Can-Con 45 Of The Day - January 1

Can-Con 45 Of The Day - January 1

Postby radiofan » Sun Dec 31, 2017 9:09 pm

Today's Can-Con 45 is from 1974 ... Dwayne Ford and Bearfoot and "Passing Time" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE-Ns9Ctmr8

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Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - January 1

Postby Richard Skelly » Sun Dec 31, 2017 11:39 pm

As a New a Year awaits, some idle thoughts about Bearfoot. Just how many Canadian bands did Ronnie Hawkins have a hand in developing? The Band, Skylark, Crowbar and Bearfoot, for sure. Also, why wasn’t this 1974 single credited to Dwayne Ford & Bearfoot? That’s how the album read when released soon thereafter.

Not to quibble: Passing Time is a great 45 with a crisp mix that leaps out of even modest radio or hi-fi speakers. Thank producer Bob Gallo for getting the most out of the Manta Studio sessions in Toronto. Gallo—a transplanted New Yorker who’d worked with Ben E. King and Pete Best (post-Beatles) & His All Stars—would soon be running Columbia Records of Canada’s a & r section.

Columbia paired Gallo with Bearfoot after the band nearly won a Most Promising Artist Juno for its first album which spawned the CanCon hit Molly. (BTO won that “best rookie” Juno in early 1974.) But the group was already splintering. The original group, full of Hawkins -trained or -spotted talent featured Jim Atkinson (guitar), Terry Danko (bass), Dwayne Ford (keyboards), Hugh Brockie (guitar) and Brian Hilton (drums). Their debut Columbia album was credited to Atkinson, Danko & Ford (with Brockie and Hilton). Good for an accounting firm’s shingle, but very unwieldy for a band.

Yet a debut single did well enough for Columbia to order a name change in return for a reissued and better-promoted album. Thus was Bearfoot born and second single Molly caught on. Ford was about the only member left when it came time for a followup. He then went solo, singing duets with or writing songs for new wife Patsy Gallant. Later in the ‘70s, founding bassist Danko (brother of The Band four-stringer Rick) decided to revive Bearfoot without Ford. By about 1980, Bearfoot was done.
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