Rebels with a musical cause
Popular ’60s Edmonton band turning back the clock with a reunion show and CD release
Nobody is more surprised by the circumstances behind Saturday night’s Barry Allen & The Rebels CD release party than the group members themselves.
With their last gig taking place more than 20 years ago, and members scattered across the continent, retired, deceased or working on other projects, it would be logical to think that the group was finished. Especially since their glory years occurred almost 50 years ago, and no new recording had been done since then. What they didn’t count on was continuing interest in their career, and a large backlog of forgotten tracks that impressed even them.
“I was amazed when I got the list of songs,” admits Rebels drummer Stu Mitchell, who has flown in from his home in Nova Scotia to participate in the reunion and CD release. He, Allen, keyboardist Gerry Dere and bassist Dennis Paul (who now lives in Arizona) will be joined by relative youngster Gord Matthews on lead guitar for the show. (Wes Dakus, one of the early band leaders, is ailing and cannot attend.)
“I figured there were 10 or 15 of them (songs), and instead I got this list with 30 or 40. I had to ask Barry where they came from and, well, he didn’t know. I’m surprised by how good they are, though,” he says after a pause. “It’s like seeing old pics of yourself when you were young and thinking ‘Hey, I didn’t look too bad back then.’ ”
The set list for The Rebels’ CD release party is just the tip of the iceberg, however, and the two-cd, 61-song Barry Allen: The Clovis Col
lection released by Super Oldies Records might not even be complete. Mitchell points out that there are still unidentified tapes from old sessions to be listened to in Clovis, N.M., where The Rebels recorded for five years in the ’60s with Buddy Holly’s producer, Norman Petty.
Back then, they were Wes Dakus & The Rebels, the pride of Edmonton and already a popular concert draw in Western Canada. Formed by Dakus in 1958, The Rebels had a contract with Quality Records and managed to release an early single ( El Ringo) in 1960. But recording studios were hard to come by in the early years of rock ’n’ roll. Mostly The Rebels toured a regional circuit that Dakus and a few other early western Canadian promoters put together, building a reputation as one of Western Canada’s finest ensembles.
“We worked hard. Wes always made sure that we were playing three or four nights a week in differ- ent venues, with a school hop at the beginning of the week or Thursday during the day,” recalls Allen, who joined the band in the early ’60s as a rhythm guitarist and vocalist. “We’d go from Edmonton to Sylvan Lake, Lethbridge to Calgary and then do a swing through Saskatchewan to Winnipeg.”
This was before bands could play in bars. Dakus and a few other promoters had carved out a touring route that took them to dance halls with names like the Trianon Ballroom in Regina, Temple Gardens in Moose Jaw, and Dance lands outside of Saskatoon. They would bump into and bond with other early bands like Winnipeg’s Chad Allen & The Expressions, who would eventually turn into The Guess Who. When a big American star like Buddy Knox (of Party Doll fame) came through, The Rebels would back them up. Dakus would also book other bands through town, like Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs.
The New Mexico-based Fireballs, who later had a No. 1 American hit in 1963 with the song Sugar Shack, made Western Canada part of their own route in 1960 after being invited up by Saskatchewan promoter George Nellis.
“I think it was George who connected us with Wes, and we ended up playing the Polish Hall in Edmonton in 1961,” says George Tomsco, lead guitarist for The Fireballs. “The Rebels opened for us and gosh, they were fantastic.”
The two bands hit it off, and Dakus began pressing them for advice on recording. “(Fireballs bassist) Stan Lark said ‘You should bring your band down to New Mexico,’ so Wes decided he needed a better band. We had Mo (Maurice) Marshall on guitar, and this amazing sax player Ronnie Park, who passed away in the ’70s. We also got Stu Mitchell, this hot young drummer from Saskatoon.”
From 1962 to 1967, Dakus took the band — with a constantly changing roster of players — to Clovis, N.M., to record. Many of these sessions were released as singles and albums under Wes Dakus & The Rebels, though some were also issued under the names of Dakus’s sidemen: Allen, Stu Mitchell and bassist Dennis Paul, or even as an ad hoc group called The Dundeeville Players.
In Clovis, they would knuckle down to a regimen of recording, turning out so many songs that they eventually lost count.
They would experiment, trying to find a sound that would take them to the top. There were instrumental and vocal numbers; sometimes Allen would take the microphone, sometimes Paul or Mitchell. Some of The Rebels would even find themselves on recordings by other bands who happened to be wandering through.
“I used to record with this kid, a good singer-songwriter,” says Mitchell. “I got hired to play on sessions at the studio for his band, which was called John David and the Cinders. Nice kid from Amarillo, Texas. Later I found out he was J.D. Souther, who wrote all that early stuff for The Eagles.”
