BLUE RIBBON
MacCalder called to the Hall
Willie MacCalder could only guess what he was getting into when he started exploring blues oriented sounds back in the 1960s and ’70s. But his pioneering experience will live on as one of the newest members of Edmonton’s Blues Hall of Fame following an induction celebration Sunday.
Now based in Victoria, veteran keyboard player and vocalist MacCalder is this year’s EBHOF inductee in the Performer category.
The late talent promoter and booker, mentor and sound technician Kirby (a.k.a. Kathy Kirby) will be inducted in the Builder category for her multi-faceted role in furthering many music careers.
Winnipeg bluesman Big Dave McLean is this year’s honoree in the Legends category. An Edmonton regular for decades now, he has served as an influence and mentor for many players here.
Following the ceremony, McLean will perform with the backing of Jimmy & The Sleepers, and MacCalder will put in a special guest appearance at the keyboard. All three are well-known to anyone who has followed Edmonton’s music scene, but they have been particularly notable in making our city a popular blues centre
In a chat earlier this week, MacCalder was at a loss to pinpoint when Edmonton became such a blues-friendly place, but he argues it’s now the most important city for blues in Western Canada.
“There is no live blues scene out here. The King Eddie is long gone in Calgary. Edmonton and Blues on Whyte are the most significant thing going on in Western Canada.”
MacCalder was born in Victoria 72 years ago into a family with origins in Nova Scotia and Ontario. His father’s job in the navy led them to the West Coast, but that association ended when they moved to Leduc before Willie’s first birthday.
Growing up in Edmonton, he recalls hearing programs like The Hit Parade on CFRN, vestiges of a bygone era, along with the horsedrawn milk trucks that used to service their Parkallen neighbourhood.
He recalls miming music-making to records on the family pingpong table before he started piano lessons around age nine, but it was seeing Elvis perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 that really got him excited about music.
“I was totally in love with both Bo Diddley and Elvis Presley, but that wasn’t allowed in my house. I wanted to be a guitar player, but they wouldn’t allow a guitar in the house. You had to play classical music on the piano, so it took a long time to get somewhere. Eventually, my dad bought me an alto saxophone from the Harmony Kids shop and I fell into playing sax in the band at the Pleasantview Community Hall, a band called The Tempests.”
But before long, rock ’n’ roll struck as part of the British Invasion, and MacCalder reverted to the keyboard, intent on following influences such as Eric Burdon and The Animals.
“We had tutors like Barry Allen, Morris Marshall and Wes Dakus who knew we wanted to follow in their footsteps. I was playing Louie Louie with all the wrong chords, but I started learning from these older guys.”
By 1965, MacCalder had formed the band Willie and the Walkers with brothers Bill and Roland
Hardie and Dennis Petruk. He was just 19 when he had the luck to hit Clovis, N.M., to record with studio whiz Norman Petty (who had recorded Buddy Holly). In 1967, they signed with Capitol Records and their hit Alone in my Room charted nationally at No. 1 in 1968.
“Live music was really important back then. We could play high schools and junior high school dances and we had some of the best equipment. We had three different costumes that we would change into over the course of three sets in one night, but the best ones were suits made of burgundy corduroy that we wore with yellow shirts.”
Around this same period, the keyboardist learned more about the real blues tradition that had inspired the British invasion by urban blues mentors like Bob Godwin and Greg Kennedy.
He credits his biggest influences on keyboard as Otis Spann and Memphis Slim and jazz leader Horace Silver.
Within a few short years, MacCalder’s career took off, from touring small-town Alberta, to playing major stages across Canada, to dates in New York and Los Angeles, and he worked in multiple bands. He learned the basics of studio engineering, too, working the mixing board for the historic debut album by Edmonton blues-rock pioneers Hot Cottage in 1972. That was the year before bigger opportunities took him to Vancouver in 1973.
From there, MacCalder’s career hit a national and international spotlight after he co-founded (with Vancouver’s Tom and Jack Lavin) The Powder Blues Band in 1978, one of Canada’s most successful groups of its time and recipients of a Juno Award and W.C. Handy Award during the 1980s. Featured on keyboards and vocal, he also contributed to songwriting and coproducing numerous hits, including their double-platinum selling debut Uncut and the acclaimed Live at Montreaux album.
Despite his success, Edmonton wasn’t forgotten. He made it back here to play with The Rault Brothers and to perform with Pontiac at venues such as The Hovel in the late 1970s. Powder Blues made their Edmonton debut in 1980. He’s played various Edmonton venues over the years. Subsequent side efforts saw MacCalder work with Jim Byrnes, Long John Baldry, Ferron and others.
While he’s been nursing retirement for a while, the keyboardist has been active again in the studio over the past several years with two musical friends he made in Yellowknife during performances up there — drummer Norman Glowach and bassist Pat Braden. They hope to be here Sunday to join MacCalder in performance.