Wilf Carter The Yodeling Cowboy Biography

[Music] patient at the Royal Ontario Museum for the Canadians biographies of a nation when a major American radio network signed up a young Canadian yodeler and named him Montana slim the kid was already a hit at home under a different name a name that would keep his reputation growing and build affection among audiences that is still alive and well it's a constant source of delight to discover how many Canadians have become entertainment Giants in our great neighboring country and I suppose everyone watching who's a real fan of country music already knows who I'm talking about but I didn't I didn't know until we started working on this edition of the Canadiens that Montana slim is just a CBS producers clever marketing name for one of the two grandfather's of modern country music a boy from Nova Scotia named Wilf Carter here's his story [Music] member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame the yodeling cowboy will Carter his career had spanned six decades and over 600 songs as with Carter in Canada and Montana swim in the United States they were honoring him as a founder of Canadian country music he was 81 years old they had come to say goodbye I mean he had a hat long before goth Brooks did and he kept it a singer accompanying himself on the guitar that it was Wilf Carter that's all there was to it he was such an icon well Carter was on the radio a lot back in those days he was a big radio presence it was just like the Beatles were coming to town or something or Elvis or somebody like that I walked 15 miles one way there are tears of me rolling down their eyes you know is it was incredible I thought I met the greatest person in the world he didn't read a no to music [Music] Oh only hard as a cake I love to see Oh wolf Carter's career started on the phonograph in the radio for generations of Canadians his distinctive voice came to represent the West in my blue Canadian yet he grew up far from the Rocky Mountains he sang about in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia where to this day the name Wilf Carter means more than a cowboy singer [Music] Carter was born in Port hillford the sixth of seven children December 1819 for as he liked to say with a tooth already grown so he could start life on a diet of spuds [Music] [Applause] Oh today when they play his music in the town of canning where he hauled apples as a boy there isn't an empty seat in the house Wilf Carter imitators come from as far away as Alberta to pay their respects yodeling came across the ocean with Austrian Swiss immigrants who used it in herding their sheep [Music] [Applause] Wilf Carter had to pay his respects to his father a Baptist minister who intended his son to follow in his footsteps a Saturday night concert in the Perot community hall changed all that the feature act was the yodeling fool whose performance enchanted Carter local resident Leon Baron and that was the first time he had ever heard anybody yodel and he liked that and he decided that was he could do that so he kept practicing and practicing until he perfected it against the wishes of his father who said that that wasn't a very nice noise for a minister's son to be making mark Peres lives in the parsonage where we'll screw up supposedly Wilfs dad was very strict probably not a typical for a minute for the day and and was not terribly pleased with his son's interest in music I've often wondered there's a little the road behind this house there's a little dip and in the winter you get this wonderful place where you'll get this echo and often wondered if he started as yodeling there I really don't know we just know that his father was not terribly pleased and Wilf was a sort of the rebel Wilfs father was a stern and unforgiving man each morning the children knelt on the floor while he prayed for them and then each read a chapter from the Bible before walking five miles to school there wasn't much room for yodeling [Music] rural Nova Scotia at the turn of the century was poor as Carter's father struggled to make ends meet he sent the children up to work Carter started at 12 by the age of 15 he was independent and willful and still yodeling his father asked him to leave it was clear that his son had no intention of becoming a Baptist minister abandoned by his father he slept in ditches when the weather turned bad he was forced to sleep in whatever Barney could find those lonely cold nights was day with will Carter all his life then a local farmer John ting Lee took him in to milk cows for 25 cents a day he spent the winters in the lumber camps of New Brunswick a boy yearning to be a man surviving the intense cold on a diet of bread and beans cooped up in a bunkhouse he spent his free time reading dime novels about the Wild West he had never liked the idea of becoming a fisherman one day a poster in the canning train station presented the opportunity he'd been waiting for and he went out west on a harvest excursion back in those days they they needed a tremendous amount of men to stoop green before the combines were invented the CPR inaugurated harvest excursions where they would make up a whole tree most men just to go to the prairies to harvest green memories of his family still haunted in the West would