OUT OF THIN AIR

been used to dropping in to entertain and be entertained when we were on Great George Street. The visitors used to annoy Art who wanted to make the studio more formal and professional, but he’d get the chairs, anyway, and line them around the wall. The performers liked the live audience there and felt as if they were playing directly to and for them rather than to the critical operators looking back at them through the plate glass window of the control room.

Art McDonald was an inveterate showman, and even though he dis- approved of the studio audience he couldn’t help putting on a show for them. Before the broadcast would begin, he would very ceremoniously produce a roll of bright red ribbon and meticulously measure distances between the mikes. Then he would position himself before each mike in turn, and with great concentration hold an end of the ribbon between his teeth and hold an arm’s length distance of ribbon to the mike. In this way he presumably was setting up the correct speaking distance. The exercise was, in fact, meaningless, but everyone was impressed as they watched, in silence, Art carry out this ritual. It was taken as a sign of great professionalism.

When “The Merry Islanders” hit the air to the tune of “Up The River” it was fun and everybody joined in. Bill Brown, who was an announcer then, would get up in the middle of a fast number and do a step dance, and Bob Large who was an operator on his way to the control booth would let out a lusty “Yahooo.” Some of the Merry Islanders were farmers like Ray Sellick and the Bertrams. It is a tes— timony to how much they enjoyed performing that they would make it into town every Friday night through many a wild Island snowstorm—— and most likely on horse and sled too.

Ray Simmons, who later played with Don Messer, was a member of “The Merry Islanders” for about a year and travelled with them play- ing for dances in centres all over the Maritimes and the Gaspé during the summer.

“I always got along well with George Chappelle because he was a heck of a nice guy,” says Ray. But Art McDonald who wasn’t with us, had many arguments with George when the band was on the road. I didn’t know Art McDonald from a hole in the ground, but I got a letter from him ordering me to paint all the signs of CFCY off the trailer we used for luggage and instruments”. No one knows how the argument between George Chappelle and Art would have been resolved, because the war broke out and many of the boys joined up.

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