Burton Cummings

[charlene]

interview and picture:
http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/music/2008/11/04/7296281-sun.html
Having just come off the road following a tour with Randy Bachman last year, Burton Cummings considered getting back to work on a new solo record, one he thought about releasing five years ago.

But while mulling it over, those who knew him best were actually setting things in motion.

"My road manager Sam Boyd and my manager Lorne Saifer, they phoned me up one day around November 2007 and said, 'Alright, the studio is booked in California, the flights are booked, so is the band and you start on January 11th,' " Cummings says. "I was like (gulps), 'What? I guess I'm doing a new album.

"So once I reached that point, I felt a little bit relieved. It was like a weight was taken off my shoulders. It was like okay, it's going to be real now, we're going in on the eleventh and everything was concrete. It was laid out in front of me."

The new album Above the Ground, in stores today, features 19 songs.

But perhaps most surprising about this record is Cummings wrote all the material himself, something he couldn't say about an album before.

"The fact that it's so many and they're all mine, that's the first time I've ever seen that in print on any of my album covers -- all songs by Burton Cummings. That's kind of a neat little personal milestone for me," he says.

After spending most of the past decade touring as The Guess Who and then as Bachman Cummings, Cummings says Father Time influenced the album's direction, hence the album title.

"I think all of my years of living have crept into the lyrics, so this is more of an album of reflecting and growing up and being a little older," Cummings, 60, says.

DUAL CITIZENSHIP

"I don't think there's a lot of fluff on here, the lyrics are far more ... I wouldn't say serious but I am more concerned now at this stage in my life. I don't want to put something out that will haunt me or embarrass me in a few years."

Although American Woman was a huge hit, Cummings remains a Canadian citizen living in Los Angeles part of the year. However, in late October Cummings revealed to Sun Media he planned on getting dual citizenship.

Maybe the idea came from We Just Came From the USA, a single Cummings describes as "Caveman stuff" that's getting lots of airplay Stateside despite not being the most praiseworthy song about Uncle Sam's land.

"It's a reflection on a Canadian's idea on how insane the United States is and yet wonderful at the same time," Cummings says. "I love the whole concept of the United States, but they're obsessed with celebrity, power and money, it's a crazy country.

"I'm not putting America down. God knows it's been good to me. In the bridge I'm saying I'll cut you open for a nickel, sew you back up for a dime, for a quarter I can testify that someone else did, for a dollar I'd do it all one more time. So it's the obsession with money and power down there."

The person Cummings might have to thank most for Above the Ground being released is his longtime cohort Randy Bachman.

After touring this summer (sometimes in severe agony), Bachman underwent shoulder surgery, the result of having a Gibson guitar slung over his left shoulder for four decades.

"Thank God he's okay again, but my next few months certainly will be centred on Above the Ground. I'm at a stage in life where that's a real privilege. A lot of people don't get that chance when they turn 60. And it's not an old lame guy just putting out an album for the sake of putting out an album."

REVIEW of new CD -
Above the Ground Burton Cummings

Sir Lucious Leftfoot ... Son of Chico Dusty Big Boi

Classic Rock

*** 1/2

Burton Cummings has his own way to rock. Again.

The CanCon icon and longtime Guess Who frontman's long-overdue comeback album -- his first solo studio release in 18 years -- is easily the most personal and ambitious work of his four-decade career. For the first time, Cummings wrote, arranged, produced and even financed the entire album himself. Some songs date back to the '70s; others are brand-new, drawing on his view of life at age 60. Stylistically it encompasses everything from lumbering Zevonesque rockers laced with arch wit to sincerely bittersweet piano ballads, along with excursions into samba, lounge, country, barbershop and more, capably rendered by Cummings' old pals The Carpet Frogs. And with 19 songs spread across 75 minutes, it certainly delivers plenty of bang for the buck (though he coulda saved a few for a followup).

In short: Burton is making up for lost time. So we'll stop wasting time and get right to the track-by-track review:

Crazy If You Mess

With the Gods 3:50

An old-school rocker laced with Chuck Berry guitar, pumping piano and dark lyrics about playing with fire. Great opener.

Junior Won't Behave 3:38

It's just a ditty about bad kids -- but the well-deep refrain and midtempo wallop make it seem far more ominous.

TPOS 3:30

First word is The. Third word is Off. Last word is Song. Cummings fills in the blank on this bouncy, CCR-ish country-rock twanger.

Any Minor Miracle 4:08

Burton quits kidding around to deliver this gorgeous little roots-pop number. Reminds us of I'm Scared.

Powers at Play 4:42

A Zevonesque California rocker based abound a rolling tom-tom line and big, ringing piano chords. Simple but effective.

Ponderlust 4:49

Never mind the bad-pun title -- but this chugging Iggy Popish rocker is a winner. Burton channels the Lizard King in the bridge.

