The Tail Behind The Tune ... Heartbreak Hotel

Watch the Heartbreak Hotel Video here: https://youtu.be/tF_BPNB-Cfw

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This recording came out of my father’s funeral at The Salvation Army Temple in Sutton. My dad had requested that the small traditional horn band there play at his service. The first organized music I ever heard was a traditional Salvation Army horn band. And it was renowned to be one of the best in Canada … at the Dovercourt Temple in Toronto. As a little kid I used to play along with them on my trombone kazoo … it even had a slide on it! Those bands have been replaced in most Sally Anne temples today by Christian rock bands. But they had a warm rich tone that was quite unique and I heard that sound again at the funeral.  I left that day wondering how I could use that horn sound in the bluesy music I like to make. To get an idea what that comforting sound was like please have a listen to a few bars of it here.

If you are old enough, like me, you may remember seeing one of these bands playing on the street with snow falling in a black and white James Stewart Christmas movie many moons ago!

For some reason sometime thereafter, I started thinking about the first rock ‘n roll song I heard. I was watching the weekly Tommy Dorsey Show one night with my parents on our black and white tv back in the 50’s when Tommy came out and said … We have something a little different for you this evening ladies and gentlemen … please welcome Mr. Elvis Presley! This guy then appeared with his rock ‘n roll band and performed a song called Heartbreak Hotel. It blew my socks off … immediately … I loved his music and his sideburns … wanted them too. My parents thought the guy was mentally ill … in some respects retroactively they had a point! However, that night changed the world … and my musical life forever, big time. Elvis Presley after all was just a white man singing the black music he had heard all around him. I began to think of Heartbreak Hotel as a blues song … and that’s exactly what it is. And I then recalled my thoughts and feelings about the Salvation Army band at the funeral. Perhaps because of their traditional work with the homeless at The Sally Anne those ideas connected … after all, what could be more Heartbreak Hotel than the streets of our big cities. If living on the streets of Toronto or New York doesn’t give one the blues, what could? So the idea was born to record a blues version of Heartbreak Hotel with Salvation Army horns. Turns out that idea was easier said than done!

When you say Elvis Presley to folks at The Salvation Army their eyes roll into the back of their heads … when they are talking about The King, it’s someone other than Elvis Presley. So my project abruptly ran into a brick wall in terms of the horn section. However, I remembered that my cousin, Maj. David Ivany, was the only Salvation Army officer I knew who loved Herbie Hancock and who went to all the jazz museums in New Orleans! So I gave him a call, described my project and what I was thinking … and he agreed to help me. He took me to an event at The Salvation Army Camp in Jackson’s Point where the Staff Band was playing to celebrate the investiture of their new General … sort of like their pope! The Staff Band is made up of all the best Salvation Army musicians in the country. I had hoped I would be able to get someone to write up a suitable horn arrangement for me. And to entice a few of the more open minded among them to play on my project … to no avail!  They played all sorts of Latin style music and big band jazz very well indeed, but I never once did I hear any of that traditional horn band sound I was looking for in their repertoire at all. I was perplexed and discouraged but still determined to find a way to get this project done.

I’m not sure why or how but I recalled I had heard that a prominent jazz musician in Toronto, Russ Little had worked with The Salvation Army in some way or other so I gave him a call. I described what I was doing and wondered whether Russ could write an arrangement for me. Russ said he knew what I was looking for that he was not the guy who could do that for me but that he knew who could … a bass player named Duncan Hopkins who played with Guido Basso.  So I got his number from Russ, thanked him very much and gave Duncan Hopkins a call. Turned out that Duncan’s wife was involved with The Salvation Army although he wasn’t but as Russ had said Duncan knew what I was looking for and agreed to write me a horn arrangement. I never actually met Duncan at all at that time but did many years later when he played bass with Bob Brough in Port Perry … we just talked on the phone, he sent me charts, I sent him money.

But I had lots more to think about than horn arrangements, I needed help to pull things together. So I called a long time friend of mine to help me produce the whole project … Sam Reid. Sam and I go back a long way … I used to manage a heavy metal band from north of Newmarket Sam played with when he was 15 called The End … helped carry his B3 into his house after gigs at 3 AM on many occasions … and when that band broke up he ended up playing in Glass Tiger. Sam had done a wonderful job producing a CD for me in 1998 … very professional guy. One of the best people I have ever worked with in the recording studio and he has great ears. My late music buddy Larry Leishman said about Sam, that although he did not play the kind of blues music Larry and I both cherished, he understood that music completely and had great taste.

