— the artist would set up a booth near the coat check to sign LPs and photographs, and to shake hands with the regulars.
Bob Gardiner, a country music photographer and journalist, was a regular at the Horseshoe throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. When his marriage broke down, he lived in a boxcar for a while on the Canadian National Railway property, but each evening he headed up to the tavern on Queen. The octogenarian recalls a particular fond memory of an interview he conducted for Walter Grealis’s RPM magazine with Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame member Ernest Tubb:
I went down to the Horseshoe in the early afternoon. It wasn’t a great day … it was raining cats and dogs. Ernest let me on to his tour bus that was parked on a side alley in behind the club. We were just getting acquainted before the interview when Ernest looks out the door and sees all these people standing in the rain. He’s dressed in this beautiful Nudie suit and says to me, “Before we get down to business, I have to go out and meet these people. If they are willing to stand out there in the rain, I appreciate that and need to let them know.” After chatting with his fans, Ernest came back in and he looked like a drowned rat. His beautiful Nudie suit was soaked. He went to the back of the bus, changed, got spruced up again, and then we had a nice conversation.
Later that night, Tubb opened his show at the ’Shoe to raucous applause, and began by playing his hit “Thanks a Lot.”
Every weekend, a similar scenario played out. Couples congregated at this country music shrine to worship their musical idols like Tubb, whose career spanned more than four decades and symbolized the heart and soul of Texas honky-tonk. Women with beehives, stretchy pants, and blouses with puffy sleeves came in with cowboys on their arms; the men sported skinny string ties, V-neck sweaters, and padded jackets. Most had pompadours and long sideburns. The women hummed, clapped, and sang along to their favourite songs; the men hooted, hollered, and banged on the tables for one more encore before closing time at 1:00 a.m. On busy weekends, up to thirty staff members would be hustling trays of beer from the bar to the tables throughout the performances. Mickey Andrews, who was in the house band for four years from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, recalls towers of empty beer cases stacked in the corners of the bar by Sunday night.
Charley Pride was another regular at the country shrine on Queen Street. Bob Gardiner knew him well. The photographer used to show up early for all the concerts, head backstage, and hang out with the various artists. He always had his camera bag with him, and often put it in the corner of the dressing room. “I remember one night being there before a show with Charley,” says Gardiner. “After the show, I had to go back to get my bag, and it was gone! I turn and look at Charley sitting in his chair, and he had this big, sheepish grin on his face. I knew he had hid it on me … he was a bit of a joker.”
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A feature article in the Toronto Daily Star in March 1964 proclaimed, “Make Way for the Country Sound.” In it, journalist Morris Duff says, “At a time when many other clubs are pushing panic buttons, those featuring country and western are doing business, even when it rains or snows.” The paper had a weekly column, Around the Ranch, with the latest country and western news, and the city even had a magazine dedicated to covering the genre called The Country Gentleman.
During this era, radio also helped get the word out about the Opry stars. Bill Bessie hosted a weekly program on Saturdays between noon and 1:00 p.m. on CBC Radio in which he would interview the Nashville stars who were playing the Horseshoe or the Edison that night. CFGM Radio, based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, also helped spread the country and western gospel. Starting in 1968, the FM station broadcast of country hits was fifty thousand watts strong, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was the first Canadian station to program country music exclusively; later, in 1976, the broadcaster even produced a show dedicated to the genre, called Opry North, that mimicked Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. The popular syndicated show continued until CFGM ended its country music policy in 1990.
Jack Starr with future Country Music Hall of Famer Loretta Lynn in the late 1960s.
As country music grew, the station increased its wattage and expanded its listener base. Alan Fisher was a DJ for CFGM in those years, and he had the chance to chat with many of the Nashville stars when they played in Toronto, frequently at the Horseshoe. He would also introduce them in the evenings as the emcee when the radio station sponsored some of the shows.
“One of the features of the show had me interviewing one of the stars who would be appearing in town that week, either at the Horseshoe Tavern or at the Edison on Yonge or from the Nashville North CTV show,” Fisher recalls in his book God, Sex and Rock ’n’ Roll. “I got to meet and interview a lot of them, including Bill Anderson, Loretta Lynn, George Hamilton IV, Bob Luman, and many more.”
Before Bernie Finkelstein went on to make his mark in the music industry, managing the likes of the Paupers and Bruce Cockburn and founding True North Records, he was just an adolescent with little interest in school and a growing love for anything to do with music. He was also a friend of Fisher’s. In later years Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, another band he managed, was a mainstay at the ’Shoe, but he says his first time walking through those timeless doors as an underage teenager remains his fondest.
I remember going with Al [Fisher] down to the Horseshoe one afternoon when he was a DJ working for CFGM. I had never been in there before, and my first impression was of it being quite glitzy. Ferlin Husky was playing. Anybody who knows anything about country music knows “Wings of a Dove,” which was his big record. That remains even today an unforgettable experience. I’ll never forget that first time at the Horseshoe. For me, the real excitement was all those country-music-loving women in their bouffants. Who knew what mysteries lurked under those wild hairdos?
Ferlin Husky was one of the stars Fisher interviewed. He played the Horseshoe many times, including that memorable first night for Finkelstein in 1969. “Wings of a Dove,” a gospel song, was a number one country hit for him in 1960 and one of his signature songs. The future Country Music Hall of Famer (2010), who went on to sell more than twenty million records, was one of the more popular performers at the venue in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The Horseshoe didn’t just draw residents of Hogtown looking for a hoedown. Many came from the outskirts of Toronto; some drove more than a hundred kilometres to hear that good old country music, and some even flew! Jack Starr told Dick Brown, in a feature piece for The Globe and Mail in 1973, about a time a mother and her daughter flew up on a Friday evening from St. John’s just to catch a performance by Husky, and then jumped on a plane back to Newfoundland on Saturday afternoon.
Country fans could not get enough of the Toronto twang and the dancing that usually accompanied it. After the Horseshoe wound down, shortly after 1:00 a.m., their appetite for more had to be satiated. To keep the party going, Toronto’s first after-hours country and western club, the Golden Guitar, opened in 1964, and then Beatrice Martin, the Horseshoe’s hostess with the mostest for more than a decade, opened her own after-hours club that same year. Aunt Bea’s short-lived Nashville Room on Spadina, south of College, catered to the country music fans’ desire to keep the honky-tonkin’ going long into the wee hours. According to reporter Jack Batten, Aunt Bea had neatly coifed silver-blond hair. She was always smiling, and her smile was contagious. She made friends with everyone she met. In an interview with the Toronto Daily Star, Aunt Bea described how her speakeasy came to be.
Country fans are such a loyal bunch, you know. They can never get enough of their music. And the musicians are the same — they like to keep on playing all night. On weekends, especially, nobody wants to quit after the Horseshoe closes at 1:00 a.m. and for years they all kept saying to me, “Oh, Aunt Bea” — everybody calls me that — “why don’t you start another place for afterwards.” Finally, I did, and now the Nashville
