L-R:
Greg Brownell, Bill Copsey, Richard Price
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PERFECT HARMONY
Folk trio a popular draw before
rock ruled
Between Elvis Presley being drafted into
the U.S. army in 1958 and the arrival of
the Beatles on North American shores in
1964, folk music enjoyed a prominent place
in popular music.
Ushered in by the Kingston Trio’s surprise
1958 hit Tom Dooley, folk music graduated
from fringe status to the commercial
mainstream as teens and young adults
scrambled for acoustic guitars and
five-string banjos. Michael was rowin’ the
boat ashore in countless coffeehouses,
cafés and church basements across the
continent.
Winnipeg’s answer to the Kingston Trio was
the Roamers, a trio who, in the early to
mid-’60s, enjoyed considerable popularity
in nightclubs. Their musical abilities and
impressive harmonies, coupled with an
appealing singalong presentation, drew
enthusiastic crowds wherever they
performed.
“There weren’t a lot of folk groups around
Winnipeg at the time,” notes Roamers
guitarist/bass player/singer Greg
Brownell, who lived across the street from
Neil Young on Grosvenor Avenue in
Crescentwood. “That made us pretty
unique.” Why folk music? “It was simple to
play and sing, and people just loved to
sit around and sing it.”
The trio — Brownell, Richard Price on
banjo and vocals and Bill Copsey, also on
guitar and vocals — came together rather
casually around 1961. Price and Copsey had
been students at Kelvin High School.
Copsey had dabbled in rock ‘n’ roll,
fronting Wild Bill Copsey & the Rhythm
Rebels before taking a folk-music turn.
Brownell, too, had wet his feet playing
community clubs in rock band the Playboys
before joining the 15-piece group the
Cools. “The Cools played on a weekly radio
broadcast from the Rancho Don Carlos out
on Pembina Highway,” he recalls. “That was
when the place was known as a Bottle
Club.” Manitoba’s antiquated liquor laws
wouldn’t allow booze to be served in the
club. “They charged for the mix, and you
brought your own bottle of booze. The
tables even had a slot underneath to store
your bottle in.”
Prior to Brownell joining, an early,
short-lived version of the trio included
future Blue Bombers player and general
manager Paul Robson.
“That was my one and only musical
endeavour,” laughs Robson, currently CEO
of Canad Inns. “We sang at the Norwood
Hotel on talent night. That was the limit
of my singing abilities. I was quite happy
to bow out.” The others recruited Copsey’s
friend Brownell. Robson went on to the
University of North Dakota and a career in
sports. “Paul was a high-energy guy and a
real showman,” states Price, who later
served as Robson’s best man at his
wedding.
With folk music in high demand in
nightclubs, the Roamers quickly
established a solid reputation. “We played
a lot of Weavers songs and traditional
songs we found in songbooks and on
albums,” says Brownell. “We also loved the
Clancy Brothers and did a lot of Irish
drinking songs. Kingston Trio and
Limeliters songs, too. Basically we just
did the songs we liked.”
The trio was the featured act in the Gold
Coach Lounge at Kennedy Street’s popular
Town n’ Country nightclub on and off for
more than two years, drawing lineups
nightly.
“People loved to come see us and sing
along,” states Price. “That was probably
the highlight of our career playing there.
We were making $600 a week, which was
pretty good money then.”
“I thought they were quite comparable to
the Kingston Trio,” says Lorrie Waugh,
ex-wife of Copsey, who saw the group at
the T n’ C. “Their voices complemented
each others in a lovely blend. And Richard
was a very good banjo player, too.”
At 6-5, Copsey towered over his partners
onstage. “On Bill, the guitar looked like
a ukelele,” laughs Brownell.
Price recalls the time he bumped into
singer Nat King Cole at the Town n’
Country. “It was winter and he was just
going outside, and he said, ‘Man, it’s
cold here.’ “
Brownell said black performers were
sometimes prevented from mixing with white
patrons or staying at certain hotels.
“We were talking with the Deep River Boys
backstage at the Rancho Don Carlos and
invited them to come sit with us in the
main room, but they said they weren’t
allowed to be in there. The City Centre
was one of the few hotels that would let
black performers stay there.”
An extended engagement at the Club Morocco
on Portage Avenue brought the Roamers to
the attention of producers from the CBC,
who booked the trio to appear on several
television shows.
“That was where the CBC staffers went
after work for a drink,” recalls Brownell.
“We played on Red River Jamboree, hosted
by Stu Phillips. Lenny Breau was in the
CBC band then but would never show up for
rehearsals. The producer told us, ‘It
doesn’t matter, because he never plays
what we write down for him anyway.’ “
The Roamers also appeared on CBC’s
nationally televised Time Out For Music
and CBC Radio’s New Talent Parade.
The trio travelled to Edmonton for an
engagement at the Paddock, followed by an
appearance at the Embers, a club run by
big-band leader and future senator Tommy
Banks. They were held over for several
weeks at the club. At a gig at
Minneapolis’s famed Padded Cell nightclub,
the Roamers were joined onstage for a
couple of songs by the Smothers Brothers,
who dropped by after their own gig.
“The place was short-staffed that night,”
Brownell remembers, “so Tommy Smothers,
the funny one, ended up serving drinks to
people in the audience. We later partied
with them at our rented apartment, and
Tommy was so drunk he passed out.”
For a gig in Duluth, Minn., the club owner
met the trio in Pembina, N.D., in his
small plane to take them to Duluth. “He
was flying really low and was using a road
map to find his way,” laughs Brownell. “He
had to keep leaning his head out the
window to see the roads to follow. This
was Bill’s first time in an airplane, so
he was very uneasy.”
The group often played winter weekends at
Kenora’s Kenricia Hotel. “The defrost on
my ’48 Chevy didn’t work,” notes Brownell,
“so one of us had to sit in the middle and
scrape the frost off the windshield all
the way there.”
Back in Winnipeg, the Roamers appeared on
a bill at the Playhouse Theatre alongside
Canadian folk-music luminary Oscar Brand
and popular quartet the Travellers for a
CBC Hootenanny show. They played the
Fourth Dimension coffee house near the
University of Manitoba and at the
university itself.
The Beatles and the British Invasion
sounded the imminent death knell for the
folk boom in early 1964. Nightclubs wanted
rock ‘n’ roll bands. Copsey bowed out to
marry and settle down.
The others brought in singer Avril Johnson
and carried on. During an extended gig at
Thunder Bay’s St. Louis Hotel in 1965,
Price earned his bush pilot’s licence and
left the group, which folded soon after.
Price worked as an airline pilot for Air
Canada for five years before moving to
British Columbia.
Brownell continued performing on and off
for the next 20 years as a solo act under
the name Rick Brown.
Copsey worked in sales and management in
Winnipeg. He died of a heart attack in
1994 at the age of 53.
Johnson’s whereabouts are unknown.
“It was a wonderful time and a great way
to make a living,” Brownell said of the
Roamers’ time in the sun. “We were good
friends and always got along well. But we
never had any aspirations to take it any
further. As long as it was fun, we did it.
We never saw it as a career or pushed it
in that direction. What a great way to
spend those young years of your life.”
When asked by noted folk-music authority
Alan Mills on CBC Radio during the trio’s
stay in Edmonton why he got into folk
music, Price nonchalantly replied, “It
beats working.”
John Einarson 2014
As
published in the Winnipeg Free Press
September 28, 2014
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