The Rosalie Trombley Commemorative Day Event: Windsor, Ontario. Sunday, September 17, 2023
FROM BLITZ MAGAZINE’S WEBSITE and FACEBOOK PAGE
By Michael McDowell
If you believe that the 1970s represented a banner era for hit singles, you can thank Rosalie Trombley.
The position of Music Director at a radio station could vary widely in terms of aesthetic gratification, commensurate with the state of the art. For such visionaries as Frank “Swingin’ ” Sweeney and Paul Cannon (who each held the position at suburban Detroit’s legendary WKNR Keener 13 throughout the mid to late 1960s), being Music Director meant selecting an average of six to ten new singles for airplay out of the roughly 300 to 600 stellar new releases that surfaced each week throughout that most dynamic and creative of musical eras.
However, doing so meant that hundreds of landmark singles were overlooked at the time of their release. For the past several decades, Blitz Magazine – The Rock And Roll Magazine For Thinking People has been working in tandem with countless musicologists and record collectors around the world to chronicle, celebrate and archive that tremendous body of material.
Conversely, with mainstream music at large having entered into a protracted aesthetic slump by the end of the 1960s, the job of Music Director by definition required a great deal more due diligence in order to sustain the momentum that had been generated by the likes of Sweeney and Cannon. As Music Director for Windsor, Ontario’s CKLW-AM throughout that period, Leamington, Ontario native Trombley nonetheless managed to separate the wheat from the chaff in similar fashion. In the process, she helped enable The Big 8 to dominate the North American market throughout the decade.
On the morning of Sunday the seventeenth of September, hundreds of radio and entertainment industry veterans gathered together with Trombley’s family and friends at Windsor’s Open Streets Festival along Riverside Drive for the unveiling of a statue in her honor. Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens was joined in his opening remarks by Saint Clair College President Patti France, statue artist Donna Jean Mayne and others, including former Deverons and Guess Who vocalist and keyboard man, Burton Cummings.
“I remember the few times I really talked to Rosalie”, said Cummings.
“She really knew the stuff. There are many musicians who are very talented, who didn’t make it. I never took that for granted. Because of Rosalie, I still hear myself on the radio all the time. And she was there, right at the launching point”.
Following the unveiling of the statue by Cummings, CKLW veteran and big8radio.com CEO Charlie O’Brien and others, Saint Clair College hosted a lunch reception for the industry vets in attendance. Also on board were CKLW legends Len Robinson, Pat Holiday, Ted Richards, JoJo Shutty-MacGregor and Joe Donovan, along with Motor City Radio Flashbacks’ curator Jim Feliciano, Edison Media Research’s Sean Ross, renowned musicologist Jim Johnson and Trombley’s son, Tim.
At the reception, Tim Trombley shared at length about his mother’s unwavering ability to balance her pioneering work at CKLW with her ongoing responsibilities as a single parent, In the process, he provided one of the event’s most moving moments.
Conversely, Richards spoke of Trombley’s lighter side by sharing the secret of “the record that Rosale hated”.
“It was C.W. McCall’s Convoy”, Richards said, in reference to the November 1975 MGM label tale of the world of truck drivers and their CB radios.
“We aired it late at night!”
Nonetheless, all concurred that Trombley (who succumbed to a lengthy battle against Alzheimer’s disease in her native Leamington in November 2021 at age 82) was unwavering in her determination to keep the atmosphere in the CKLW studios like that of one big, happy family.
“We had fun!”, said Holiday.
To be certain, it was fun that was augmented by gratitude. And perhaps no individual at the day’s festivities was more grateful in that respect than Cummings.
Having left the Deverons in 1966 to join the Guess Who for the release of their third album, ‘It’s Time’, the band went on to sign with Larry Uttal’s Amy label in the United States. At Amy, the Guess Who released their Dave Clark Five – inspired “His Girl” single.
Meanwhile, the Guess Who continued to record for Quality at home. The results included such magnificent singles as Clock On The Wall and their ambitious cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong”.
However, with the departure of original front man Chad Allan (who had provided the lead vocal for the Guess Who’s 1965 monster classic cover of Johnny Kidd And The Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over” for Florence Greenberg’s Scepter label), the band remained in transitory mode for more than a year. In addition to those various projects for Amy and Quality, they managed to sustain their momentum in part by hosting a musical variety television series from their native Winnipeg, Manitoba.
But thanks to Rosalie Trombley, that all began to change at the end of 1968.
Around the time they had completed a joint album project at home with Capitol Records stalwarts, The Staccatos, The Guess Who switched label affiliations to RCA Victor in the United States and Nimbus in Canada. Their resultant Wheatfield Soul album produced an ambitious original ballad (composed by Cummings and Guess Who lead guitarist Randy Bachman), “These Eyes”.
After that single had enjoyed brief success at home in late 1968, Trombley lent her support to the record, putting it in heavy rotation at CKLW in the early weeks of 1969. The single became an instant classic.
One magnificent Guess Who single after another followed in succession, from mid-1969 throughout the first half of the 1970s. Among the highlights were “Laughing / Undun”, “No Time”, “American Woman” / “No Sugar Tonight”, “Hand Me Down World”, “Rain Dance”, “Albert Flasher”, “Dancin’ Fool”, “Share The Land” / “Bus Rider”, “Sour Suite”, “Glamour Boy”, “Orly” and their sublime signature single,” Running Back To Saskatoon”. Without exception, Trombley afforded each and every one of them heavy rotation at CKLW.
“When it comes to Rosalie Trombley, I have no problem saying very easily that she changed my life”, said Cummings. “It would occur to me once in a while that if it weren’t for Rosalie, I wouldn’t be here.
“I kept a journal, as we didn’t have laptops back then. We traveled all over the world. I wouldn’t have had that luxury had Rosalie Trombley not launched our first (RCA Victor) record.
“Rosalie was a huge part in launching that record. This was the gateway into Detroit, where a lot of people heard it for the first time. I would not have a wall of beautiful gold records at home, were it not for Rosalie. For that, I am eternally grateful. I will never forget her.”
The statue of Rosalie Trombley can be viewed from Riverside Drive at the intersection of McDougall Street.
—Mike McDowell September 19, 2023
Copyright 2023. Blitz Magazine. All rights reserved.
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A special THANK YOU to Mike McDowell, Editor of Blitz Magazine, for his guest article published here today at Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
All photographs were taken and is property of Mike McDowell.
A special THANK YOU to Terry Scott. The You Tube video presentation below is courtesy of CKLW 580 newsman Terry Scott.
Also, visit the newly-launched website (September 17, 2023), ‘Honouring Rosalie Trombley’, go HERE
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A MCRFB Note: For detailed and enlarged viewing of all images presented here, double-click over each photo with your PC mouse. Tap over photo and stretch image across your mobile device window for expanded detailed view.
