Stompin' Tom Connors

 

Charles Thomas "Stompin' Tom" Connors, OC (February 9, 1936 – March 6, 2013) was a Canadian country and folk singer-songwriter. Focusing his career exclusively on his native Canada, he is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly four million copies.

Connors' songs have become part of the Canadian cultural landscape. Among his best-known songs are "Sudbury Saturday Night", "Bud the Spud" and "The Hockey Song"; the last is played at various games throughout the National Hockey League, including at every Toronto Maple Leafs home game. In 2018, the song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in a ceremony at a Leafs game.

Early life

Charles Thomas Connors was born on February 9, 1936, at the General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, to Isabel Connors and Thomas Joseph Sullivan.

Isabel's family were Irish Protestants, and his maternal grandfather, John Connors, was a sea captain from Boston, Massachusetts, who had died before Charles was born. His father was a Catholic of Irish ancestry, and "may have been Métis or ... Micmac." Isabel Connors and Thomas Joseph Sullivan did not marry until 30 years later, as Sullivan's family were devout Catholics and did not want him marrying a Protestant; they later divorced. Sullivan's mother gave him $10, and he was told to leave home. Connors was also a cousin of New Brunswick fiddling sensation, Ned Landry.

Connors' first home was on St. Patrick Street, in the "poorest and most rundown part of Saint John". He lived there with his mother, his maternal grandmother Lucy Scribner, and his maternal stepgrandfather Joe Scribner When Connors was three, Lucy and Joe died within weeks of each other. This forced Isabel to move to a two-bedroom apartment. Around this time Isabel got pregnant again by Tom's father when he briefly returned,and Tom got a taste of hitchhiking when he and Isabel went to visit relatives in Tusket Falls, Nova Scotia. This trip was the first time he saw his mother steal to feed them, when she stole food from a Chinese restaurant in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. When they returned to Saint John, they moved in with friends of Isabel and she gave birth to Tom's sister Marie, who had to stay in hospital to have a birthmark removed. Later, Isabel and Tom moved in with her new boyfriend Terrence Messer at the corner of Clarence and Erin Streets. While they did not marry, the family would take on his surname. Terrence and Isabel did pretend to be married to find a place to live, due to the moral standards of the time. The family was quite poor, and Terrence was a neglectful stepfather, who spent most of the family's money on wine. When they missed paying rent, the family was evicted and moved to a house on St. Patrick Street. Marie finally came home from the hospital then, but she died when Tom was four, following more surgery to remove another birthmark. To make ends meet, Isabel got a job scrubbing floors and Terrence did odd jobs.The family was evicted again after a spat with the landlord when Tom started a fire in their apartment. Their next home was a basement apartment on King Street.

Connors spent a short time living with his mother in a low-security women's penitentiary before he was seized by Children's Aid Society and later adopted by Cora and Russell Aylward in Skinners Pond, Prince Edward Island.

At 13 he ran away from his adoptive family to hitchhike across Canada. He got his first guitar at 14, and at 15 he wrote his first song called "Reversing Falls Darling". His hitchhiking journey consumed the next 13 years of his life as he travelled among various part-time jobs while writing songs on his guitar, singing for his supper. He worked in mines and rode in boxcars, and in the coldest part of winter he welcomed vagrancy arrests for the warm place to sleep. At his last stop in Timmins, Ontario, he found himself a nickel short of a 35-cent beer at the city's Maple Leaf Hotel. Tom told the bartender to put the cap back on the bottle and he'd head for the Sally Ann, but the bartender, Gaëtan Lepine, accepted the 30 cents and offered him a second beer if he would open his guitar case and play a few songs.These few songs turned into a 14-month run at the hotel, a weekly spot on CKGB in Timmins, eight 45-RPM recordings, and the end of the beginning for Tom Connors.

Musical career

Connors was never part of the Canadian musical establishment, and his style was quite different from other Canadian icons such as Leonard Cohen or Gordon Lightfoot.He could, however, be characterized as a passionist poet within Canadian culture, similar to Milton Acorn and Stan Rogers. As the National Post characterized him:

He sang of a nation without politics, to its proud history, and to its better angels. His songs remind us that Canada matters—that we've built something amazing here, and must not take it for granted.

Typically writing about Canadian lore and history, some of Connors' better-known songs include "Bud the Spud", "Big Joe Mufferaw", "The Black Donnellys", "The Martin Hartwell Story", "Reesor Crossing Tragedy", "Sudbury Saturday Night", and "The Hockey Song". This last, often incorrectly called "The Good Old Hockey Game," is frequently played over sound systems at National Hockey League (NHL) games.

Throughout the years, Tom never lost touch with Gaëtan Lepine, the bartender he befriended in Timmins; in fact, the two wrote many songs together. These songs are featured in 250 Songs by Stompin' Tom: Including All the Words and Chords.

In 1968, he composed and sang a radio jingle for a Sudbury-area tire store, Duhamel & Dewar, in exchange for a set of winter tires.

During the mid-1970s Connors wrote and recorded The Consumer, an ode to bill-paying that became the theme song for the popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) consumer affairs program Marketplace. For the first few seasons, Connors appeared in the program's opening credits, before "The Consumer" was replaced as the theme—initially by an instrumental background version and ultimately by a different piece of music.

In 1974 Tom had a series running on CBC Television in which he met and exchanged with folks from all across Canada. Stompin' Tom's Canada was co-produced with the CBC, and consisted of 26 half-hour episodes.

The song that Tom wrote in the least time was "Maritime Waltz", which was completed in 12 minutes.

