Overview

It began with a radio station in Cleveland, Ohio, a 50,000-watt clear-channel signal reaching teens across the Buckeye State and over the Great Lakes to Southern Ontario and beyond. The invasion continued on the airwave voices of popular radio disc jockeys such as Alan Freed, Hound Dog George Lorenz, and Dick Biondi, combined with outlandish performances on Canadian stages by well-known American entertainers such as Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry. In Vancouver, a 16-year-old disc jockey named Red Robinson was already on the air playing just about every rock 'n' roll song he could get his hands on. The stuff of early Canadian rock nostalgia, the work focuses on the critical twelve-year window from 1951 when the term rock and roll was coined to 1963 when a Canadian band, Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights, rocketed to #1 on Toronto's CHUM Chart and pop charts across the nation with Charlena, Canada's first home-grown, chart-busting rock and roll hit. The essence of Canadian, it's about the rock and rollers who didn't leave Canada for the U.S., bands that played the high school gyms, church basements, and the dance pavillions of the resort towns. It's about equipment that worked sometimes, fifteen-cent beer, five-dollars-a-night gigs, and never forgetting the million-dollar dream of putting out a hit record. National Business Book Award-winner Greig Stewart (Shutting Down the National Dream: A. V. Roe and the Tragedy of the Avro Arrow and Arrow Through the Heart: The Life and Times of Crawford Gordon) combines his signature extensive research, including in-depth interviews, with a fluid, takes-you-there writing style.

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9781775187615

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