Posted by Donabie (mornings) on May 7, 2008, 10:41 pm, in reply to "Re: A related question on Alan Freed and WJW"
99.254.209.45 | Message modified by user mornings May 14, 2008, 8:49 am
Don't know about Winnipeg; but I sure had the pleasure of knowing and working with Ray Sonin at CFRB. He was sent 45's from England on a weekly basis. According to Ray; that's how he was able to play the first Beatles record in Canada. Beatle records were being released a full year to year and a half; before North America and we in Canada adopted them much quicker than the U.S.
Here is a portion of an article about my old friend Ray.
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Ray was the man who discovered a young girl named Vera Lynn singing in a London pub in 1935, and got her career started by introducing her to the famous BBC band leader, Joe Loss. He also influenced the careers of Cleo Laine, John Dankworth, Frankie Laine, Roger Whittaker, Petula Clark and many other well-known musical talents through the years.
He was a song lyricist and, among many, wrote "Lonely Woman" for Sarah Vaughan, as well as "Best of All" and "Homecoming Waltz" for Vera Lynn. As a BBC writer, he wrote scripts for the famous Tommy Handley Half Hour" and "It's That Man Again" or "ITMA," "Hi Gang" with Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon and, later, "Life with the Lyons." And when not busy doing all this, he wrote 14 murder mystery novels under an assumed name.
For 10 years, Ray was also the editor of the UK's famous "Melody Maker" magazine, the first publication anywhere in the world to introduce a "Top Ten" music chart. He was the first to play the Beatles, ABBA, the Dave Clark Five and Petula Clark to North American audiences, and also gave musical advice to Eric Spear who, at the time, was composing a signature tune for a new Granada TV show called, "Coronation Street."
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