by Richard Skelly » Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:57 pm
Rain Dance no doubt resonated to more than a few Canadian and American farmers—or more likely their rock-loving offspring. A few inches of precipitation sprinkled through the growing season made all the difference between bumper harvest and catastrophic drought. From titling their first Nimbus 9/RCA album Wheatfield Soul to Rain Dance (not to mention Runnin’ Back To Saskatoon), The Guess Who never forgot their Great Plains lineage.
So Long, Bannatyne was the album from which Rain Dance emerged. Lead guitarist Kurt Winter’s imprint was all over the record. He co-wrote pretty well every song with Burton Cummings. The album cover, like the title track, referenced Kurt’s childhood apartment home in the working class Bannatyne Apartments. Indeed, he supposedly still occasionally bunked there during his hardscrabble rock years with Prairie bands such as Gainsborough Gallery and Brother.
The band poses in front of the fraying building on the front cover of So Long, Bannatyne. The rear cover shows the boys by a sign proclaiming Hello My Chevrier Home. Kurt had used his initial Guess Who windfall (after joining in 1970 with co-guitarist Greg Leskiw to replace Randy Bachman) to buy a house on Chevrier Boulevard, a middle class subdivision near the University Of Manitoba. Long after leaving The Guess Who, Kurt was a pool-playing regular at an off-campus tavern I patronized.
Despite considerably boosting his fortune through his 1974 Guess Who departure—and earning considerable royalties thereafter—Kurt contentedly stayed in his Chevrier home until passing away in 1997.