Music journalism, books and more

The Silver Dollar is one of Toronto’s most historically significant music venues. Along with its important role as a blues bar for 16 years (1994-2010), it provided a regular showcase room for rock, jazz and bluegrass music.  The earliest known band to play there was Tommy Danton & the Echoes, a gold-lame-suited group fronted by a Sinatra-style crooner that performed a popular mix of jazz and rhythm 'n' blues. Danton and the Echoes (pictured below at right) had a long residency at the club, after it opened in 1958. In the ’70s, when the Dollar was a strip club, the house band included notable jazz players John T. Davis (B3 organ) and Tommy Okie (drums) who brought in sax great Jim H...

He’s one of the most famous musicians of the 20th century and a rock guitarist of unparalleled talent. Although his mainstream career lasted only four years before his death on Sept. 18, 1970 of an apparent drug overdose, Jimi Hendrix shone so brightly that today his albums and concert appearances are the stuff of legend. The official Hendrix website, run by his estate, painstakingly catalogues every recording and performance he ever made under his own name. And many devoted fan sites do the same. As most fans know, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed twice in Toronto: once at the Canadian National Exhibition on Feb. 24, 1968, on a bill with England’s Soft Machine and Toronto’s own Pa...

 A two-hour documentary that initially aired on Canadian TV in January, 2006 and was released on DVD on December 11, 2007. The documentary captures the sounds of the 1960s in Canada, from the folk music of Ian and Sylvia, and the rhythm 'n blues of Ronnie Hawkins, to the many other legendary stars like Joni Mitchell, The Guess Who, Neil Young, Anne Murray, The Band, cult heroes like David Wiffen, The Collectors and Mashmakhan, and some of Canada's brightest younger stars including Blue Rodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Sarah Harmer. Full of candid interviews with more than 60 iconic figures.         Here is a list of all the songs featured, taken from concert footage and T...

Oscar Peterson is remembered as a gifted pianist who could play it all, from Chopin and Liszt to blues, stride, boogie and beyond. Peterson led his own jazz trios, performed with such legendary figures as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, who dubbed him “the man with four hands,” won eight Grammy Awards and Canada’s prestigious Glenn Gould Prize. Called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, he released over 200 recordings before his death in 2007, including his 1956 Stratford Festival recording, 1958’s On the Town, recorded at Toronto’s Town Tavern, and 1962’s Night Train, which featured a number of Ellington pieces a...

A two-hour documentary that aired on television in 2009 and was released on DVD  that same year. Looks at the digital age of Canadian music in the 1980s, a visual era of big hair and shoulder pads, when music videos helped homegrown artists to take off internationally.The documentary is split into nine segments: - Video Rock - Reggae / New Wave - Quebec Pop - Art, Pop & Politics - Alt-Country - Heartland Rock - Roots / Hip Hop - Blues Rock - Divas & Icons Songs featured in concert footage and videos (in alphabetical order): "A Criminal Mind" – Gowan "Ain't No Room For Cheatin' – Handsome Ned "Black Velvet"&nbs...