chainstitch embroidery on wool gaberdine
In 1972, Canadian film changed forever with the release of Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road.
In it, two men from Cape Breton Nova Scotia head to Toronto to seek fortune, and escape the dismal future facing them at home. Unfortunately, things don’t turn out as they’d hoped.
Doug McGrath and Paul Bradley in Goin' Down the Road
Bruce Cockburn sings the title song he wrote for the film over the opening credits, as we see the beauty of Cape Breton’s coast from the air, and zoom down onto desolate streets, out-of-commission fishing boats and coal mine towers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDQ10u42G2M&NR=1
So I’m goin’ down the road, boys
Seeking what I’m owed, boys
And I know it must get better
If far enough I go
To Shebib’s displeasure, Ontario-born Cockburn never recorded, released, or performed in concert the music he wrote for Goin’ Down the Road, saying it expressed the feelings of the actors in the story, not his own. Over 20 years later, in his first public performance of this song, he accompanied Cape Breton Queen Rita MacNeil as she sang it on her national TV show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axnQ501pYSA
In a scene reportedly filmed at Toronto’s famous Horseshoe Tavern, Pete and Joey drink beer with other displaced Maritimers and listen to a country singer, in a pompadour and glittering jacket, do Hank Snow’s ode to his home province “My Nova Scotia Home”.
Bobby Rowan in Goin' Down the Road
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz1xSVRaOQw
Hank, who was born and grew up on the southwest coast, around Liverpool, and then Lunenburg, first recorded this song in his home studio at the Rainbow Ranch in 1959, releasing it that year b/w his tragic narration song about a fallen woman “The Tramp’s Story”, on a 45 sold only in Canada.
There’s a place I’ll always cherish, ‘neath the blue Atlantic skies
Where the shores down in Cape Breton bid the golden sun to rise
And the fragrance of the apple blossoms sprays the dew-kissed lawn
Back in dear old Nova Scotia, the place where I was born.
Hank was one of the first in Nashville to make a home studio. On “My Nova Scotia Home” he accompanies himself on guitar. It was regular practice for him to stay up all night recording, by himself, or with some of his regular visitors and drinking buddies like steel player Howard White and fiddler Buddy Spicher in the early 60s. Howard writes about his experiences playing places like Glace Bay with Hank, or, as they called him at the Opry, “The Little General”, in his book Every Highway Out of Nashville. Howard played with everyone from Hank Williams on, did several tours of Canada with Wilf Carter, and spent 1960-64 with Hank Snow’s Rainbow Ranch Boys.
“Hank,” I said, when I started working for him in 1960, “I hear you drink a lot, and I’ll be glad to drink with you if you pay for it.” Howard White, Every Highway Out of Nashville
Howard White on steel with Hank Snow
It was unusual for RCA to release Hank’s self-recorded material, almost exclusively he recorded in their Nashville studio, which by 1959 was the now-famous Studio B, presided over by Gretsch-playing producer Chet Atkins.
Most likely RCA couldn’t be bothered to record a song like “My Nova Scotia Home”. All the records from Atkin’s operation were heavily orchestrated, with background vocals by quartets like The Anita Kerr Singers and The Jordanaires. A solo folk song with a guitar wasn’t an option.
But Hank had big sales and considerable pull with RCA so that’s probably how he got the Canadian single released. It sold well enough to have at least two pressings, because on some , an M.I. MacIntyre is credited as co-writer and others, including the 1968 LP My Nova Scotia Home, the writer is only C.E Snow.
Country music historian Don Miller, who died a year ago in Afton, Nova Scotia, never hesitated to say, as he did to me, “Hank Snow stole that song! Just like he stole “The Night I Stole Old Sammy Morgan’s Gin”!” Don held Hank in poor regard, but he had all his records and songbooks in his meticulously catalogued collection.
Don Miller, collector, historian, musician, Wilf Carter fan, stationmaster. Afton, Nova Scotia, 2007.
