COUNTRY ROOTS
LARRY DELANEY
THE INITIAL LINEUP OF THE CFRA HAPPY WANDERERS - (L/R FRONT) VINCE LEBEAU, BOB KING, KEN DAVIDSON (L/R - BACK) WARD ALLEN, “PAPA” JOE BROWN, KEN REYNOLDS
Country, The next wave
Our continuing retrospective into the roots of country music in the Ottawa Valley now takes us into the late 1950’s- early 60’s. We previously saw how the early roots were established with the music of Mac Beattie, Reg Hill, Oral Scheer, Hank “Rivers” Lariviere, and Orval Prophet, all of whom laid a foun- dation for the next wave -- artists like Bob King, The Happy Wanderers, Ron McMunn, Irwin Prescott, and others.
22 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
BOB KING - “Mr. Sunshine” Bob King (1934-1989) was raised in Joyceville, a small community near Kingston, and moved to Ottawa, where, as a 14-year-old, he formed his first band, The Country Cousins. After honing his talents, he joined on as a member of Mac Beattie & His Ottawa Valley
Melodiers. In 1954, at age 20, he signed a solo recording deal with RCA Canada; cutting several sessions at RCA studios in Montreal. It was a time when few Canadian country artists earned radio airplay and there were no national “hit charts” to reflect the more popular art- ists or songs of the
day...yet Bob King delivered a best-selling winner with his ballad Laurel Lee, which reportedly sold in excess of 50,000 discs for RCA, an unheard of figure for a Canadian country singer at the time. The mid-50’s also ushered in a new form of
music...rock ‘n roll. RCA Can- ada jumped on the bandwagon, using Bob King as their poster boy of the new genre, releasing singles like Rockin’ The Jukebox, Party Hop and the Elvis- flavoured ballad, A Woman’s Devotion.
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