This article is another recurring contribution from Bluegrass Canada, the quarterly magazine of the Bluegrass Music Association of Canada. Editor Mike Higgins has promised to send us regular updates from the bluegrass scene up north.
We at the Bluegrass Music Association of Canada are excited to announce that the following people have been inducted into the 2024 edition of the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
We would like to thank all those people who submitted names for consideration, and want to assure everyone that any names that had been submitted but were not inducted this year, will be reconsidered for next year’s group of inductees.
We have selected one submission for each of six regions of Canada: Pacific, Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, Eastern, Northern.
If there is someone that you think should be included in the Hall of Fame, please visit the Hall of Fame page on the BMAC website to find out how you can submit that person’s name and information to the Hall of Fame Submission Committee. We would also invite you to visit our website to find out more about each of the 2024 Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees.
Congratulations to all the 2024 Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame Inductees!
Sue Malcolm – Pacific
Sue Malcolm has been a bluegrass mainstay for as long as I’ve been in bluegrass, and that is about 44 years or more. In real life Sue was a teacher, which certainly shows, and of course, she has never stopped teaching. Sue Malcolm worked in the school system for 30 years as a special education teacher and family counselor, later becoming a community school co-ordinator then a bereavement counselor.
She retired in 2009 to spend her full time on music. Sue has guided the Vancouver bluegrass music scene for years, giving lessons and classes, holding jams, and writing numerous songbooks teaching bluegrass. She has tutored many a player to go on to play better bluegrass.
She was a founder and four-term president of The Pacific Bluegrass and Heritage Society. Recognized for her ability to help beginners gain confidence and enjoy making music in a group setting, Sue developed the Slow Pitch Jam method of teaching bluegrass jamming.
Since 1996 Sue’s monthly Slow Pitch Jams at the ANZA Club in Vancouver have been drawing huge crowds, and helping hundreds of people experience the joy of jamming.
Her main instrument is guitar, however she also plays bass and banjo. She has taught singing and harmony classes, as well as played in several bands. The most recent ones are Highrise Lonesome and The Soda Crackers. Her partner Paul Norton runs the local Vancouver Coop radio station – CFRO 100.5 FM – and she has been instrumental in helping him bring new bluegrass music to the area.
In addition, Sue has had her hand in bluegrass shows as one of the founding members of PBHS now PBOHS, the Vancouver Bluegrass Club.
Nominated by Linda Thorburn
BMAC is proud to welcome Sue Malcolm to the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame
Gene Bretecher ( 1939- 2013 ) – Western
Gene Bretecher was not only an excellent banjo and guitar player, but also a wonderful human being. When I was learning the banjo in Winnipeg in the early eighties, I came upon a vinyl album called Banjo Holiday, recorded in 1976 at Sunshine Studios in Winnipeg. Here was a local banjo expert that played all the tunes that I wanted to learn, plus clearly had a sense of whimsy—one of the cuts on the album was Take Back my Heart, I Ordered Liver!
Before he moved from Manitoba to BC, he could be heard playing at numerous festivals and on CBC radio in Manitoba. Gene had drawn inspiration from seeing Bill Monroe in person. He learned then that the four string banjo he had purchased at a pawn shop was not what he needed, made the necessary adjustment, and set off on a life-long passion for the 5- string banjo and bluegrass music.
A stint with Winnipeg’s Northern Gentleman in the 1960s introduced him to a wider Canadian audience, as did his own solo album, the aforementioned Banjo Holiday in 1976. A few years later, he received the“Instrumentalist of the Year award from the Manitoba Association of Country Artists. His banjo (and guitar) playing was featured in a number of television specials for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Gene remained close to the music throughout his life, playing festivals and taking private students at his home.
After his move to BC, he became a member of the Canadian Whitewater band in the Okanagan region, until his accidental death by drowning in 2013 while fishing in the Shuswap Lakes. Gene made contributions as a performer and teacher in both Manitoba and BC, and thus has had a pan–Canadian influence.
Nominated by Ed Byard
BMAC is proud to welcome Gene Bretecher to the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame
Michael O’Reilly (1944-2021)- Ontario
Mike discovered bluegrass, learned to play banjo and began entertaining while in high school. He earned a B.Ed. at the University of Ottawa, but his forte was always music and humour. In 1969, Mike formed the first Strictly Bluegrass band in Ottawa, bought his first mandolin and guitar, and soon mastered both. In 1970 he headed for the US to hone his skills with a young Del McCoury and others.
Upon returning to Canada, many bands followed, beginning with Cody, with whom he recorded their acclaimed album in 1978. He ventured into other genres with the Radio Kings, and as Bolt Upright, but stayed connected to bluegrass as both a performer and a promoter. Mike and others brought many top bluegrass acts to Ottawa in the ’80s and ’90s. He helped launch The Valley Bluegrass Festival (Renfrew), which ran for 23 years with The Dick Smith-Mike O’Reilly Band, as host band with Mike as the main MC.
Mike performed throughout Ontario, the rest of Canada, the US, Europe, and Australia. He MCed many other events, and hosted roots music shows called Café Hibou on CBC Ottawa TV for three years, and Rural Roots on local radio. Beyond music, Mike led the comedy duo, Delmer and Ceci, on Ottawa radio, and performed as a voice actor or in person in numerous TV movies, shows, and commercials.