give him the elbow room he needed historian David Leonard like so many Maritimers before and after wolf Carter when you pull up stakes and you come to Western Canada make your mark the field is open the way is clear for you to try anything that you want to and try anything he did the sprawling farms were like nothing he'd ever seen with only a knapsack and the music he still practiced faithfully Carter explored the far hills and wide-open spaces of Alberta stoking fleet driving teams of horses hauling grain the work was physical with every job he grew stronger [Music] Wilf daughter Carol Cooper I can remember has a big man you know being a child his hands just seems so big to me you know he was just I thought he was up like a John Wayne type but you know I just a big person first time I met him like I said I shook hands with him and I had to go down to my knees he's so strong you know and right up until her later in life when he shook your hand you noise your hand had been shook it was a strong healthy man every second person Carter met was a newcomer like himself the hulking young man was no longer an outcast radio programmer Brian Dunsmore both said he's Footloose and fancy-free in a brand new world a world that is as different from Nova Scotia and the evangelical family as you could imagine he's sleeping in a bunk house with a bunch of rough-and-ready man he's up at the crack of dawn he's riding horses he's a man even if it paid less he preferred cowboy work he rode Bronx at local rodeos and had the broken bones to prove it it was an odd place for an artist to find his calling he was beginning to write songs about the lives of the men he met Alberta's first cowboy songs I think it's significant that Wilf Carter the Entertainer didn't come about for a number of years after he hit Alberta it took him a few years of becoming himself becoming this man that we talked about this Wilf Carter who was very deeply grounded in his own being and then he starts to think about doing other things and one of these other things that he's thinking about doing is becoming an entertainer starting to sing [Music] those huge hands now played a guitar weekends he'd go to town to play at community dances the crowd was in for a big surprise [Music] Tommy Hunter Wilf used to have the old thumb pick in like I said he had powerful hands and you'd hear we'll get ready then and he would start to sing a song now here's one that goes back to the early days of my recording career and he would give it a couple of whacks on the on the strings bang ding ding and he'd hit this and if it got out of tune boy you'd hear that you'd see that thumb really want the little strings and I'm not sure well who has the blame the guitar for going out of tune or see if he can hit it hard enough to bring it back into my 1927 he was traveling to the Calgary Stampede seeking to expand his horizons as a bronc rider and a senior [Music] singer Audrey Shackleton a lot of these Cowboys singers are not Cowboys and he is a true cowboy when he wrote songs I mean those were from experiences he had the heart of a cowboy and was and in the heart of a westerner and he never forgot his roots and he had tremendous love for these coasts but he was he was a cowboy the cowboy became very very positive at this time he was a figure to be admired he was not just a ranch hand he was a figure in popular imagination being disseminated by a lot of the popular literature of the time [Music] Parador soon added the love song to his repertoire disc jockey Jack Fox my introduction of Wilf Carter was at the age of five that song just turned me on to country music and I'd never forgotten the song I can I can recite the I think the first first verse of it use the I III beautiful girl on the prairies with eyes so blue and a heart so true she's the girl I'm gonna marry [Music] I'd like to pay tribute now to one of the greatest Cowboys had ever called a border saddle Pete night the king of the cowboy [Music] well Carter's music came from everyday events he was as much a storyteller as an entertainer Pete Knight was about a bronc rider Carter met at the Calgary Stampede who became a world champion before being killed by a horse called duster Knights funeral was the biggest Calgary had ever seen it was Pete Knight who convinced Carter to give up bronc riding and concentrate on music the guitar wasn't going to kill you gordon lightfoot really he is a folk artist in a lot of respects a balladeer highly recognized in the country music fields in the the Songwriters Hall of Fame in Nashville musician David Wilkie played with wealth on the last roundup tour and that's why I look at Wilf as as a folk singer because he was singing songs about cross B of P tonight the Calgary Stampede and the Yoho Valli and Wilf was really putting all of that down on record and I think someday people are gonna realize that that is really our only Alberta folk music you know it shows that the stories can be gonna be written about and I always wanted to be that way so in that way he kind of influenced he did he influenced me at a very early age Calgary theatres began to pay Carter five dollars a week to sing cowboy songs inch-by-inch he was making his way onto a larger stage he would sing in front of a fire made of red paper