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Smiling Al Harris, the guitar man
Well known to Canadians on radio, early TV
Played for troops, Tommy Hunter, Gordie Tapp
Jul. 3, 2006. 08:41 AM
CATHERINE DUNPHY
OBITUARY WRITER
When Al Harris was 14, the school principal at Weston C.I. called his parents in for a meeting. He was concerned: Their son was interested only in music, nothing else. He showed them his notebooks; no matter the subject, the content was music.
That wasn't a surprise for them. The oldest of their four children had made, out of an old Havana cigar box, a crystal radio set he'd always have on late at night, picking up dance bands playing in a room high atop a hotel in some midwest American city. He had invented a contraption involving pedals for his steel guitar and he was already earning pocket money teaching music to neighbourhood kids.
Okay, they told their son when they returned from that meeting, if you're not studying then you might as well take lessons from the best. Then they sent him to the Royal Conservatory of Music.
Two years later, he was playing professionally with Jimmy Fry and his Orchestra at Port Carling's 21 Club, in a career that ended only with his death, at 84, on March 4.
He was everybody's sideman.
"He was a perfect sideman," said Tommy Hunter. "He knew instinctively what to do. He had a dry sense of humour and he'd play you along but when the (studio) red light came on, he played it straight."
Harris played with Hunter on the singer's eponymous CBC radio and television shows in the '60s.
He played with Bert Niosi, Joe DeCourcy, Moxie Whitney, Trump Davidson and their orchestras. Rob McConnell's Spitfire Band. Peter Appleyard. Our Pet Juliette. At Barbara Ann Scott's wedding. And Bobby Gimby's iconic Ca-na-da recording? He was the guitar on that Confederation year hit. He played at the CNE Bandshell, the Palais Royale, the Old Mill, Casa Loma, the O'Keefe, Maple Leaf Gardens, Massey Hall and yes, on the 54th floor, high atop the Toronto-Dominion Centre.
Harris wrote the jingle for People's Credit Jewellers. He gave Lenny Breau lessons on reading music. He worked with, to name just a few, Marlene Dietrich, the Ink Spots, Kay Starr, Eartha Kitt, Gene Autry and Danny Kaye, when they came to town.
When he was 18, he was voted the #1 guitarist in Canada by DownBeat magazine. He was entertaining troops across Canada with Mart Kenney's orchestra before he was 21.
Throughout the '40s and early '50s, when Canadians gathered around the radio set for their entertainment, Harris was usually the man playing the guitar, be it acoustic, electric or steel.
In September 1952, Cliff McKay's Holiday Ranch hit the black-and-white television airwaves, the first country show to go coast-to-coast. McKay was the genial bespectacled man in the plaid shirt and cowboy hat on clarinet and vocals, King Ganam was the scene-stealing fiddler, and the Buddy Holly lookalike, bent and intent over his guitar, was always introduced as Smiling Al Harris.
"Cliff called him that because he never smiled," said Harris' youngest brother, Ken. The show was on every Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. Their mother insisted everything stop while the family watched it. "Sometimes at the end of a piece, there would be just a small smile, in one corner of his mouth, but only if he liked the way the song had turned out."
Al Harris was never a showman, shunning the spotlight and the microphone patter.
But he was a brilliant musician.
"We couldn't do a show without him," said Gordie Tapp. Harris played for three years on Country Hoedown and on about 10 overseas tours, including three to the Middle East.
Harris was the kind of guy who refused to let anyone carry his guitar, then fell into a trench with it. In the Gaza Strip, he ignored all the warning signs and crossed a fence to take a short cut to the beach. He later found out he had walked through a minefield.
During one of their return trips from the Middle East, Algeria declared war on France. Their plane was re-routed and when they landed in a West German airbase where Vickers bombers were parked, they were ordered to take no pictures and go straight to the waiting bus. Harris set up his tripod, mounting his camera, and was checking the light on his meter — "he wanted to get a picture of the planes he had heard so much about," Hunter explained — when he was beset by guards who ripped the film from his camera. "And that was Al. That was really Al, " said Tapp. "He'd do the darndest dumb things."
When it came to his music, he was the consummate professional "on time and on cue," his brother said.
He never turned down a gig — from weddings to bar mitzvahs and political conventions — and took on students in his spare time.
Harris was married in 1960 to Ina Webdon, one of his students, and they performed as Al and Ina Harris in many venues. Ina died in 1990, but Al continued performing.
"Retire? Does a postman stop walking?" he once said to his son, Wayne, one of two children, including a daughter, Pam, from a previous marriage.
He dyed his hair, took on more students and gigs at seniors residences. His health wasn't good, but he'd say he'd feel better once he got on the bandstand. Six months ago, he played at Woodbine Lounge.
But late in February he collapsed while having dinner at a restaurant and was rushed to hospital. He never went back to his Thornhill condo; he moved straight from the hospital into a seniors residence where he could be looked after. He wasn't happy there, but he was more concerned about the fact that his guitar — an Ovation he used to call his Stradivarius because of its rich sound — was still in the condo.
"He was also worried that his fingers would get soft or stiff if he wasn't practicing," said his brother, who brought Al his guitar.
Al died the next day.

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