I roughed out the piano part so we could make a demo for the other musicians on the session. Then I headed over to Sam’s studio thinking that I would show him the piano part and then he could record it since he was a keyboard player … I am not … but when I got there he refused! He said … it’s your project, you play the piano! … so I did and then I sang the song to that. We had to correct the odd part of the piano and I thought I would go back and record the piano part and the vocals again later … but I never did!

We had wanted our regular drummer in Burrows And Company, Al Cross to play on the session but he could not do it … he was on an extended live tour somewhere and couldn’t make it. So Sam hired a drummer who he said was a “brushes specialist” … we wanted brushes … Jim Casson … well-known Toronto musician who often played with The Downchild Blues Band. We also called in our regular bass player Dennis Pendrith to play acoustic bass on the tune. And our guitarist at that time, Larry Leishman, formerly with Jon Lee and the Checkmates. Larry was the first guy on the session I sent the demo Sam and I had made to for a listen. He sent it back to me a couple of days later with some guitar he had recorded on it asking if this was the kind of thing I was looking for … gave it a listen and it literally made me weep with joy! We were off to a great start! … I called and asked if he could also play some mouth organ for us.

Also thought that pedal steel might work on this recording in that it tended to evoke a feeling of sadness because the instrument is most frequently used in country music “hurtin’ songs”. Discussed this idea with Sam and although he agreed it might work well he also had concerns that it might be a bit over the top and not work out, so he suggested we should record the rest of the band first and then record the pedal steel thereafter … I agreed that was a good call. So I got contacted a very good pedal steel player I had worked with at Cosmo Music, Al Brisco. Al readily agreed to come out on the same day after the rest of the band had finished recording.

We had planned to record the horns sometime after the rest of the recording had been done.
A good thing because, although we had the horn parts, we did not yet have the horn players!

Some people might think that when you make a recording like this, you get all the instruments ready, set up a mic, count in the song, play it perfectly and then say goodbye and go home. But that’s not what happens at all … there are at least 12 mics on the drum kit alone. Most often the band and all the players overdubbing something later play at least 3 takes. We do that so we have lots to work with when we are comping or editing the song later. There are occasions when we don’t have to do any digital editing at all but that is rare. One such occasion for our band was our recording of Morning Hymn. What you are hearing on that track is Take 5 … there is not one edit of any kind on that. We did have someone mix the song, balance out all the instruments and every sound. But that’s not editing or comping … it’s just making everything sound as good as possible.

The main session went very smoothly … the band recorded to the piano / vocal demo I had sent. I had planned to go back and do that over again but it sounded very good so I never did that. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Larry stayed when everyone else left to overdub the mouth organ … worked really well. Then Al Brisco arrived and set up to play overdub the pedal steel … Larry also stayed to listen. Like Sam and I he was somewhat concerned that the pedal steel might conflict with his guitar. Within only a few bars it was obvious that it did not … on the contrary it embellished what Larry had played and lifted the whole recording to a wonderful new level … it sounded great. Larry was thrilled with what he was hearing and so was everyone else … it worked really well. Thereafter Sam worked up a rough mix of the track so we could record the horns later.

It turned out that my cousin David Ivany played flugelhorn, and he was able to convince two members of The Salvation Army Staff Band to come out and play tenor and baritone horn. It was a brother and sister and those were brass horns rather unique to Sally Anne Bands. When they played together, they produced the wonderful classic sound we were looking for. The horns come in very discreetly in the third verse and continue through the guitar solo to the end of the song and add a special ambiance to the recording as we had hoped they would. The session went very smoothly, the horn players enjoyed the experience, we were overjoyed.

It seemed to take forever to get Sam to mix the tune, he was on tour with Glass Tiger. We had recorded everything in June and by September I was getting antsy to get it mixed. We planned to release the recording and a video in early December just before Christmas. When Sam got home from his tour, he got to work on mixing the recording at his studio. Sam has great ears, he is wonderful in the studio and he created a lovely mix of the song. He told me later that it was a shame he had to discard so many great moments on both the guitar and the pedal steel … you can only use so many, the rest get thrown away in “the can”. And although Sam doesn’t play blues music himself he has great taste and understands it well. I was very happy with the final mix and the master he created for our project. When he heard the final mix of the song, Larry, who had been a close friend in music and in life told me he thought Heartbreak Hotel was my masterpiece but he was wrong … it was his! His guitar and mouth organ on that track is the best I ever heard him play on a recording. Sadly he passed away from the scourge of cancer not long thereafter in 2012.

