Tom Johnson was born in Sackville, NB and at 18, during military service, started playing guitar. His musical talents increased rapidly after he and some army buddies formed a country band, The Melody Ramblers, while stationed at Oromocto. In 1967, he joined The York County Boys to play bass and sing harmony with 1985 Hall of Fame inductee Allan Sherwood. Back home in Sackville, he joined Ivan Hicks and his Old Time Band, which soon became known as Maritime Express. In the past 25 years, this band has continuously performed throughout the Maritimes and eastern USA, and in this millennium has already done two multi-concert cross-Canada tours. Along with being part of the show’s musical core, Tom and Del Wheaton, his brother-in-law, soon developed a side-splitting hillbilly act, The Grubb Brothers, that by fan demand became a regular part of band concerts. Tom also is helmsman of an annual Shepody Bay Old-Time and Bluegrass Music Festival and has raised thousands of dollars for local charities. Since 1990, he’s played and sung with a country gospel act Diamonds In The Rough as well, and they’ve released several CDs. Tom also currently is part of a band, the Hardly Herd, and plays backup for The Sussex Avenue Fiddlers. He now has his own recording studio and spends much of his time recording young entertainers, as well as entertaining at many nursing homes and charitable events; his most cherished of these being Sackville’s annual Christmas At Home concert. He has been honoured for his musical contributions by surrounding communities and was chosen Sackville’s Citizen of the Year in 1995. Tom has unselfishly devoted 48 years to the music he loves.
Deleanor Wheaton Del was born in Midgic, NB in 1933, and started strumming guitar when he was eight. He was soon playing for school sing-alongs and shortly afterwards was proficient enough to join old-time fiddler Albert Throop playing house parties, and form a band called The Midgic Pioneers while still in his teens. His first new guitar, an S.S. Stewart, was a Christmas gift from his parents. Before long he was playing dances with Hall of Famers, Curtis Hicks and his son, Ivan.
In 1954, he joined Ivan in forming The Golden Valley Boys to broadcast on radio, record two albums and play many concerts and dances across the Maritimes. In 1979, he became part of a bluegrass band Ivan Hicks and Maritime Express that played, on occasion, as far away as Florida and backing such international legends as Chubby Wise, Mac Wiseman, John Hartford and Roni Stoneman. Del and a brother-in-law, Tom Johnson, eventually evolved an act, The Grubb Brothers, to add comedy to certain Express shows but it quickly became a regular highlight of the band’s concerts. He is heard on the many records, tapes and CDs released by Maritime Express over the years.
Del has also been involved with the Sackville Citizens Band, the Hussars Militia Band and Marshwinds dance band and has played mandolin with Rustic Harmony and fiddle and mandolin with Tom Johnson in backing the popular Diamonds In The Rough duo. Del has also often backed the Sussex Avenue Fiddlers over the years on guitar.
He has been honoured as Citizen of the Year by Sackville, his home town for many years, and has been publicly lauded by other nearby communities.
Bob Henry Robert ‘Bob’ Henry was born in Charlottetown, PEI in 1942. Raised on an Island farm, he joined the RCAF in 1959 and began his long career as a country radio personality in 1963 over KOLD while serving at Station Armstrong, Ontario, over an LPRT located on that base. Commercially, his first ‘on air’ radio stint came at CFCY, Charlottetown in 1964. He went from there to CKDH, Amherst and then to CKCL, Truro, where he started his first Weekend Jamboree featuring ‘older artists’ in 1967. Broadcast live, it was carried on both CKCL and CKDH. From there he moved to CFAN, Newcastle to become their PD/Morning Man, then to CHER in Sydney. In 1975, he returned to Charlottetown, becoming Sports Director of a new station CHTN. He moved back to Sydney in 1978 to help start a new country FM station, CKPE. In 1980 he came to Saint John’s CHSJ as PD/Morning man and in 1984 started the station’s first Weekend Jamboree on Saturday nights, from 7 to 9 PM that he hosted for 11 years until the station ‘modified staff’ in 1995. Wishing to stay in Saint John, Bob began a new career with the Canadian Blood Service. In 2002, however, he was asked by new management at CHSJ to return as host of their Weekend Jamboree, now airing on Sunday nights from 6 to 9 PM on Country 94.1 FM, and re-focused to not only feature international artists of various eras, but to serve as a showcase for the wealth of old and new NB country singers and instrumentalists, now recording in great numbers.
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