and a light bulb and some days there would be a microphone on the stage radio was just around the corner set to turn the empty expanses of the prairies into one big living Carter won a weekly Friday night spot on cfcn rain even the pay was now 5.9 for an entertainer radio was a great legitimize er that really brought your career to legitimacy to get a radio show all of a sudden the world thought you were somebody pretty special they'd give you 15 minutes maybe and maybe if you were really really good and put hold an audience you'd get thirty minutes the popularity of cfcn in particular became very strong it was the the biggest radio and the most powerful broadcasts a station on the prairies and when wolf Carter began to broadcast over CFC and this was one of our own this is a Western Canadian cowboy singing music that relates to us about us to us it's as though Western Canadians were saying to Eastern Canadians that we aren't a pale imitation of you we are Western Canadians emphasis on Western Canadians with our own our Familia our own culture our own music and I think the ethos that the cowboy became the most romantic symbol of that [Music] with a sweetheart in them the trail riders of the Canadian Rockies heard his music on the radio in the spring of 1932 they were looking for a cowboy to entertain adventurous Americans who would pay twenty dollars a day to sleep in a tent past president of the trail riders Dennis or the original sponsorship of the trail Raja Canadian Rockies was done by the CPR they needed people to both entertain and be Cowboys and Wilf Carter fit into both of those categories he was both an entertainer and a singer and an account boy and a tremendous number of his original songs the the only ones that he did were actually written in these trail ride camps to entertain the people the nights were cold and Carter had to borrow clothes from the old hands the dudes from New York would gather round the slim cowboy with the big hat and the guitar [Music] for one magic summer along the Great Divide Carter lived out his boyhood dreams Oh it wouldn't last when he arrived back and down he stepped into a worldwide depression by 1933 the grain prices have fallen to 35 cents a bushel for number one wheat too low to make it viable for what most Western farmers to ship their grains to the Lakehead and the railway was seen to be maybe the culprit and all this because the freight rates were just a little too high by the same token the railways seemed to be sort of a lifeline to freedom you know things were terrible for you were right now they may not be that better the nice community but they couldn't be any worse it could get worse news arrived that his father had died Carter had always hoped for a reconciliation now there never would be one [Music] I've had my way I [Music] he fished on the West Coast farm in Saskatchewan until there were no more jobs just thousands of men prowling the country he received no social assistance he would have had to go back to Nova Scotia to qualify like Jimmy Rogers and Woody Guthrie in the United States Carter was singing for a lost generation he never lost him [Music] somewhere up the line beyond the next hobo camp he'd find the normal life he longed [Music] whilst daughter Sheila Duke arm he had an old guitar and I think he sat on the corners of Calgary and sang with his hat out on the on the street he didn't have any money when he told you that he would go in and he'd go into restaurant and get ketchup and put hot water in it and and you know that was his soup with some crackers I mean that was a true story through the depression I think the people that that survived happily were those who could entertain because people would always throw dimes and nickels in your hat if you were doing it on the street you always had a job if you're an entertainer whereas if you were a bricklayer or worked with wood or whatever sometimes the jobs were hard to come by and you went many weeks maybe or months without any income at all but a guy who has a guitar and consitent you can always make a couple of bucks dad holy nearly od Carter was doing odd jobs on ranches along the Rockies when a message caught up with him there was a cable waiting for him at the nearest Canadian Pacific station would he come to Montreal for a meeting at head office for the first time in years Carter boarded a train legally even his meals were paid for when he arrived at Montreal's Windsor station he was asked to audition for RCA Victor he recorded Swiss moonlight lullaby with the capture of Albert Johnson on the flip side it was Canada's first cowboy record [Music] the year 1933 [Music] Canadian Pacific asked him to go to New York would he perform on the maiden voyage of their new luxury liner the Empress of Britain the ship was so huge he claimed he couldn't find his room for three days he was happy to set up camp in the dining room this was no trail ride [Music] when the boat returned to New York there was a surprise reception party in the two weeks he'd been away Swiss moonlight lullaby had become a hit and this record was so popular somebody from RCA Victor ran down to meet the boat and when wolf got off they had this great big limousine for him and Wilf kept looking out and they're saying come on get