Stompin' Tom

I'm not much of a music aficionado, approaching songs the way a blind person does a Playboy magazine: for the words alone. (Yes, there is, or at least was once a Braille edition of Playboy). I like interesting lyrics that tell a story and make me laugh. And I enjoy listening to songs about the places I'm flying over and landing in. No one has ever written songs to make me laugh about the places I fly like Stompin' Tom Connors. He died yesterday, after a lifetime of singing, travelling and performing in small towns. I doubt I have to introduce any Canadians to him, but foreign readers don't be surprised if he's not as familiar as Shania Twain, Justin Bieber and Celine Dion. He's the musician we kept. He remained in Canada writing Canadian songs for his whole career, and he's a legend here. His death is at the top of the CBC news site, and pretty much every other news outlet, and was immediately commented on by the Prime Minister and the National Hockey League. Here's Jian Ghomeshi's tribute to him. He dedicated the first hour of his show on CBC One this morning to the man. Where Stompin' Tom is concerned, Canadian stereotypes are dialed up to full volume. This song, Sudbury Saturday Night is one of my favourites.

For those Sudbury is a northern town, not so northern in latitude, but northern in attitude. It's on the north shore of Lake Huron, a little bit south of the northernmost reaches of Michigan, but it's hours of bleak driving from anywhere else. Its principle employer used to be the nickel mining company Inco, since bought out by a Brazilian multinational. There's a giant nickel beside the highway (Canadians love our giant roadside things, and don't forget that a Canadian nickel has a beaver on one side, our Queen on the other and is now our lowest denomination coin--we officially stopped producing one cent coins last week). I've never been anywhere in the US that was like Sudbury. Maybe there's a mining town three hours drive from anywhere along a bleak snowbound highway with moose jumping out at you. Listen to the song and maybe you'll recognize it.

I found this version of him singing The Cremation of Sam McGee. Stompin' Tom's stories will be retold for as long as the story poems of Robert Service, and I hope his last words inspire more Canadian songwriters to sing about our land and people and institutions.

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P.S. I'm not disregarding the request to make links more visible. It's just going to take a bit of work because I've never upgraded my Blogger template and it will probably break if I use the new tools, so I'm hesitant to go there.