No doubt inspired by the CKNX Saturday Night Barndance, my father, Lynn Russwurm, started writing country songs while still in his teens in the 1940’s. The live country music radio show broadcast from Wingham’s CKNX radio station built its fan base by putting on live Saturday Night Barndance shows in communities throughout the southern Ontario listening area.
On the night Dad took a girl to what I believe was his first visit to a live CKNX Barndance Show, he told me he didn’t know if the song he had mailed to CKNX had even reached the show’s “heartthrob.” But he knew it when Ernie King got up and sang, “In Our Dreamboat Let’s Pretend” live onstage for the very first time. For Dad it was magic. Even better, he got paid for the privilege: it was the very first song he ever sold. Although the song became King’s signature tune on the CKNX Barndance, there were never any royalties since Ernie never recorded.
But that was just the beginning of Dad’s music career. Dad was a good musician who wrote, performed and sometimes sold his own music from the 1940’s onward. As well as writing and selling his own songs, Dad co-wrote songs with other recording artists over the years. During my childhood in the 1960s Dad was often up late writing songs, or letters trying to sell them. In the 1960’s, Dad made a pilgrimage to Nashville to network in hopes of selling more.
Although others had recorded his music, Dad didn’t get his own chance to record any of it it himself until the 1970s. “Play It Long and Lonesome,” an album of his own songs performed by his family band, “The Hummingbirds” was set to be produced by Columbia Records.
The initial release of two of the album’s most commercial singles, “Down Home In Newfoundland,” and “Drifter” were meant to introduce the record to radio audiences.
But when the singles didn’t perform as well as expected, Columbia pulled out of the deal, and Copyright ownership reverted to Dad.
Instead of letting it end there, Dad remortgaged the family home to finish recording the album himself at the Mercey Brothers recording studio, self publishing it on his own “Flora Records” label.
Dad never struck it big, but he kept networking, playing, singing, and selling the odd record or two throughout southern Ontario. He made much more money when he struck out into the used record sale and auction business. In his later years, with much of the soundtrack of his youth starting to disappear, Dad had begun working to preserve the country music that he loved.
He was one of the original founders of the CKNX Barn Dance Historical Society & Entertainment Museum, a volunteer organization intended to keep their music heritage alive by putting on revival CKNX Barndance shows, which would also provide a showcase for the next generations of performers.
Dad was involved by performing in and running the Barndance band, putting on Barndance shows and Campouts, producing Barndance CDs and a DVD, writing his “Boots and Saddles” historical column in the news letter.
When Shirley became the president of the Barndance society, he helped her establish and launch an actual brick and mortar Barndance museum in the CKNX hometown of Wingham, Ontario.
After a lifetime in the music business, Dad didn’t really expect anything much from royalties. He once told me the purpose of records was to get people to come to the shows you played in. My understanding was that Dad’s royalties, if and when they came in, were more likely to number in dollars than hundreds of dollars. The only exception to this was when British rock star Martin Gore (Depeche Mode) covered “I Cast a Lonesome Shadow,” a song Dad had co-written with American Country Music star Hank Thompson.
Dad was happy that music he grew up with recorded on 78s, was no longer locked under copyright. This meant he could help preserve the music he loved. Before selling his considerable Canadian Country Music record collection to Library and Archives Canada, Dad pulled together recordings from his collection to create a series of four traditional Canadian country music compilation albums issued as “Lynn Russwurm’s Canadian Country Music, Volumes 1 – 4” published by the British Archive of Country Music (BACM).
He also volunteered his expertise, contributing artwork, memorabilia, liner notes, tracks etc.) for a variety of other BACM recordings, allowing it to release a lot of otherwise lost Canadian country music on CD (and now digital downloads) to the world. These projects included a collection of music from another major Southern Ontario country music venue from his youth, Hamilton’s Main Street Jamboree, as well as an album of early music from CKNX Barndance headliner, friend and occasional co-writer, Earl Heywood: Canada’s No. 1 Singing Cowboy, Jack Kingston: The Canadian Playboy, Evan Kemp: Beautiful Nicola Valley, and Stu Davis: Canada’s Cowboy Troubadour.
Over the years, Dad and I had discussions, sometimes joined by Bob and Willem, about releasing all of his solo music under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Dad really liked the idea, but didn’t want to do it until he and Shirley were both gone, just in case another song hit it big.
Dad did release his solo CD “Singing My Songs” under a Creative Commons license. His main reason for wanting to make his music freely accessible, not just to his family, but to any artist who wanted to use it in their own projects, was to keep his musical legacy alive. He knew how much effort he had put into creating and promoting his own work. And he had watched first hand as the biggest stars of his country music era began disappearing from the scene after they were gone.
Dad understood that releasing his music with an Attribution License would allow the next generations to use and remix his work, keep his music alive and circulating, and hopefully ensure his life’s work didn’t sink into obscurity. He would still get credit, his music could live on, and maybe even grow if other artists used it in their projects.