in and we'll just kept looking at Milwaukee and who they were and he's we're from RCA Victor I don't care where you're from get out of here you know we'll just kept walking right out by them Carter was at the beginning of a remarkable role RCA signed him to his first contract their only demand that he returned to the mountains and write more songs Carter shared his last summer in the Rockies with millions of homebound listeners the Depression was in its fifth year with no end in sight the high lonesome voice on the radio became part of everybody's life I sing you a song while the moons rolling [Music] in 1937 CBS called from New York would he consider a morning radio show within weeks he was Montana slim singing the praises of lucky straight cigarettes even though he'd never smoked in his life within one month the show went from last to first in the ratings Montana slim had become a household name the Americans thought that Wilf Carter probably wouldn't suit down there so they had to you know how the Americans are no offense my mother's an American but they I don't know whether he came up with the name or they agreed to it or somebody gave it to him but he was known in the States as Montana slim and in Canada as well Carter but if it wasn't for wolf Carter RCA Victor during the Depression would have gone under because there wasn't a home across Canada that didn't have a wolf Carter record in it and and he was the guy that that really held the company together he was selling an awful lot of Records he enticing his records were everywhere and every bunkhouse had if it hadn't wind-up Victrola then the the Wilf Carter records were there probably 90% of the of the old 78s big thick 70s wood would be he didn't like to fuss over his recordings and you know might not a days they spend millions of dollars and they have overdubs and 34 tracks where they don't have the banjo player come in at noon and the steel guitar player at 3:00 and they just over dub it and everything but will told me that he just hated that he didn't like to rehearse he would just go in and say I got 12 songs turn on the tape machine I'm gonna be here for as long as it takes me to do them once and you better get him down cuz that's that's my new album there's like bronc riding for Wilf you know recording was like getting on for eight seconds and riding it and going home you know that's that that's the way he was in spite of stardom the call of the West was as strong as ever Carter came back to Alberta in 1939 bought a ranch he joined the Canadian broadcast network and drove once a week to Calgary to perform he had married Bobby Bryant a New York nurse he wanted to start a family as they were driving west outside Shelby Montana their car was hit by a truck across the centerline I know that he had a head-on collision and it took him 10 years to come out of it they didn't think he'd ever walk again it sure put him out of business for many many years and it was a tragic car crash it he had to have several operations and a lot of people heard about about wolf Carter or Montana slim having this wreck in the States and a lot of people thought that he had died because of it Wilf had chosen the ranch in the Alberta foothills within sight of the Rockies Carter had to walk with a back brace he tried to record but his heart wasn't in it [Music] the only cure seemed to be the life of the cowboy it was not going to be easy for Bobby here she is all of a sudden in the middle of this big ranch she's got all these Thrasher's that are showing up at five o'clock in the morning so they can eat and get out and and then she just gets everything cleaned up she's got lunch to fix she gets everything cleaned up again and she's got dinner to fix his daughter Sheila and Carol were born it was the perfect place to raise a family and Bobby was only two hours from the city and Wilf used to take Bobby to town every week you know so she could get her hair done and you know because she missed the city at last Wilf Carter had found the family he'd lost as a boy he learned to take the time to be a father money was no worry by 1947 his record sales that hit two million they're beneath those dear old western sky and I'll tell you just the reason why there's a love heart in malaria [Music] if you talk about horse whisperer well fin vented it honestly I mean he could talk to when he went out to the barn will gut back to blaze and he'd walk out to that gate and he'd say hello blaze blaze would winner every time he couldn't stay away forever his success had spawned a legion of imitators Montana Slim's even Wilf Carter's were appearing in his place across the country he decided to set the record straight in 1949 he went back on the road this time with his family as part of the show [Music] with Sheila and Carol part of the show he embarked on his first cross-canada tour the Ottawa promoter who convinced him to do it Kim Reynolds they paid almost every town of any size coast to coast and Canada from Vancouver Island up to Whitehorse kind of late to Newfoundland in fact I must have been maybe five or six years old and we were on the stage and daddy was singing a song and I pulled on his pants and he stopped singing and I said he said what's the matter nice nice I said you made a mistake he