If you go to the Scarborough Town Centre you can see Johnny Cowell’s star on the Scarborough Walk of Fame. But if you go to the Scarborough Civic Centre this Saturday, May 15, 2010, 2 p.m., you can do one better. You can hear his music being played live, with the 84-year-old trumpeter-extraordaire even expected to perform in a couple of the numbers. The Northdale Concert Band, a renowned east-end-based Toronto community orchestra, is dedicating its show to Cowell, who entered Scarborough’s Walk of Fame in 2007.
As promised to readers of the Scarborough Mirror, here are links to three of his biggest hits that fans of his have posted on YouTube. For anyone else who wishes to read the story, just scroll to the end of this blog entry ...
Also included is another story I wrote for the Scarborough Mirror on Johnny Cowell prior to his induction into Scarborough’s Walk of Fame back in 2007. Meanwhile, enjoy his music ...
Tony Martin’s version of Walk Hand in Hand With Me
And here's Andy Martin’s version
And here's Bill Purcell’s version of Our Winter Love, with a dreamy winter scene.
And here is Floyd Cramer's These are the Young Years.
Here’s the complete story, from this past week, on the Johnny Cowell tribute concert this Saturday, May 15 by the Northdale Concert Band ...
Cowell Tribute May 15, 2 p.m.
If you go to the Scarborough Town Centre you can see Johnny Cowell’s star on the Scarborough Walk of Fame. But if you go to the Scarborough Civic Centre this Saturday, May 15, at 2 p.m., you can do one better. You can hear his music being played live, with the 84-year-old trumpeter-extraordaire even expected to perform in a couple of the numbers.
The Northdale Concert Band, a renowned east-end-based Toronto community orchestra, is dedicating its show to Cowell, who entered Scarborough’s Walk of Fame in 2007.
Northdale Concert Band conductor Stephen Chenette explained that Cowell, a Tillsonburg native, who has now lived more than half a century in Scarborough, lived a double life – musically speaking.
“He’s a wonderful symphonic trumpet player and one of the most brilliant trumpet soloists that Canada has ever had. And in his other life, he’s an extremely successful and skilled composer of popular songs. I think probably there’s no member of any symphony orchestra that’s had two songs that have made it to No. 1 on the hit parade. Walk Hand in Hand and Our Winter Love – these were both international bestsellers.”
In addition, country legend Floyd Cramer turned These are the Young Years into an instrumental hit in 1963, which is included in Cramer’s “essential” hits package.
Also interesting to Canadian music fans is that the Guess Who, after their smash debut, Shakin’ All Over in 1965, for their second single in 1966 chose the Cowell-penned His Girl, which cracked the Top 20 in England.
Cowell also lived a further double life as a composer. Besides pop songs, he also wrote original compositions for orchestra. As he explained to The Mirror in an extensive interview prior to his induction into the Scarborough Walk of Fame: “I stopped writing (pop) songs when Elvis and the Beatles came on the scene, the style itself changed so completely. That’s when I sort of switched over to writing symphonic pops.”
He wrote one number specifically for an international tour the TSO was embarking on.
“This (composition) was called Roller Coaster and it’s been played all over the world,” said Chenette, who added that he recalled playing it on one of his recent visits, as a conductor, to Russia. “I had a special soloist with me – a trumpet soloist with the U.S. Marine Band in Washington, D.C. – and she liked the piece so much she got the Marine band to play it in a concert last summer in Washington D.C.”
Joining the Northdale band for this number will be a very special guest - Cowell himself.
“He’s going to play third trumpet in that one,” said Chenette, who added that he had already been out to two rehearsals as of this interview. “He was a world-class trumpeter and he is the first to admit that he, you know, hasn’t been practising and he doesn’t play the way he used to. But I must say on the pieces he’s playing, he sounds really first rate.”
He is also expected to join in on his timeless classic, Walk Hand in Hand.
The entire second half of the concert will be dedicated strictly to Cowell. “We have nine of Johnny’s compositions and arrangements,” said Chenette. For the first half, he said, “in recognition of Johnny’s years as the associate principal trumpet of the Toronto Symphony, we’re beginning with the Triumphal March from Aida, which has very important trumpet solos.”
Naturally, the band’s guest performer for this afternoon comes with a trumpet. “We have another trumpet soloist - John Edward Liddle - who is himself a brilliant trumpeter who is going to play some of Johnny’s solos.”
Chenette, a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto’s music program, is himself a noted trumpet player, holding the position of principal trumpet with the Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Pops, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Denver Symphony, and appearing as a soloist with numerous orchestras.
And trumpet is what Chenette will be playing with the concert band henceforth, announcing he will pass on the conductor’s baton he has held since 1996. “This is a wonderful final concert for me. Johnny is one of everybody’s favourite people, so positive, so up, so nice. I’ve never heard anyone say the slightest negative thing about him - I don’t think you could. If you’re with him for five minutes, you must like him.”