He recorded many of the 300 hundred songs he wrote on at least six albums, and saw his songs recorded by other great bluegrass performers including Del and Ronnie McCoury, Danny Paisley, The Country Gentlemen, Junior Sisk, and Rhonda Vincent.
At the Central Canada Bluegrass Awards he won Composer of the Year four times, Entertainer of the Year eight times, DJ of the Year five times, and was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame 1996.
Nominated by Dave Porter
BMAC is proud to welcome Mike O’Reilly to the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
Angus Walker – Quebec Region
Angus Reynolds Walker, born on August 27, 1939, is a Canadian bluegrass and country musician from Port Hastings, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has been called “Canada’s Prime Minister of Country Music,” and “The Cape Breton Rebel.”
Walker’s music career began at the age of 12, performing at local venues until 1953, when he began to appear with Ron Spencer, and Cris and Earl Chisholm as part of the Radio Rangers on CJFX Radio in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
After 1956, he appeared as part of the West Virginia Jamboree Show, and later toured with future Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame alumni Fred McKenna and George Beck as a member of Beck’s Maritime Playboys.
Angus Walker crossed the line between bluegrass and country music all through the 1950s and ’60s. Along with Vic Mullen on banjo, Brent Williams on fiddle, and Harry Cromwell on banjo, he was part of The Birch Mountain Boys. With that band, Angus made several albums of bluegrass music in the 1960s on the Rodeo and Banff labels, which were reissued on Rosedale in 2016. After that band broke up, he formed The CJCH Countrymen with George Beck on bass, Vic Mullen on fiddle and banjo, Chuck Lohnes on steel guitar, and Ross Broughm on lead guitar. They were the house band for the cross-country television show of country music to originate in Halifax – The CJCH Countrymen Jamboree.
In 1963, Walker transitioned to Montreal where he eventually joined Dougal Trineer’s band, The Hackamores, with Paul Menard on fiddle, June Davey on bass, and Dougal Trineer as lead guitarist and singer. The group backed many of the country records produced in Montreal, released three albums in 1966, and opened for many of Country Music’s greatest super stars at the Montreal Forum during the 1960s. Visit Angus on his very active Facebook page.
Nominated by Darcy Whiteside
BMAC is proud to welcome Angus Walker to the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame
Neil V. Rosenberg – Eastern Region
Dr. Neil V. Rosenberg was born in the USA, however he relocated to Newfoundland in 1968 when he took a position teaching Folklore at the Memorial University in NL. Neil still lives in NL, and has had a significant impact on bluegrass in Canada.
From 1972 to 1979 he helped organize and run the Nova Scotia Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, Canada’s first such an event. In 1973, he co-founded Crooked Stovepipe, a Newfoundland-based band that continues to this day. From 1984 to 1991 he hosted a weekly bluegrass radio show on St. John’s commercial country station CKIX-FM. And in 2003 he was a founding member of the Bluegrass and Old Time Country Music Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A prolific author and historian, Neil’s crowning achievement in music is his 1985 monumental and definitive 450 page book on the roots and development of bluegrass music, Bluegrass: A History. Neil has authored several other books, culminating in 2018 with Bluegrass Generation, the memoir of his involvement with the emerging bluegrass scene of the 1960s.
Among Neil’s many awards is a 1998 Grammy for Best Album Notes, and he was also inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame in 2014.
One has only to Google his name to read about Neil’s many accomplishments in the world of bluegrass music, both in Canada and abroad.
Neil even played a few times with Bill Monroe – enough to put his name on Blue Grass Boys belt buckle #120, given to him by The Grand Ole Opry and Bluegrass Unlimited on Bill’s birthday in 1987.
Nominated by Karen DeCoste
BMAC is proud to welcome Neil V. Rosenberg to the Canadian Bluegrass Hall of Fame
Bob Hayes and Peter Milner – Northern Region
In the 1990s, Bob Hayes and Peter Milner were members of one of the earliest bluegrass bands in the Yukon, Disturbin’ the Peace. Their shared love of the music got them thinking the unthinkable, that they could start a bluegrass festival in a Territory with no bluegrass community or history.
To make things more challenging, they decided to establish their festival in Haines Junction, a remote village with a population of 500, where Bob then lived.
So, start one they did. Fortunately, both were well loved and had no shortage of loyal friends who were promptly enlisted to help. The first Kluane Mountain Bluegrass Festival was presented in 2003, the Yukon embraced it, and the festival has been going strong ever since.
Together they didn’t just start a festival. They started and ran a legendary festival. It quickly became a must-play festival for bluegrass bands. All passed the word that there was a gem up in the Yukon with the best scenery, the best organization, the best food and hospitality, the best vibe, and the warmest welcome. Bob, Peter, and their team couldn’t take credit for the scenery, but they were responsible for setting the standard for everything else. The festival was always going to have music and mountains. They added the magic.
Sadly, Peter passed away in 2005 and the CEO role fell to Bob who booked, produced, and managed the festival until 2010. Bob went to join Peter in 2022.
Nominated by John Faulkner, Artistic Director, Kluane Mountain Bluegrass Festival
BMAC is proud to welcome Bob Hayes and Peter Milner to the Canadian Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