said well okay you know and then we said we'll just have to start right over again because we started from the beginning and um he said everybody left of course you know I didn't realize that what I was causing a commotion but that's you know it was just part of us being you know together as a family on the stage the tour was a huge success Carter called it the family show with folks you know it was the beginning of a whirlwind 20 years and as we drove into Minden wealth noticed a sign population 260 and he expressed to me what was that plan to do to him no even if everybody came there wouldn't be nearly enough even though I was paying him it's coming out of my pocket we would drive into this little tiny town and and I mean it would be in the middle of nowhere and by 6 o'clock at night this town has got thousands of people coming in and you're just wondering where in the world all these people hide and we had to stop the show two different occasions that night in order to raise the speaker's up higher so the people at the back could hear their gem derp on the stage so bad I suppose we've had 16 1800 people perhaps I can remember mom is trying to take tickets and I mean take care off tickets and take money and and there's money everywhere and she looks up at these Mounties and she says I gotta have some help down here you know and he says you don't ever have to worry here nobody will ever touch one of those dollar bills he says let him fall on the floor nobody will pick him up and nobody ever did musician Bobby right I always look forward to it because it was like working with an encyclopedia he had so many stories about every town that you would go in and it was one place in Ontario I can't think of the name of the town but we'd pull in there and he said I remember working a rodeo here once said they didn't have a stage set up there were so many people there was no room to bring the stage in he said I had to climb up the telephone pole and hook a belt around me and hang off of the pole and sing to the people but he said they loved it [Music] the forties became the 50s Carter had always wanted to run a motel he built one in a Florida orange grove with a strange new piece of furniture in every room a television set waiting for a blue-eyed gal you bear while I'm riding arrange all day my old lass who seems to say it twines around an ordinary stray hey hey there's a love knot in malaria and it's waiting for my little prairie pen when I swing me olace who will hear my Yodlee there's a love nod in malaria holy Toledo there's a love knot in malaria television reunited him with a fellow Nova Scotian named Hank Snow yeah see Sheila's got your guitars from me all right Carole with you Cody oh here's the girls again boy they sure have a way of growing up fast yeah man they go off and fly away but I think you forgot one of the main things well what's it up and that's right here Oh grandchild isn't that the sweetest little hey Hank my first grandchild the first of all oh man how about all the folks it likes it they move up and give us a real close yeah right in here get him right on here yeah pretty close buddy that's real yeah he's yodeling but you can't hear much now okay you starting yeah [Music] [Applause] fine years flew by now in his 60s color television tried to package him for a modern audience would he be too long but he certainly was one of the early performers that I insisted that he come on the show and none of the producers frankly wanted him on the show musicologist Richard flow Hill wolf was the old geezer you know who came on and smiled and sang him old songs just like they did in the old days and that's always rather comforting I think it may not be the world's greatest music wolf was worse one for the book he was character and and those people who knew him and he never became him the young kids never got onto him in the way that they got into a man like stompin Tom Connors he'll tell you to your face the wolf Carter was the greatest thing that ever happened to country music he doesn't have any nice things to say about Hank snow up but wolf never became that hip with the kids with a younger audience maybe his music was just his square maybe his music was just what it was for its time young people today I don't know if they remember they even remember Gordon Lightfoot and the enticing let alone Wilf Carter I'm not being facetious I mean that's the way it is you know I think we'll should have stopped a little earlier than he did but that's just my opinion and as a senior citizen I'm you know I'm allowed to voice that how can you stop if if you love it so much and you are loved like he was I mean he got such love from his fans I think he needed that I think that was important I think that's why he lived to be that old you know he might have been tired but he loved it so much and he always felt so honored that so many people would want to see him many thanks to the CBC who picked me up when they was born I was with the CRC Canadian radio Commission before that and then CBS heard me in New York and took pity on me and took me down there and all you wonderful people got behind me through all these years I just want to say thanks a million you've really been great to a fella called Wilf Carter thank you so much