The concert was supposed to have been held last November “but then they cancelled the concert at the Scarborough Civic Centre to use it as a place to give flu shots and this concert was the one that got cancelled,” said Chenette. “But we had resolved to save it intact and not do any of these pieces on our other concerts so we could just go ahead with the program as it had been planned back then.”
For more on the Northdale Community Band, log onto http://www.northdalemusic.com/
Here’s the complete story, from 2007, on Johnny Cowell’s induction into the Scarborough Walk of Fame.
Cowell to be inducted into Scarborough Walk of Fame
Longtime Scarborough resident Johnny Cowell has led a double life – virtuoso trumpet player with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as well as an international chart-topper who paved the way for a generation of future Canadian songwriters.
“Primarily I was a trumpet player – that was the main thing – but I got interested in writing songs and it paid off as good or better than the trumpet,” he said from his house in southeast Scarborough, which he has lived in with wife Joan now for 50 years.
The couple have one adult daughter, Marcie (who was educated through the Scarborough public school system going to Bliss Carman and Fairmount public schools and R.H. King high school), and three grandchildren.
His best known hits, which still get played on oldies shows, are arguably:
• Walk Hand in Hand With Me, which was a minor British Invasion hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1965, after being a huge pop hit in 1956 for both Tony Martin and Andy Williams. A big thrill for the couple happened one evening when they were watching the Ed Sullivan Show and, much to their surprise, “Tony Martin came out and sang Hand in Hand,” Cowell said.
• Our Winter Love, which provided Bill Pursell a Top 10 instrumental hit in 1963 (No. 9). In 1967, the Lettermen released a vocal version, which cracked the Top 100 in the U.S.
• and These are the Young Years, which country legend Floyd Cramer turned into an instrumental hit in 1963, and is included in Cramer’s “essential” hits package.
Also interesting to Canadian music fans is that the Guess Who, after their smash debut Shakin’ All Over in 1965, for their second single in 1966 chose the Cowell-penned His Girl, which cracked the Top 20 in England.
Besides these hits, the list of artists who have covered his songs includes Vera Lynn, Chet Atkins, Lawrence Welk, 101 Strings, Nashville Strings and Anita Bryant.
“I stopped writing (pop) songs when Elvis and the Beatles came on the scene, the style itself changed so completely,” he explained. “That’s when I sort of switched over to writing symphonic pops.”
He met with similar success, and has received numerous honours from the many orchestras he’s played with, first and foremost from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra which, on July 18, 1991, in an unprecedented move, presented two special concerts in honour of Cowell, who was featured as trumpet soloist, composer and arranger.
“I enjoyed myself right from the very time I joined the Toronto symphony with Sir Ernest MacMillan ’til I left in 1991. I think the highlight for me of my Toronto Symphony years was playing in the ‘pops’ concerts. … I was principal trumpet with the pops, and I enjoyed that a lot. I used to look forward to the those concerts.”
Well-known Boston Pops Orchestra conductor Arthur Fieldler, when he was guest conducting in Toronto, used to make sure Cowell was first trumpet.
Cowell recalled one fond memory when Fieldler brought a special arrangement to the Toronto Symphony Pops of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.
“The opening was a four trumpet standup,” said Cowell, who proceeded to perfectly hum the signature opening bars.
“So we all stood up and played until he stopped us and said: ‘No that doesn’t sound right, just three of you play it.’
“So the fourth guy kind of sat down, and we started again and he stopped us and said: ‘There’s something wrong with that, I don’t like it – so just the first two guys play it.’
“So the fellow and I played it, and then he stopped again (and turned to Cowell, saying): ‘How would you like to do that as a solo?’ So I wound up playing it as a solo.”
Another highlight occurred when the couple went out to see a Peter Sellers movie Two-Way Stretch. Sellers was playing a character in a prison cell and when he turned on the radio, the song that came on was the Cowell-penned Stroll Along With the Blues.
“Joan and I had no idea it was in there,” said Johnny, adding they went to see the movie simple because “we were both fans of Peter Sellers.”
They then sat through the movie again to hear the song.
Cowell has also been accorded civic honours, awarded Scarborough’s Civic Award of Merit in 1997 and being declared “a favourite son” by Tillsonburg in 1990 in a three-day celebration of his music. Cowell was born and raised in Tillsonburg.
Cowell was honoured yet again on June 9 when a North York-based community orchestra called the Encore Symphonic Concert Band, comprised largely of retired pro and semi-pro musicians, hosted a night of his music in North York.
And they managed quite a coup in enticing the revered 81-year-old Canadian musician to dust off his beloved trumpet for a guest solo.
Although not having played the trumpet for two years, Cowell, in an interview prior to the concert, said he would join in on one of his own compositions, Roller Coaster.
It was commissioned in the late 1960s by the then-artistic director of the Toronto Symphony, Seiji Ozawa.
“We were doing a tour of Japan so he asked me if I would write an encore piece.”
