One afternoon, Jack left his office in the back of the club to check on his customers, as was his habit. As he was walking through the bar, talking to the folks who were there, one of the loyal customers chirped, “Hey, Jack. You should start booking live music here.” To which the owner replied, “Okay. What kind of music do you like?” “Country, of course,” the customer said.
And so country and western music it was.
The genre was certainly not something Mr. Starr and his family listened to at home on the radio. “Jack knew how to bring the music in, but he wasn’t very musical and we all hated country and western music!” recalls his daughter Natalie Clairman, whose family still owns the building. “We never went down there at all.”
But, being a shrewd and smart businessman, Mr. Starr knew satisfying his customers was crucial to running a successful small business. As he once told the Toronto Star, “I didn’t know anything about country music in those days, but I looked around and I figured that, with all the other types of entertainment available in the city, there must be room for a country place.”
The Edison Hotel on Gould Street had a foothold on Toronto’s nascent country scene; later, the Brunswick House on Bloor and the Matador at Dovercourt and College hired country acts. But the Horseshoe would acquire a reputation for booking the best — Nashville’s top talent. (It also became an unwritten rule that if you played the Edison, you didn’t play the Horseshoe, and vice versa.)
So Starr got to work, replacing the kitchen with a stage (in the backroom where the bar is located today) and renovating the space — gradually expanding the available space fivefold by purchasing neighbouring stores. By the time Starr started booking live music, the seating capacity had increased from eighty-seven to five hundred. An assortment of square and round tables with chairs were nestled right up to the stage, which was only slightly raised off the black-and-white checkered tile floor that remains to this day. With this new setup, the performers and audience melded into one.
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Bazil Donovan, the bassist for Blue Rodeo, grew up in Toronto’s west end. His parents were regulars at the Horseshoe — one of the many couples who had migrated from the East Coast. His mom was a Cape Bretoner, and his dad was born in Prince Edward Island but grew up in Halifax. Bazil’s dad loved country music, while his mother was more into rock ’n’ roll — Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. “He watched what became The Band [former members of Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks] at the Concord a lot. My dad went to all of those places. My mom was seventeen when she had me,” Donovan recalls. “They arrived in Toronto in April 1956. My dad was twenty. Needless to say, they were out to explore ‘the big city,’ and the things that mattered to them the most were listening to music and dancing. I remember him bringing me home autographed pictures of some of the people he saw play at the Horseshoe, such as Stonewall Jackson. I didn’t know who the guy was, but he said, ‘Keep this, and someday it will be worth something.’ Of course, I never did.”
Juanita Garron arrived in Toronto in the early 1950s. Like many before her, she, too, quickly fell in love with the country music scene Starr started. This passion for country and western led to a job checking coats at the Horseshoe. From this vantage point, Garron heard the music nightly and met many of the Nashville stars of the day. Starr was so impressed by Garron’s amiable personality, and her good ear, that he expanded her duties over the years — sending her on the road. Garron took scouting trips to Wheeling, West Virginia, and Tennessee to see these legendary musicians and other rising stars at the Grand Ole Opry and other western venues.
Stonewall Jackson, one of the most popular country artists of the 1960s, was a regular at the Horseshoe Tavern.
According to her obituary (Garron passed away on December 22, 2014), in her lifetime she visited this country music shrine eighty-eight times. “She was approachable, awesome, kind, and thoughtful,” recalls Doreen Brown, a country artist and one-time friend of Garron’s. “She loved to talk about country music. She didn’t drink, smoke, or swear, but she was hilarious!” With a great deal of encouragement from the musicians she met, Garron later started singing country and western Bible songs and hymns. Her talent was recognized by the major country and western associations in Ontario and she was well known for her rendition of “One Day at a Time” and for singing Canada’s national anthem at the opening and closing of Ontario’s country and western music associations during their meetings, jamborees, and other events. It’s no surprise to learn that Starr later presented his former coat check girl with a certificate naming her the “Mother of Country Music.”
For more than a decade, tour buses, all with Nashville plates, were a common sight in the vicinity of the Horseshoe Tavern, and they often parked in the back alley. No matter the weather, country music fans lined up hoping to share a few words with their idols and snag an autograph. Usually, the musicians obliged. During intermissions, members of the feature band or the house band would go from table to table selling the headliner’s latest LP. If the show was presented by one of the major country record labels of the day — such as RCA — the artist would set up a booth near the coat check to sign LPs and photographs, and to shake hands with the regulars.
Bob Gardiner, a country music photographer and journalist, was a regular at the Horseshoe throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. When his marriage broke down, he lived in a boxcar for a while on the Canadian National Railway property, but each evening he headed up to the tavern on Queen. The octogenarian recalls a particular fond memory of an interview he conducted for Walter Grealis’s RPM magazine with Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame member Ernest Tubb:
I went down to the Horseshoe in the early afternoon. It wasn’t a great day … it was raining cats and dogs. Ernest let me on to his tour bus that was parked on a side alley in behind the club. We were just getting acquainted before the interview when Ernest looks out the door and sees all these people standing in the rain. He’s dressed in this beautiful Nudie suit and says to me, “Before we get down to business, I have to go out and meet these people. If they are willing to stand out there in the rain, I appreciate that and need to let them know.” After chatting with his fans, Ernest came back in and he looked like a drowned rat. His beautiful Nudie suit was soaked. He went to the back of the bus, changed, got spruced up again, and then we had a nice conversation.
Later that night, Tubb opened his show at the ’Shoe to raucous applause, and began by playing his hit “Thanks a Lot.”
Every weekend, a similar scenario played out. Couples congregated at this country music shrine to worship their musical idols like Tubb, whose career spanned more than four decades and symbolized the heart and soul of Texas honky-tonk. Women with beehives, stretchy pants, and blouses with puffy sleeves came in with cowboys on their arms; the men sported skinny string ties, V-neck sweaters, and padded jackets. Most had pompadours and long sideburns. The women hummed, clapped, and sang along to their favourite songs; the men hooted, hollered, and banged on the tables for one more encore before closing time at 1:00 a.m. On busy weekends, up to thirty staff members would be hustling trays of beer from the bar to the tables throughout the performances. Mickey Andrews, who was in the house band for four years from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, recalls towers of empty beer cases stacked in the corners of the bar by Sunday night.
Charley Pride was another regular at the country shrine on Queen Street. Bob Gardiner knew him well. The photographer used to show up early for all the concerts, head backstage, and hang out with the various artists. He always had his camera bag with him, and often put it in the corner of the dressing room. “I remember one night being there before a show with Charley,” says Gardiner. “After the show, I had to go back to get my bag, and it was gone! I turn and look at Charley sitting in his chair, and he had this big, sheepish grin on his face. I knew he had hid it on me … he was a bit of a joker.”
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A feature article in the Toronto Daily Star in March 1964 proclaimed, “Make Way for the Country Sound.”