Rollaway 1:42

This silly barbershop-quartet ode to a hide-a-bed is the album's oldest song. Cute, but coulda been a bonus cut.

We Just Came From the U.S.A. 3:36

The 'Hey, hey, get out of my way' playground chant becomes a neanderthal rocker. Amazingly, Randy Bachman didn't write it.

Pretty Pictures 3:39

We go from the U.S.A. to the Caribbean for a lilting, deceptively sunny number inspired by a kidnapping.

Look Out Charlie (There's a New Bartender In Town) 3:14

Cummings makes like Billy Joel on a suave lounge-piano workout about Dubya, 9/11 and the Gulf War.

Kurt's Song 4:45

No, not Cobain; the Kurt in this melancholy lament is late Guess Who guitarist Kurt Winter, who died in '97.

Richard 5:00

Another tribute to lost friends and relationships, this shadowy slow-burner is reminiscent of Rain Dance.

Dream 3:45

Even Burton gets lonely sometimes, as we learn in this gently strummed, fittingly dreamy tune.

Up In The Canyon 3:09

The flip side of Dream: A lightly funky groover about the splendid isolation of Cummings' home in the L.A. hills.

A Touch of Morning 3:49

Burton does the samba. As light and sunny as its title -- but nice as this is, the disc is starting to feel a little long.

Revelation 4:24

A little Huey Piano Smith X a dash of Alley Oop + lyrics about "Mr. L. da Vinci" = A bouncy little retro-pop nugget.

Invisible 3:31

Cummings conjures Aaron Neville for a soulful ode to life's unseen magic. Fun fact: The lyrics are blank verse.

Retribution 5:25

One last blast: A crunchy slow-motion boogie-rocker with another Jimbo tribute. Good, but not great.

Above the Ground 4:18

It takes a long time to get there, but this breezy piano-pop closer is worth the trip.

[Moosedog]

Burton's radio interviews over the past couple of days have been great! He'll be signing a CD for me tomorrow, thanks to a great friend of mine in Toronto. :)

Vickie

[charlene]

He's a very personable guy-funny and he has great stories..He should write a book...
;)

article & pic - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081101.wcummings01/BNStory/Entertainment/home

article text is in next post.

[charlene]

Globe and Mail

November 1, 2008

First, shake the hand – meaty and muscular, with fingers that have carved 10,000 keyboards.

Then, switch on the tape recorder, sit back, and just let him riff. He needs no invitation.

When I say my name, the eyes seem to flinch momentarily through the cigarette haze, because, although we've never met before, Burton Cummings and I share a common history, having occupied the same psychic terrain known as Winnipeg in our formative years. A physical place, too, of course, but mainly a state of mind.

Burton and I roamed the same elm-lined boulevards, cursed the same endless winters, hung out in the same bowling alleys, and listened addictively to the same pop radio stations, the music imprinting itself forever in the fresh Silly Putty of our cerebella. Of course, there's one major difference: I can still recite lots of the old lyrics; Burton started writing his own – and went on to sell upward of 20 million records, entering the pantheon reserved for the royalty of rock music.
Cummings can still belt out a dozen lines from his starring tenor role in his Winnipeg high school's production of HMS Pinafore, crica 1963. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)
Just how deep this personal connection runs is immediately apparent, because it turns out that the object of Burton's first great adolescent crush was my first cousin Karen (“She didn't have any time for me”) and that his good friends growing up were two more of my cousins, Mark and Miles.

Of course, you couldn't come of age in the Russian shtetl that was still north Winnipeg in the 1950s and early sixties without associating with Jews, but Burton, nominally a gentile, probably overdid it (not for the last time) when he persuaded Rosh Pina Rabbi Phillip Shnairson to admit him to the synagogue's youth program – “the only goy,” he laughs, “to be a member.” He attended “more bar mitzvahs than most Jews,” can still recite (in Hebrew, no less) the first of the four questions from the Passover Haggadah, and belonged for four years to the Sabras, one of the teen clubs at the Young Men's Hebrew Association on Hargrave Street (about 200 metres from a theatre that now bears his name). “Listen,” he says, drawing on a cigarette, “I could daven [pray] by the time I was 12. All my friends were Jews. I found the Anglicans really boring.”

The newspaper-delivery route that Burton administered as a boy took him past the Ludwig house on Scotia Avenue, where he would stop to visit his friend Israel, tinkle the ivories on the family's grand piano, and experiment with their reel-to-reel tape recorder, then still a novelty. Ludwig still owns the earliest known tapes of Cummings singing songs by Ray Charles, as well as the Marathons doing Peanut Butter. “I was 13,” he says. “My voice hadn't even changed.”