Not only did the TSO perform it, but it also went on to be played by the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and many other orchestras throughout the world.
Another of his favourite orchestral compositions was Canadian Odyssey, which he wrote for the TSO following a 1970 tour by the orchestra of Western Canada and the Northwest Territories.
Amazingly, the June tribute show marked 75 years since he performed his first trumpet solo as a child prodigy back in Tillsonburg.
“I still remember it” he said, chuckling. “My mother played piano. We were invited to play in the Tillsonburg council chamber for the councillors and I stood up on a little stage there and played Abide With Me, with my mother on piano.
“A year later, on my seventh birthday, I was asked to come to London, Ont., and play on a radio show called Sleepy Town Express.”
Having conquered Tillsonburg and London in his pre-teens, Cowell struck out for the big city at 15.
He explained how he grew up listening to a weekly CBC-Radio show by the Toronto Symphony Band on Thursday nights, and then proceeded to learn all the trumpet solos by Ellis McLintock, through sheet music that his father would get for him.
When he found out that McLintock was vacating his spot to serve in the RCAF Central Band in Ottawa, Cowell quickly fired off a resume. “I said that I thought that I was the man for the job. I didn’t tell them that I was 15.”
“And they wrote back and said we’d like to hear you play.”
As soon as he got the reply, about four days after he had sent his original letter, he was on his way to Toronto, hitching a ride with a friend of his father’s on a transport truck, leaving about 4 a.m. and arriving in Toronto about 7 a.m.
Armed with directions from the truck depot, he took the streetcar to the east end where he was knocking at the door of orchestra director Laidlaw Addison before 9 a.m.
“I can’t believe I did this,” said Cowell, chuckling, adding that, “Finally the door opened and it was Laidlaw Addison. He had a nightgown on and I said I’m Jack Cowell – he changed my name to Johnny – and you asked me to come down and audition. I just received this letter four days ago.
“And then he said, ‘How old are you’. And I said 15, but I’ll soon be 16 in four months.
“He said, ‘Well it’s a wasted trip. We can’t even hire you. You’re too young.’”
Cowell said he asked him to come in and was told to warm up while his wife made him coffee. About 20 minutes later, Addison came in the room and asked him to play.
“So I played two of the solos that Ellis McLintock had played on the radio.”
He was then asked to play a hymn, which he also did.
“And he said do you think you could stay overnight and come and audition for the band committee at Varsity Arena in the morning?”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Addison arranged a place for him to stay, the audition was successful, the age problem was worked out with the union and Johnny found himself, at the age of 15, playing on the CBC radio program that he used to listen to. When he turned 16 he was picked up by the Toronto Symphony as an ‘extra,’ but actually got to play a lot.
The following year, he joined a navy band based in Victoria. “I had to get a special letter from my dad to let me join the navy when I was 17 so I could be a soloist with the navy band.”
He would soon also become the principal trumpet with the Victoria symphony.
All of the playing, however, took its toll.
“During VJ-Day (Victory over Japan), we played about three concerts, two parades and then I did an all-night dance job. When I got up in the morning, I couldn’t play a note.”
He went to the doctor and then on to a nerve specialist who determined “that I would never play again because I severed all of the tissues and destroyed the muscles in my lip.”
Undaunted, and back in Toronto, he simply changed directions. “I wrote a piece of music, a suite for symphony orchestras and submitted it to the conservatory (Royal Conservatory of Music) and they gave me a composition scholarship to study composition. And that sort of took up my time.”
At the same time he never gave up hope of playing the trumpet again, “trying all the time to see if I could get a note out of the trumpet.”
Gradually, he did regain his ability, first playing in swing and dance bands.
“I didn’t have any endurance, I didn’t have any range. But I wanted to play so badly,” Cowell said.
“In dance bands you sort of got away with it,” his wife Joan said. “It’s not like a symphony where every note has to be perfect.”
Not only did playing in swing and dance bands help him get his form back, it also helped get him his wife as she was a vocalist in the Stanley St. John dance band, which he also played in.
In 1952, he finally found himself back with the Toronto Symphony.
“It just worked out perfectly for me because there was an opening, I was almost back to where I wanted to be.”
He also had another incentive.
“I said I wasn’t going to marry him until he had a steady job,” said Joan, laughing.
Cowell added: “… So I got a steady job as soon as I could.”
Following his retirement in 1991 with the Toronto Symphony, his talents were scooped up by a number of area concert bands including Toronto Philharmonia and Hannaford Street Silver Band, right up until a few years ago when he put down the trumpet.
There are four songs authored by Johnny Cowell easily available for download on iTunes and they are:
• Walk Hand in Hand With Me (Gerry and the Pacemakers 1965 hit version);
• His Girl (Guess Who 1965 hit version);
• Our Winter Love (two versions, Billy Pursell 1963 instrumental hit; The Letterman vocal hit from 1967)
• These are the Young Years (Floyd Cramer hit from 1963).