even the awards shows began to feel like goodbye they were trying to tell him something but he wouldn't listen his old bus was still on the road touring with old friends like Johnny Wright and Kitty Wells he liked to entertain entertain the folks just like we did you know and he'd go out and put on the show and sit down and photograph and talk for the people they'd ask about the family they'd always be glad to talk to him tell him about him and boil eggs and the I just can't think of enough but good things to say about him because he was wonderful to work with and really a wonderful person after the show's over he called it going to arrested he says come on boys let's go put on the nose bag he dumb about the foods you know he'd go there and the whole whole group I'm going eat and he'd pick up the tab on it so he's just a gentleman [Music] as long as there was an audience Carter would keep singing I'm it's over was a little gentleman in the wheelchair come here well I walk so just pretty near to him he says how long you been in here and I said not not very long he said well I ain't seen you around and I said no he says I don't like your singing and I said well I'm sorry sir I don't like it but he says I'll tell you something now you take I don't whether you Norman up but that Wilf Carter can sing he said I looked at him I said do you know him he said no don't know him but lots of his old records he says we play the Dickens out of it but he said you've never met him I said no well he said I don't think you're gonna go very far in singing he was getting very hard of hearing and that bothered him and but there was there were there were people that I mean I watched him doing his shows and there were people that come out that just loved to come in and and sit and talk to him and there were times when it used to irritate wealth because they would be talking and they're pouring out their soul about the very first time I met you and you were so kind to me you sign my autograph and I've carried this around with me and they pull out an autograph signature it used to bother will because he couldn't he couldn't hear he now spent most of his time answering mail in typical Carter fashion he hand wrote a response to every letter the day it arrived [Music] he would always reply just like clockwork I would get her letter back within seven days after I wrote I knew that with clockwork Carter set out on what he called the last roundup tour the time had come to call it a day a lot of younger people of course would have seen him as the man from Mars you know I mean this guy was like the bearded lady at the carnival passing through town a real oddity but for the people who remembered and who weren't even that old he was very special and this was a very special time [Music] he would do it his way he would go back to the one-horse towns where he'd begun his career where he had played for community dances in the 20s his final concert would be intro shoe Alberta population 907 the older people just turned out in droves you know and a they just wanted to reach out and touch that legend and they all came and and just to see him and just to just to touch him and talk to him again you know and and it was a it was a sad it was a sad night for me [Music] we were out in the rift with the rhythm house as a matter of fact in Western Canada we ended the tour intro shoe Alberta the last date he ever did and they flew his granddaughter Bobby up to see him which would be Carol's the youngest daughter and she'd never seen him perform in concert we actually brought her out on stage about getting jealous thinking about it and they introduced her as who has the Wills granddaughter well for a wolf just broke down and cried and she did and the whole crowd was crying there are tears to be rolling down their eyes you know is it was incredible you know to see even even at that age you know it was really um it was incredible to see how he moved people when he's saying we're all just sobbing I mean everybody and I was trying to keep him you know concentrating on what he was doing because he was so sentimental and you know he went through a lot of memories about being in Alberta and he'd put his hands up from the guitar like this and he said well folks you know me and the old girl are gonna have one last tune and here it is and it was called have a nice day and I'll never forget his last show and he says I'm going on string my guitar [Music] he would never pick up his guitar again wolf was like like the soil he was but he never he stayed exactly the same on December the 7th 1996 the Calgary Herald wrote Wilf Carter the yodeling cowboy who was Canada's first cowboy star died Thursday night in Scottsdale Arizona at the age of 91 oh my lonely heart is aching for a home [Music] to see I know what a give if I could be there a sweetheart who's waiting for me in my blue spring a sign through [Music] and the golden poppies are blooming around the banks all the way join me again next week at the same time for another episode of the Canadians biographies of a nation until then for history television I'm Patrick Watson you

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Id: z1AuQBFU3es

Length: 46min 15sec (2775 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020