Another country historian, Jim Dean of Halifax, told me that M.I. MacIntyre was a musician from Cape Breton who played with Jack MacLean of L’Ardoise, Cape Breton in Toronto in the fifties. He wrote a song with the same name and wanted Hank to record it, but Hank had his own version and said no thanks. MacIntyre’s version was actually recorded by another band of Capers in Ontario, Scotty Stevenson and Ruthie and Bernie MacLean, cousins to Jack, who has to be one of the biggest Hank Snow fans on all of Cape Breton Island, and that’s saying something, because there are a lot of them there.
Hank had no qualms about putting his name on other people’s songs he bought fair and square through his Moncton-based Silver Star Song Club, with the lucky songwriter getting a few dollars and a copy of the recording in exchange for complete rights. In the 40s, he recorded New Waterford singer Alonzo Marsh’s “The Alphabet Song”, and another Jim Dean says sounds a lot like Marsh’s style without credit, “You Didn’t Have To Tell Me”. Was that the case for “My Nova Scotia Home”?
Jim Dean and Don Miller agree to disagree at the Hank Snow Tribute, Bridgewater Nova Scotia, 2007.
Hank Snow had mixed feelings about his Nova Scotia beginnings, which as he never hesitated to say, were awful–poverty and hardship, a broken home, social rejection, physical abuse–which makes it a little surprising he wrote such a bright and moving tribute to the province.
The Scotian and the Ocean Limited, and the Maritime Express
Their mighty engines throbbing, make their way towards the west
And the sturdy fishin’ schooners, sways so laz’ly to and fro’
Nova Scotia is my sanctuary, and I love her so
Where the pretty robin red breast, seeks its’ loved ones in the trees
And the French di’lect in old Quebec, keeps callin’ out to me
It seems to say, be on your way, there’s a welcome at the door
Where the kinfolks are a-waiting on that gay Atlantic shore
Not even ten years before RCA thought he was too big to record that song, Hank finally made it in Nashville, at the age of 36, after 15 years of recording and touring in Canada. He was a star in Canada, but was continually going broke with his relentless failed efforts to make it in the US. In spite of his eventual rise to success, flashy wardrobe and famous friends, he was not the same kind of conspicuous consumer as Hank Williams or Webb Pierce. Most Canadian fans still saw him as their own, and identified with his struggles and drive to reach his goals.
Hank Snow, Dale Evans, Roy Rogers
Hank’s 1950 monster hit “I’m Movin’ On” is a more optimistic, confident take on leaving your home behind than the bleak story in Goin’ Down The Road. There is no doubt who wrote these words.
That big eight-wheeler rollin’ down the track
Means your true-lovin’ daddy ain’t comin’ back
‘Cause I’m movin’ on, I’ll soon be gone
You were flyin’ too high for my little old sky
So I’m movin’ on.
Sounds like he knew he was going to be OK, even though he wrote that before he secured his first US session in 1950, embarking on a career that would result in over 90 million in sales, second only to Celine Dion of Canadian-born artists.
Florida show poster, c. 1953
Down through beautiful New Brunswick and across to P.E.I.
To the rock-bound coasts of Newfoundland, I’ll love them till I die
But if God came here on Earth with us and asked if he could rest
I’d take him to my Nova Scotia home, the place that I love best.
After regular shows there for decades, Hank didn’t visit Nova Scotia for many years. In the early 80s, he hit an all-time low when requests to play the Lunenburg and Bridgewater Exhibitions were turned down. Snow made a final tour of Nova Scotia in 1984. He didn’t return again before his death in Nashville in 1999, at the age of 85.
I recently made my first chainstitch-embroidered Nudie-style suit, for a musician in Nova Scotia.
He’s wearing it at this weekend’s East Coast Music Awards in Cape Breton. “East Coast” music and this award show has become a big deal, far different than when Hank started playing halls in Sydney, Port Hawkesbury and New Waterford in the late 30s. Shortly after his death, the ECMAs were going to do a splashy tribute to Hank Snow, but it was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances, and never rescheduled.
Arthur Theriault, letter to Halifax Chronicle-Herald, n.d.
