OUT OF THIN AIR

another brilliant musician who was the talented player of 16 different instruments. Duke’s best instrument was the bass fiddle and that is what he payed most of the time. That and the banjo. Don, Duke and Charlie teamed up with Ned Landry, Eldon Rathburn, and Joe LeBlanc for “The Backwoods Breakdown”. Later the group headed by Don, Charlie and Duke were known as “The New Brunswick Lumberjacks.” Sometimes as many as fifteen musicians played with them and they broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Commission programs from CHSJ Saint John.

When they moved to Charlottetown, Jackie Doyle former pianist with George Chappelle, joined them and also Bill LeBlanc and the MacRae cousins, Harold and Warren on the drums and trumpet. Marg Osburne, “The Girl From The Singing Hills“ came to Charlottetown to sing with Don Messer in 1947. Cecil McEachern joined the Islanders the same year as Marg and Waldo Munro was the popular pianist in the later years. They were all of them very accomplished musicians and rugged individualists; and it says something for their quiet little leader that he was able to keep them practicing long hours perfecting their style.

Don Messer was involved in broadcasting for forty years. Art McDonald did the announcing for the program on the coast-

to-coast network in the early years. He was announcing on their first broadcast to the CBC network, Nov. 11th, 1939. He would come on

the air with:

“From the studios of CF C Y in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, it’s the way down east music of Don Messer and his Islanders!”

Then Charlie would sing:

“Got my dancin’ boots on Got my Sunday best Dancing to the Islanders tonight!”

and they’d be away on a program that reached at one time well over three million people. Later the announcing job was done by Bob Large when

102