Freddy McKenna was born in Fredericton in 1934; he was blind from birth. In spite of this, people remember him for his cheerful disposition.
He spent two years studying piano at the School for the Blind in Halifax. When he was 12 his parents bought him his first guitar. A neighbourhood girl taught him to play using the Hawaiian mode of playing. Freddy improvised a three finger style, holding the guitar across his lap as if he was playing traditional Hawaiian. The result was that he fingered the chords backwards.
He later learned to play fiddle, mandolin and banjo in the same way.
By the time he was 16 he was playing for dances and local concerts. His first professional appearances were on the old Capital Co-op Saturday Night Jamborees heard over CFNB.
Kidd Baker, one of NB's leading country music stars heard him and took him on the road. He spent several years with Kidd's band, mostly in Ontario .
Recognition for Freddy came in the late 50's; he made several appearances in 1958 and 1959 on Don Messer's Jubilee resulting in such a reaction from viewers that when CBC put on a summer replacement for the Messer Show, Singalong Jubilee, Fred McKenna was written in as a permanent part of the show.
When the show went before the camera he quickly established himself as one of the most important ingredients in the show's recipe for success. During the years the show ran, first as a summer replacement, and later as a regular prime-time fall to spring feature, his gargantuan size, dark glasses and battered guitar was a familiar sight to viewers across the nation.
During his Singalong years, Freddy McKenna recorded three albums for Arc Records and later one for Camden .
He finished life, not as an entertainer, but as musical director for the George Hamilton TV show produced in Montreal .
On Friday, November 18, 1977 , Fred McKenna died quietly at his home in Toronto . He was only 43.
One of Anne Murray's lps bears the inscription, “Dedicated to the memory of Freddy McKenna, the man who first introduced me to country music”.
Art Marr ...Arthur Maher...was born in Sussex , but moved to Saint John in his pre-school years. At 14 he began playing Hawaiian lap guitar. Four years later, in 1946, he joined four friends, Bob Milner, Eddy Bailey, Eddie MacDonald and Frank McDermot, to form the Sunshine Boys and broadcast over CHSJ Radio. They stayed together for a year and did a number of live concerts in communities around Saint John .
Art played with various bands around the port city and in 1949 joined the troupe of Hal Breau and his Lone Pine Mountaineers as their steel guitar player. He was with Breau when the Maine balladeer recorded his big hit, “ Prince Edward Island is Heaven to Me”, for Canadian RCA. Other recording sessions and hits followed the PEI song, but it was the biggest seller. Due to his influence on the band's sound, Art was featured in the Breau Song Folios and sheet music published by the Canadian Music Company in 1950.
During these years with Breau they appeared in and around Nashville and Wheeling with such US stars as Hawkshaw Hawkins and Big Slim The Lone Cowboy and backed such acts as Don Red Barry and Sunset Carson on stage in St. John.
In 1952, Art formed his own local Saint John band to back Hal Lone Pine and his wife Betty Cody and fiddler Ned Landry on a series of CBC coast-to-coast broadcasts. During that same year, he did a stint as a disc jockey on a country music evening show over CFBC in an effort to keep real country music on the air.
For the next several years he continued to record and travel with Breau and appeared with him on several ABC Network shows in the US .
In 1955 he was a regular on the GWG Country Show over CHSJ-TV and in 1956 on the Curly O'Brien Show. Years of traveling with his own band followed.
In 1969 he launched one of NB's best known country shows, The Art Marr Country Music Jamboree which unfolded on the stage of the Lily Lake Pavilion each Sunday night for nearly three years. Some of the international greats who appeared on his show were: Lenny Breau, Lefty Frizzell, Tommy Cash, Tommy Overstreet, George Morgan and Hank Snow.
Art still leads an active life today although he ceased to operate the band several years ago. Many weekends he travels to Halifax or Bangor to jam with friends Pearson Friars and Dick Curless.
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