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Burton Cummings & Neil Young 1987


LORRAINE  WEST


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Lorraine West

There was a time in the 1960s when you couldn't turn your radio or television on without hearing the golden voice of Winnipegger Lorraine West.  The popular singer was a fixture on CBC radio and television.

"That was a wonderful time at the CBC," recalls Lorraine, from her St. James home.  "I had so much work it wasn't unusual for me to do a live afternoon radio broadcast then go straight from that to a rehearsal for a television show airing the following week.  It was just heaven."

Born Lorraine Boux in 1934 in St. Boniface, Lorraine grew up in Norwood.  "We moved a lot," she says, "because we didn't have a lot of money back then like most people so I attended several schools.  I didn't finish high school because I was too busy singing."

Her professional career got its start following an appearance on an amateur talent show held at the Beacon Theatre located at Main and Rupert (now the Centennial Concert Hall).

"My mother kept bugging me about trying out because I was always singing around the house.  So I went and won seven weeks in a row.  I was only 16 or 17 years old."

Fortunately for Lorraine, CKY radio broadcast the show and the bandleader at the Fort Garry Hotel heard her and invited her to sing with his group.  Lorraine began singing with Ed Emel's band at the Fort Garry in the mid '50s.  "They had supper dances and it was all very formal so I had to dress up in a long gown."  She also sang at the Royal Alexandra Hotel with Irvin Plumm's orchestra.

The piano player in the Emel band had a connection at CBC radio and encouraged the local CBC brass to hire Lorraine.

"There were all sorts of locally produced broadcasts on radio and then TV came along.  I was working all the time."  Besides a regional afternoon radio series entitled Let's Meet Lorraine, she appeared on a number of variety productions.

"I did a lot of work with Neil Harris, Mitch Parks, Bob McMullin, George LaFlèche, all the local musicians.  The funny part was that I didn't read music.  With me it was all by ear.  I never had any problems, though."

Guitar genius Lenny Breau often backed Lorraine.  "Practically every show I did was with Lenny as a side man," she recalls.  "He was already into the drugs then, but was still brilliant.  He was such a nice, quiet, soft-spoken young man."

Another CBC regular was Len Cariou who would go on to star on Broadway.  "I knew the Carious from Norwood.  Len used to hang around the CBC and he finally asked me, 'Who do you have to know to get to work here?'  I just told him to keep at it.  He did OK," she says with a laugh.  Years later the two starred in a CTV Christmas special and sang Send in the Clowns.

With CBC work so plentiful, Lorraine rarely went out on the road.  "I had three little kiddies at home.  We had our children (George, later the original bass player with Crash Test Dummies, Martine and Joe) pretty close together.  Twice I was asked by the CBC to host my own national television series and both times I had to turn them down because I was pregnant.  In those days they couldn't show you pregnant on television.  They must have thought all my husband and I did was have babies.

One trip, however, remains memorable.  "We went up to Ellesmere Island on the Arctic Circle with the CBC to play for our troops.  It was so cold that they kept the airplane engines running the whole time so they wouldn't freeze up."  From there the troupe performed for 10,000 U.S. soldiers and families in Thule, Greenland.

Lorraine was also a featured singer with the Harry Levine Trio at the Airport Hotel's Constellation Room in its heyday in the early '60s.  But by the late '60s local radio and television production dried up.

"CBC radio here went from music practically 24 hours a day to no music.  Everything came out of Toronto," she says.  Lorraine moved on to the Hollow Mug dinner theatre at the International Inn where she appeared in over 100 productions in 20 years.  "That was a wonderful experience because you got to be a ham," she says with a smile.  "But you sure learned your craft."  Among her fellow performers was a young Loreena McKennitt.

More recently Lorraine has sung at seniors' facilities.  "That was fun because you'd get requests and get to talk to people.  I'd tell them I'm scouting out the place for when I'm ready to go," she says with a laugh.

John Einarson
As published in the The Prime Times, March 31, 2011


Lorraine West


CKY Production featuring Lorraine West.
Filmed in 1991 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Lorraine
speaks about her career and performs two songs.



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