His character was rough but genuine. As the National Post noted:

That persona wasn't shtick. Stompin' Tom was one of the great Canadian story-tellers, and a uniquely collegial one as well. The proper venue for a Gordon Lightfoot performance is a concert hall, where the audience connects silently and contemplatively. The proper venue for Mr. Connors was a smoky bar room where people connected by slamming their beer mugs together, hopefully obliterating whatever differences existed between them.

In 1999, after completing a 38-city tour, Connors received the National Achievement Award at the annual SOCAN Awards held in Toronto.

In 2009, Connors was the recipient of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual SOCAN Awards in Toronto.

Nickname

Connors' habit of stomping the heel of his left boot to keep rhythm earned him the nickname "that stompin' guy", or "Stomper". It wasn't until Canada's 100th birthday, July 1, 1967, that the name "Stompin" Tom Connors was first used, when Boyd MacDonald, a waiter at the King George Tavern in Peterborough, Ontario, introduced Tom on stage. Based on an enthused audience reaction to it, Tom had it officially registered in Ontario as Stompin' Tom Ltd. the following week. Various stories have circulated about the origin of the foot stomping, but it's generally accepted that he did this to keep a strong tempo for his guitar playing—especially in the noisy bars and beer joints where he frequently performed. After numerous complaints about damaged stage floors, Tom began to carry a piece of plywood that he stomped even more vigorously than before. The "stompin'" board became one of his trademarks. After stomping a hole in the wood, he would pick it up and show it to the audience (accompanied by a joke about the quality of the local lumber) before calling for a new one. It was reported that when asked about his "stompin' board", Tom replied, "it's just a stage I'm going through". Connors periodically auctioned off his "stompin' boards" for charity, with one board selling for $15,000 in July 2011.

Favourite guitar

Tom's favourite guitar was a Gibson Southern Jumbo acoustic that he purchased in 1956 while on his way through Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee and Mexico. He discovered it in a furniture store, hidden in a case on top of a shelf and, after some haggling, purchased it for $80 (he had $90 with him). The guitar was used to audition in 1964 at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, as well as for writing Bud the Spud four years later. Although retired in 1972, it remained in his possession. It has subsequently been refurbished, a birthday gift from his wife Lena. The serial number inside the guitar reads 2222 in red stamped numbers and the actual age of the guitar is still unknown.

Releases

Connors released music on seven different labels. His earliest foray into recording was on the CKGB Timmins radio station label. These 45 RPM singles were pressed by Quality Records in Toronto, and distributed (and paid for) primarily by Tom. His first two albums (and two subsequent 45 RPM singles) were released on the Rebel Records bluegrass label, under the name "Tom Connors". These two albums were subsequently re-released on Dominion Records under the Stompin' Tom moniker and had to be totally re-recorded due to a dispute with Rebel Records owner John Irvine.

Most of Connors' well-known albums were released on Dominion Records (1969–70), and after 1971 on the Boot Records label that he co-founded with Jury Krytiuk and Mark Altman. His releases on Dominion (and all subsequent releases) were done under the name "Stompin' Tom Connors". Most of the Rebel and Dominion albums would be reissued (and in some cases, re-recorded) under the Boot label, and would represent the bulk of his recorded material. It was released on 331⁄3 RPM record albums, 45 RPM record singles, 8-tracks, and cassette tapes.

After his retreat from the music business in the late 1970s, he started the A-C-T (Assisting Canadian Talent) label in 1986, and released two albums: Stompin' Tom is Back to Assist Canadian Talent and his comeback album, Fiddle and Songs in 1988. A-C-T also re-released Tom's back catalogue on cassette tapes only.

All of his subsequent releases (and re-releases) have been through Capitol Records / EMI. Most of this work is now available on Compact Disc. In recent years, many of his album releases have included at least one re-recording of one of his earlier songs.

Promoting Canadian artists

Connors founded three record labels, which promoted not just his own work, but that of other Canadian artists:

Boot Records, together with its budget label Cynda, which were active in the 1970s and 1980s

A-C-T, active from the late 1980s

Among artists who were featured on these labels were Liona Boyd, Rita MacNeil, The Canadian Brass, Dixie Flyers, Charlie Panigoniak, among others. Liona Boyd recalled in 2013 about the time Connors signed Boyd to Boot for her first record, 1974's The Guitar, and two more:

It was Tom's vision obviously. And as I understood it, he wasn't really a fan of classical music but he had heard Canada had no classical label, which was absolutely true. So bless him, he went and decided he'd be the first one. And he signed myself and the Canadian Brass. It's like me deciding, "Well listen, maybe I don't know much about rap, but hey Canada's doesn't have a rap label, I'll go and do it." So he was a bit of a pioneer with classical music.

Cultural and historical references

In the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who led the UNAMIR peacekeeping force in Rwanda during that country's 1994 genocide reported that he played a recording of Tom's song "The Blue Berets" (about United Nations peacekeeping forces) to keep up his troops' morale while their headquarters was under bombardment.

The Les Claypool Frog Brigade mentions Connors in the song "Long in the Tooth" on the album Purple Onion, while Corb Lund references him in the song "Long Gone to Saskatchewan" and Dean Brody references him in the song "Canadian Girls".

Tim Hus also wrote a song titled "Man with the Black Hat" about Connors.

Songs referencing Canadian historical events

The following is a list of events in the history of Canada which have been the subject of a song by Connors, who is widely renowned for singing about both well-known and little-known episodes in the country's past.