random

[jj]

i see...the current centre is in a 25 year old building...and they've broken ground for a replacement site to be ready in 2015...i need to listen to CBC more, eh

cool exhibits...Ronnie Prophet, Gordie Tapp wardrobes, all adorably yucky, lol

spots are reserved for Gord's white suit + the red velvet/waiter blazer

oh, the current blue one too...and the 70's flower power, embroidered jeans

..

[charlene]

TOM might get into the Hockey Hall of Fame : http://sports.nationalpost.com/2013/...medium=twitter

[charlene]

10 more albums yet to be released apparently...

[charlene]

this is a riot! http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...ce=twitterfeed

[jj]

it is...these are the tunes/Canadian paintings that i love...the Skiddadler's also from the movie Ron was in... when i subscribed to Canadian Indy Film channel in the mid 90s, it was the first film i circled in the guide and later sat down to watch in full, with a stubby, or two...lol

i had immediately thought, why didn't they have a film like this (so well preserved) of Gord and others performing way back when at the Horseshoe, plus these type of humorous video diversions

i miss those old tank-like, heavy streetcars taking me down to the CNE, etc

these days, you get on those AC hard seated, futuristic ones and if the driver picks his nose or shuts his eyes at a stoplight, for even a second, you can bet some teenager is capturing it on cellphone and posting it to youtube hoping it goes viral...they at least know that the online version of thestar.com will have a link to it, lol

[jj]

here is a fun tribute from the Canadian members of parliament... NDP-ers

Andrew Cash and the NDP Caucus Sing "Bud the...

i don't watch Question Period...i had wondered where Andrew Cash got to

[charlene]

interactive Tom 'places in songs' map ! http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/stompin-tom/