In the meantime, I had been working on getting a video made to accompany the song. The whole idea of the project was to elevate the profile of the homeless and to possibly raise some funds for the people who supported them leading into the Christmas season. Those people were Fred Victor … formerly The Fred Victor Mission … and The River Street Café of The Salvation Army … essentially a soup kitchen for the homeless in east end Toronto. Started working on that part of things before we ever got into the recording studio.

So I contacted Ryerson University because I was aware they had a media program there and asked them if they could recommend a student who had demonstrated skills in video. They referred me to a recent graduate of the course there who had won many awards and excelled in videography named Anne Douris and passed along my contact information to her. Anne got in touch a few days later, shortly thereafter we met at her mother’s house in Stouffville. Turned out I had taught school with her mother for several years at a local school in town. Small world!

Anne and I came to an understanding financially and also about various aspects of the video.
That it would be shot in black and white for dramatic effect, the length of the video and what we were trying to achieve and portray in the project overall … we seemed to be on the same page. She indicated that she would get to work on the project right away and would keep in touch.  Not too long thereafter she invited me to come and view some of the images she had collected. She clearly had a wonderful eye for video and photography and had assembled a great set of images depicting the environment of the homeless … but there were no homeless people in any. When I pointed that out, Anne indicated that she was feeling awkward abut shooting homeless people because she had a concern about being disrespectful of their dignity and privacy. While I was empathetic to her feelings and thoughts in that regard, I responded that I found it difficult to think that we could produce a video here without some homeless people in it. I pointed out that I had on many occasions seen stories on the news dealing with obesity that showed images of obesity in which you could not identify the subject at all, and that we could possibly get images of such people that in a similar way that did not compromise their identity. Or be invasive or disrespectful of the homeless, shots from behind, special lighting. She agreed that might be possible and said she would go out and work on that aspect.  Not long thereafter Anne called and told me that she had not been able to get beyond her feelings about shooting any images of homeless people and said she would have to pull out of the project. I asked her if we might be able to use the images she had collected and she agreed to do that. So then I went looking for someone else who would be able to carry the project forward.

Saw a sign on a store in Uxbridge advertising videos so I went in and talked to them. Turned out they made videos of kids’ birthday parties and weddings … weren’t interested. But one of the women told me to contact a local photographer named Stuart Blower. I did that and met with Stuart shortly thereafter … he readily accepted the challenge of carrying the video forward to its completion and agreed to incorporate the images created by Anne. Stuart and I then spent many nights driving around Toronto looking for suitable images. We spent many hours downtown in places like Edward Gardens shooting video. The experience resonated deeply within me since I had grown up in central west Toronto in the area of Dundas and Ossington and had seen this environment up close as a youth. Also reminded me of my Uncle Stanley … the black sheep of a Salvation Army … because he was a homosexual alcoholic who lived in the parks and back alleys downtown for years. It was a profound and deeply disturbing experience for me personally shooting the video.

Stuart then took all the rough footage of what we had done, Anne’s images and the music back to his studio and got to work on assembling and editing that into the final version of the piece. When he was done he invited me to come for a viewing of the video he had created. It was stunning in every way … a video that would do well in any short film or video festival. It presented a very powerful and moving vision of the homeless and the world they lived in. I was thrilled with the results of his time, his effort and the outcome of his wonderful skills.  I dedicated the video to my father, Ray Burrows and to his brother, my uncle Stanley.

On this recording Burrows And Company are …

Drums … Jim Casson Flugelhorn … David Ivany
Acoustic Bass … Dennis Pendrith Tenor Horn … Megan Smith
Guitar … Larry Leishman Baritone Horn … Jeremy Smith
Mouth Organ … Larry Leishman Piano … Bob Burrows
Pedal Steel … Al Brisco Vocals … Bob Burrows

Recorded at Chalet Studio in June 2011 … chalet.com
Recording Engineers … Theo Posthumous, David Chester
Mixing Engineer … Sam Reid
Produced by … Sam Reid and Bob Burrows

Heartbreak Hotel was written by … Tommy Durden, Mae Boren Axton and Elvis Presley

Burrows And Company embarked upon this project to accomplish two objectives … To elevate the plight and the profile of the homeless in our community And to pay tribute to and hopefully raise funds to help the organizations that support them.

That being the case we invite you and encourage you to consider making a donation to one of the following organizations …

Fred Victor … https://www.fredvictor.org/ … 416-364-8228 x.1332 [email protected]

Inn From The Cold (Newmarket) … https://www.innfromthecold.ca/ … 905 895 8889

Or any other organization who provides services directly to the homeless that you prefer or are aware of in your community.

Thank you for considering our request and for your interest in and support for our music.

Bob Burrows