by Richard Skelly » Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:24 am
Don’t know much about Ms. Matthews and her “Big Town” backups. But this was probably one of the final 45s released on Tamarac Records. By 1965, Tamarac owner Stan Klees had merged it with other area labels to create Red Bird.
If the Klees name rings a bell...it should. Klees was the driving force in later persuading buddy Walt Grealis to launch RPM Magazine to follow the nascent Canadian music industry. What ex-Mountie Grealis initially lacked in music biz awareness, Klees compensated for and much more. In a 10-part RPM series, Stan Klees pushed for federal broadcast regulators to enact some type of minimum airplay requirements for Canadian-connected recordings.
After the new CRTC followed through with CanCon regs, Klees was credited with designing the MAPL circle soon affixed to domestic releases to show whether they qualified in two or more categories for Music, Artist, Production or Lyrics. Grealis and Klees also saw their annual Music Awards gala morph into the Juno Awards, but were quickly sidelined as organizers. (Full disclosure: I freelanced from Vancouver for RPM in the mid-70s, but normally dealt with Walt on the phone. Stan was always up to his elbows in photos and layout sheets.)
Grealis died many years ago, but was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1994. Klees—still alive and, hopefully, well—never was inducted even though Grealis felt he deserved the same honour. Maybe Order judges can rectify that oversight in time for next December’s announcement of 2019 recipients.