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Bill Anderson, a Nashville songwriter who is still playing and recording today at the age of seventy-nine, keeps a special place in his heart for the Horseshoe Tavern. During the 1960s, Whisperin’ Bill — as he was affectionately known for his soft vocal style — was a regular, playing the Horseshoe at least once or twice a year. A Grand Ole Opry member since 1961, Anderson says that at the time the Horseshoe Tavern and the Flame Club in Minneapolis were the only two places in North America where you could play for an extended run. “It was one of those special places where you could sit down and play for one week, and not have to pack up every day,” Anderson recalls. The country crooner would drive up from Nashville with his band (usually five or six strong) to play a week-long residency at Jack Starr’s tavern. Often, they would play a gig somewhere else on the way to Toronto and then another en route back to Tennessee. Starr would put Anderson and his bandmates up at the Lord Simcoe Hotel. “I don’t think I could have afforded that fine a hotel for me and my bandmates,” Anderson jokes. Once located on the northeast corner of King Street and University Avenue, at 150 King Street West, the hotel opened in May 1957 and was closed in 1979, and the building was torn down in 1981.
Anderson remembers the Horseshoe as an intimate venue with a small stage. He always had a fairly big band. “We used to get creative on how to set up on the stage. The fans were right there in front of us and were always really responsive to our music. There was a country music station in town at the time, so they knew all our songs, applauded often, and sang along. The contract was for nightly shows from Wednesday to Saturday that included a matinee. These matinees,” says Anderson, “saw kids come to the shows; they were always a family-friendly affair and a fun atmosphere.”
In June 1965, the Country Music Hall of Famer went into the studio to cut a promising new song he wrote with bandmate Jimmy Gateley called “Bright Lights and Country Music.” Anderson explains how the idea for the song came about:
The … idea came from a fan letter from a woman in London, Ontario, I got while out on the road. We were in Toronto working a little nightclub called the Horseshoe Tavern. We did a matinee on Saturday afternoon and a night show on Saturday night. One of my fans had written me a letter. She said, “I’m going to come to the night show because I like soft lights with my country music.” I read the letter to Jimmy and both our ears perked up and our songwriters’ antennas went up. We wrote almost the entire song in the dressing room at the Horseshoe Tavern.
I told Jimmy, “There is an idea in here somewhere,” but soft lights didn’t feel right.
Throughout their whole set that night, the pair couldn’t get the words from that letter out of their minds. When the show ended, they went down to the dressing room in the basement of the Horseshoe where, after each show, the fans would line up for autographs and pictures with the visiting Nashville musicians, shake hands, and buy records.
“On this night, we told the crowd to wait and be patient for a minute, as we had a song to write. They were very respectful and patient. With the door of our dressing room open, Jimmy and I, with our guitars, sat there, and the song came to life. It’s the only song I ever wrote in front of an audience. We took turns coming up with lines and writing the tune,” recalls Anderson.
Today, Anderson still lives in Music City and plays live every chance he gets. He also recently celebrated the fifty-fifth anniversary of his joining the Grand Ole Opry. “An old man like me doesn’t need to be so busy!” he jokes. I catch up with the legendary country musician, and he tells me how he played the Horseshoe so many times over the years that the gigs all blend together. Still, he says there were a few shows that stood out for him.
The head of MCA Canada presents Whispering Bill Anderson (right) a gold record for Bill Anderson’s Greatest Hits, onstage at the Horseshoe Tavern in May 1974.
One memorable night he unexpectedly received his first gold record. “I don’t remember the year,” he tells me, “but it was in the late 1960s. I had been recording for Decca Records. Several of the local office staff in Toronto came down to the Horseshoe one night to see my performance. What I didn’t know is they were there to present me with my first gold record. It was for my album Bill Anderson’s Greatest Hits, which had gone gold in Canada. One of the guys from the record company came up on stage in the middle of our set and made the presentation. I still have the photo somewhere, and the framed record still hangs on my wall.”
Like the other country music stars who played at the Horseshoe from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, Anderson recalls Starr as being a cordial and honest host. “He always honoured our contracts,” he says.
The tavern owner and music promoter was also an avid golfer. He once tried to get Anderson to go tee it up with him, but for some reason that Anderson can’t recall, the invitation to play a round together never panned out. Starr did drive Anderson up to CFGM, the country music station in Richmond Hill, for an interview once, though. Whisperin’ Bill said he always enjoyed the candid conversations he had with the Horseshoe’s original owner on those short trips.
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In the mid 1960s, Starr hired Dick Nolan and the Blue Valley Boys (Johnny Burke, Roy Penney, and Bunty Petrie) as the Horseshoe’s house band. They would play during the first part of the week, and then back up the Nashville headliners on the weekends.
Nolan was a pioneer of a Newfoundland style of country music, and was just nineteen when he brought that unique East Coast style to Toronto — first to the Drake Hotel, and later to the Horseshoe Tavern. By the time he died in 2005, Nolan had recorded forty albums and sold approximately one million records. He was the first Newfoundlander to have both a gold (fifty thousand units sold) and a platinum record (one hundred thousand units sold), and was also the first musician from The Rock to appear at the Grand Ole Opry. He’s best known for his 1972 hit “Aunt Martha’s Sheep.”
When Nolan migrated to Toronto in 1958, he was set on seeing what the big city could offer. Before landing his first gig playing music, he waited tables at another country bar — the 300 Tavern at College and Spadina.
June Carter Cash and the Carter Family play the bar in the 1960s, when it was known as Nashville North, backed by the house band featuring lead guitarist Roy Penney.
Blue Valley Boy Roy Penney grew up with Nolan in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. The pair had been performing in several of the bars in their hometown before they were even of legal drinking age. Penney says during his stint at the Horseshoe in the mid-1960s, the Nashville musicians took him into their inner circle. He made fast friends with many of them, including the Carter Family, Little Jimmy Dickens, Billy Walker, and Charley Pride. They respected his hard work and dedication.
To prepare for each week’s gigs, Penney would stay up late listening to the latest country and western hits on CFGM radio and capturing them with his trusty tape recorder so that he could play them back and learn the guitar licks. Many nights, if he didn’t go to Aunt Bea’s after-hours club or the Matador, he would drive the stars back to the Executive Hotel, where most of them stayed during their time in Toronto. Sometimes they would invite him up to their rooms and he would go and share a drink and chat about music. One night, Little Jimmy Dickens gave Penney a sneak preview of one of his new songs. It was a silly number called “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose.” Well, that song went on to be a huge hit for Dickens, reaching number one on the country charts and number fifteen on the pop charts. Penney felt privileged to have been able to hear it first. For a good many years, the Horseshoe Tavern was the centre of Penney’s life. Today, it’s where his warmest memories still reside.
Jack Starr (far left) poses next to famed Grand Ole Opry star and hillbilly singer Little Jimmy Dickens.
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