shy lamb. Tom was always his own best PR person; the way he landed the gig at the Horseshoe is a perfect example of this dogged determination. Andrews recalls seeing Tom play at an after-hours club before Starr hired him, and thought he was tipping off the club owner to a new act. Not so. Tom had already gathered up his courage and been to see Starr many times, begging for a chance to play that storied stage. In late 1968, Starr finally relented, giving Connors a chance to prove himself by booking him for a one-week stint. It’s something the late musician never forgot. In his memoir Stompin’ Tom and the Connors Tone, the singer devotes an entire chapter, “Landing the Horseshoe,” to Starr’s bar. In it, Connors recalls the seminal moment when he signed his first contract to play the iconic institution on Queen:
On the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of November, I got my courage up again and decided to go down to Toronto and try the Horseshoe Tavern, only this time minus the suit. I really didn’t have much faith in landing a job there because the Horseshoe was known all over Canada. Everybody who was a country fan and who landed in Toronto for any reason, either by plane, car, bus or train, for any length of time, sooner or later, wound up paying a visit to the Horseshoe. The owner’s name was Jack Star [sic] and he had kept the place “country” through thick and thin now for over twenty years and the club had a great reputation. There wasn’t hardly a weekend that went by that the place wasn’t packed, due mainly to the fact that he would always bring a big-name act from Nashville, Tennessee, to play Friday and Saturday night. When Jack finally arrived on the scene I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was a very quiet, congenial man, even though he had the demeanour of a person who knew his business very well. He made me feel at ease and I began telling him what I had done, where I had been up until now, and just how much I wanted a chance to play his club to see how well I could fare. “Well,” he said, “I’m trying out a new house band next week and if you want to come in and see if they can back you up, I’ll give you the opportunity to see what you can do. Bring your contract in before you start on Monday night and I’ll sign you on for a week.
Tom could not believe his ears. That weekend he went back to where he was staying, and that’s all he could talk about with the owners of the house. On Monday, at around four o’clock in the afternoon, he returned to the Horseshoe and just sat there for the next five hours, until his set time at 9:00 p.m. The only interruption to his thoughts came when Starr stopped by his table and asked him for his union contract. After signing it, Starr shook Connors’s hand and said, “You must really want to play here. I’ve been watching you sit there for the last three or four hours, and I don’t think you took your eyes off the stage once.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