More importantly, this was where Buddy Holly had recorded, and the young Edmontonians were not unaware of the history of the place.
“I remember his parents would come over to the studio just to say ‘Hello, welcome to Clovis; how nice to have you Canadian boys down here,’ ” Allen recalls. “That was a thrill. Can you imagine how difficult it was for them, losing their son and then still coming to that studio? On the other hand, I guess I can understand that they may have felt closer to him that way.”
“Mr. Holly would sit and watch us in the studio,” Mitchell chimes in.
“I think we reminded him of when Buddy recorded there. We’d say ‘Whaddaya think, Mr. Holly?’ And he’d say ‘Oh, it’s up to y’all. I’m just watching.’ ”
Four years after first turning up on Petty’s doorstep, The Rebels finally found the song they were looking for in Lovedrops, a B-side to a minor 1961 single by R&B duo Mickey & Sylvia. Capital Records, who were already releasing Wes Dakus albums, were high on Allen, especially after he won a Red Leaf award (precursor to the Junos) as Most Promising Male Vocalist in Canada in 1965. Released by the label under the name Barry Allen & The Rebels, the single stayed in the Canadian Top 10 for three months, made a splash in a few American markets and eventually went on to gold status in Canada. They were on their way.
“Barry had great charisma and the girls loved him,” says Paul White, at that time National Promotion Manager and A&R Manager for Capital Records in Canada. “Norm Petty thought he had the right chemistry for that time and decided to record him solo. I loved that idea and released an album right away, taking a couple of singles from it that sold fairly well.”
It was an exciting time for Allen. The Rebels were booked in Van- couver, Calgary and Winnipeg, and CHUM radio station in Toronto jumped on Lovedrops and put the song on their Battle of New Discs. Allen won, the song hit in Halifax, then Montreal, Winnipeg and, naturally, Edmonton. He was on his way, a genuine teen idol, with a gold record and a road-tested band to back him up.
“In those days, record companies were sloppy with sales figures and there was no industry organization to register sales with,” notes White. “I estimate Lovedrops sold between 40,000 and 45,000 copies, a very big number for those days. Barry did his share of publicity and became a teen idol. We continued to release singles but they didn’t catch on quite as well.”
Allen did his best to follow up on his initial success with songs like Turn Her Down, Stumble and Fall
(written by Mitchell) and Armful of
Teddy Bears. But while he continued to be a known figure in Canadian rock (touring with Southbound Freeway and Coloured Rain, and later Purple Haze), the initial surge fizzled. Capital Records released him from his contract, and he and the rest of The Rebels began drifting off on their own ventures.
“He had opportunities. Barry and I used to talk about how he was invited by Randy Bachman to join The Guess Who after (original singer) Chad Allen left, before they got Burton Cummings,” says local promoter, DJ and writer Peter North. “But Barry had a young family and was committed to them. Also, at the time Wes Dakus and The Rebels were equal in terms of drawing power, stature and money. They could sell out big rooms on the weekend. This was before These
Eyes hit, of course, but The Rebels were pretty huge.”
Allen, who bought Edmonton’s Homestead Recorders back in 1985 and has now carved out a niche as a producer and engineer, shrugs off what could have been and happily takes pleasure in what he’s accomplished.
“I was originally going to be an accountant, and this was way more fun,” he says with a laugh. “I was fortunate that I was able to play with that band, and then have a career as a singer. I had Randy Bachman produce an album in Chicago, and then hosted a TV show for a year.
“Then I had the band Cheyenne Winter, and then my last band, Painter, was on Elektra Asylum. It was getting harder to stay on the road, though. I had a young family and I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t stand to be away from my family.”
“Way back then it was us and The Guess Who, chasing each other up and down the highway,” adds Mitchell. “When they got their first hit, the second happiest bunch of guys were us, because they were like our brothers. They hit it and we didn’t, but man, we had an equal amount of fun.”
The reunion and double album came about due to the diligent work of Shawn Nagy. The Canadian-born musician and sole proprietor of the Duluth, Minn.-based Super Oldies had been working with the Petty estate, already releasing two albums of Wes Dakus & The Rebels material on his label. In 2011, the estate presented him with tapes featuring Barry Allen as the singer, and he quickly put together the recordings, which he presented to a skeptical Allen.
“I knew that the guys were good and we had great material, but I wasn’t sure that it was anything anyone else wanted to hear,” admits Allen, who initially resisted the idea of a reunion but now admits to excitement at the idea of playing with a few of his former bandmates again.
“When I listen now I go ‘Oooo, I wish I hadn’t sung that,’ but it is what it is, a snapshot of where we were at the time. When you get older you start to learn technique, you learn to sing, but with youthful enthusiasm like that, you always go for the top.”