listening and dancing and talking.
Gary Clairman, Jack Starr’s grandson, pretends to play the drums at Aunt Bea’s after-hours club one Sunday morning.
For a brief period during the Horseshoe’s heyday as a country music mecca, Bea’s Nashville Room, with a capacity of about 250, was packed every weekend night long after last call ended at the ’Shoe. It was so popular that many patrons were turned away at the door.
The Matador, which opened in 1964 and was run by the late Ann Dunn — a single mother of five who, as the story goes, wanted a place that wouldn’t interfere with her parenting duties — lasted a lot longer. The after-hours club quickly found a home as a notorious booze can and hip honky-tonk spot that satisfied the appetites of patrons and musicians alike. These twenty-four-hour party people wanted to carry on the celebrations on the weekends into the wee hours, long after the Horseshoe and the other honky-tonk bars had closed. Many of the artists who’d been booked at the Horseshoe, along with a parade of patrons, headed over to this speakeasy at Dovercourt and College once the ’Shoe had closed down — keeping the conversations and the music going until 5:00 a.m. Cowboy boots were nailed onto the wall behind the stage. Here, only real traditional country music was played. There was a house band at the Matador, but everyone who went there was like one big family. Performers swapped songs and shared the stage. In between sets, everyone went upstairs to mingle, or downstairs, where there was always a high-stakes poker game being played. Barnboard walls marked the turn-of-the-century building that was once a ballroom and dance hall for soldiers on leave during the Great War. Naturally, signs with “Cowgirls” and “Cowboys” indicated the route to the washrooms.
Over the years, patrons had the chance to witness legendary early-morning jam sessions by the likes of Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, and Conway Twitty. In the 1970s, the Matador was also the stompin’ grounds for Stompin’ Tom Connors following his Horseshoe gigs. Later on, Canadian folksinger-songwriters Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen found their way there, as did many other celebrities; Cohen even wrote the song “Closing Time” about the after-hours club. The venue continued to operate until 2006.
Back at the Horseshoe, the entrepreneurial Starr was looking for ways to expand his business. In the early part of the 1970s, with Martin as the hostess, on long weekends throughout the summer bus tours left from the Horseshoe’s door and travelled the white line south to Music City, visiting the sites like the Country Music Hall of Fame and taking in performances at the Grand Ole Opry. Three hundred music lovers would line up for a chance to get a seat on one of seven buses that made these regular pilgrimages to the home of country music. Sometimes, Starr would tag along on these road trips.
Baseball fence at the old Maple Leaf Stadium at Bathurst and Lake Shore, with a banner advertisement for the Horseshoe Tavern from the early 1950s.
During this period, Starr expanded his business to include music publishing. He promoted big packaged shows outside the Horseshoe at places like Maple Leaf Stadium, the old baseball stadium on Lake Shore Boulevard, just south of where the Tip Top Tailors lofts stand today. Starr managed the artists and manufactured and sold their LPs and other merchandise at their shows, since the Nashville acts had a hard time bringing products across the border in those days.
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Bill Anderson, a Nashville songwriter who is still playing and recording today at the age of seventy-nine, keeps a special place in his heart for the Horseshoe Tavern. During the 1960s, Whisperin’ Bill — as he was affectionately known for his soft vocal style — was a regular, playing the Horseshoe at least once or twice a year. A Grand Ole Opry member since 1961, Anderson says that at the time the Horseshoe Tavern and the Flame Club in Minneapolis were the only two places in North America where you could play for an extended run. “It was one of those special places where you could sit down and play for one week, and not have to pack up every day,” Anderson recalls. The country crooner would drive up from Nashville with his band (usually five or six strong) to play a week-long residency at Jack Starr’s tavern. Often, they would play a gig somewhere else on the way to Toronto and then another en route back to Tennessee. Starr would put Anderson and his bandmates up at the Lord Simcoe Hotel. “I don’t think I could have afforded that fine a hotel for me and my bandmates,” Anderson jokes. Once located on the northeast corner of King Street and University Avenue, at 150 King Street West, the hotel opened in May 1957 and was closed in 1979, and the building was torn down in 1981.
Anderson remembers the Horseshoe as an intimate venue with a small stage. He always had a fairly big band. “We used to get creative on how to set up on the stage. The fans were right there in front of us and were always really responsive to our music. There was a country music station in town at the time, so they knew all our songs, applauded often, and sang along. The contract was for nightly shows from Wednesday to Saturday that included a matinee. These matinees,” says Anderson, “saw kids come to the shows; they were always a family-friendly affair and a fun atmosphere.”
In June 1965, the Country Music Hall of Famer went into the studio to cut a promising new song he wrote with bandmate Jimmy Gateley called “Bright Lights and Country Music.” Anderson explains how the idea for the song came about:
The … idea came from a fan letter from a woman in London, Ontario, I got while out on the road. We were in Toronto working a little nightclub called the Horseshoe Tavern. We did a matinee on Saturday afternoon and a night show on Saturday night. One of my fans had written me a letter. She said, “I’m going to come to the night show because I like soft lights with my country music.” I read the letter to Jimmy and both our ears perked up and our songwriters’ antennas went up. We wrote almost the entire song in the dressing room at the Horseshoe Tavern.
I told Jimmy, “There is an idea in here somewhere,” but soft lights didn’t feel right.
Throughout their whole set that night, the pair couldn’t get the words from that letter out of their minds. When the show ended, they went down to the dressing room in the basement of the Horseshoe where, after each show, the fans would line up for autographs and pictures with the visiting Nashville musicians, shake hands, and buy records.
“On this night, we told the crowd to wait and be patient for a minute, as we had a song to write. They were very respectful and patient. With the door of our dressing room open, Jimmy and I, with our guitars, sat there, and the song came to life. It’s the only song I ever wrote in front of an audience. We took turns coming up with lines and writing the tune,” recalls Anderson.
Today, Anderson still lives in Music City and plays live every chance he gets. He also recently celebrated the fifty-fifth anniversary of his joining the Grand Ole Opry. “An old man like me doesn’t need to be so busy!” he jokes. I catch up with the legendary country musician, and he tells me how he played the Horseshoe so many times over the years that the gigs all blend together. Still, he says there were a few shows that stood out for him.
The head of MCA Canada presents Whispering Bill Anderson (right) a gold record for Bill Anderson’s Greatest Hits, onstage at the Horseshoe Tavern in May 1974.
One memorable night he unexpectedly received his first gold record. “I don’t remember the year,” he tells me, “but it was in the late 1960s. I had been recording for Decca Records. Several of the local office staff in Toronto came down to the Horseshoe one night to see my performance. What I didn’t know is they were there to present me with my first gold record. It was for my album Bill Anderson’s Greatest Hits, which had gone gold in Canada. One of the guys from the record company came up on