And when he made his first professional appearance at 14, as a member of the Deverons, the gig was booked at the Herzlia Academy, then an orthodox shul in the city's south end. The booking agent was an enterprising kid named Lorne Saifer. Now, 47 years later, Saifer is still Burton's manager. His fee back then for the five-member band: $5. “None of them were old enough to drive, so we had to take cabs,” remembers Cummings. “We lost money.”

This was even before he had started dating a young Jewish girl from the south end, Jan Schneider, who would be his girlfriend for nine years (and very nearly became his wife) – a crucially important period in his personal and musical development. It was for Schneider that he wrote such hits as Stand Tall, Timeless Love and I Will Play a Rhapsody. Indeed, long after she was married to someone else, “I was still writing songs for Jan,” he says, “trying to make her think about coming back.”

All of this came flooding back a few weeks ago as Burton sat down to talk about his new CD, Above the Ground. It's his first solo album in 19 years, and he has not stinted on content: The disc boasts 19 songs, all new, music and lyrics by Cummings himself. The photo on the cover shows him sitting in a chair with his arms extended, looking not unlike another Winnipegger, the late magician Doug Henning, as if he were levitating an invisible body.

Above the Ground is an apt metaphor. Although the years have taken a toll on him – for the Globe's photographer, he was reluctant to open his jacket to show a Beatles T-shirt, for fear of revealing his ample stomach – Cummings has endured. The title track goes, in part: “Been waking up with my nose in the eggs now, and I suppose that I could use a shower, but I'll never turn the other cheek now, I guess the 'tude is getting dark and sour … Not a crime to want to kick it alone … but I have come to know what a real crime is … to mortify what you don't own.”

Turning 61 in December, Cummings says he now feels “a certain freedom” to speak his mind. “I'm not as guarded about my past as I was. I can say what I want. At this point, I'm not hiding. It's not going to have any long-term effects.”

Of his drug use during the glory years, for example, he concedes, “I shovelled an awful lot of the white lady up my nose. I did a lot of acid, smoked a lot of great hash, great weed. I barely even lay down till I was about 40. But no needles – I can't get a vaccination without passing out.”

Today, he says, he likes an occasional joint “whenever it's offered. I still smoke dope a little bit, not as much as before, because it's a little harder on your throat. And I like Newcastle Brown Ale. So I'm not ready to move to Lourdes quite yet. I've never really denied myself anything and I've never had any serious problems with alcohol or drugs, where I woke up with the shakes. To me, it was just rock 'n' roll party shit, that's all it was.

“I've read the Motley Crüe book,” he adds, referring to The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, “and Jesus, man, compared to them, I was an angel.”

Certainly, rock's snack-food diet of cocaine, hash and acid hasn't affected Cummings's memory. He belts out a dozen lines from his starring tenor role in the St. John's High School production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, circa 1963 (he played Ralph), and then sings a few bars of the first song he ever wrote, at 12, So Hard to Explain (“How do you tell the girl you love, the way you feel about her? … I find it so hard to tell her, so hard to explain.”).

Two years of operetta and a few more in the choir at St. Martin's Anglican Church constituted the only formal singing lessons Cummings ever had. “I was taught to sing from here,” he says, pointing to his diaphragm, “but I just sing. It helped to be the lead. From an early age, I always said, ‘Why try out for the chorus when you can try out for the lead?' ”

His gift for piano he owes mainly to his mother, Rhoda, who started him on lessons at the age of 5. He immediately rebelled, making it clear to her that he preferred to play road hockey and football with his friends. But a year later, she forced him back to it. Soon, he figured out that four basic chords – C, A minor, F and G – allowed him to play “80 per cent of the songs on the radio. From that point on, she couldn't drag me away from it. All of a sudden, I became a big hero because I could play Bumble Boogie.” The rest is music history.

He was just 19 when he became lead singer of the Guess Who, joining Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson. They had a decade-long run at the top of the world, producing a steady stream of hits, including These Eyes, No Time, Laughing and (She's Come) Un dun. “Our heroes were the great songwriters of that period, King and Goffin, Lieber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney, Mann and Weil.”

Cummings still retains a close connection to Winnipeg. In addition to the downtown theatre, there's a community centre named for him, he owns a stake in the city's legendary Salisbury House restaurant chain, and he just bought a house in the Tuxedo neighbourhood, with Assiniboine Park as his front yard. He won't disclose the purchase price, but says: “Let's put it this way. Lenny Kravitz paid for it. Thank you, Lenny. Thank you, God.” Cummings is referring to the royalties Kravitz paid him for his rerecording of the Bachman-Cummings classic American Woman, the first song by a Canadian rock band to make it to No. 1 on Billboard.

American Woman was a hit in 1970, the same year that Bachman, a Mormon, bailed from the Guess Who, unable to tolerate the rock lifestyle any longer. Cummings carried on for another five years before going solo, soon afterward producing I'm Scared.

The new house has a grand piano in the foyer. In the basement stands the 110-year-old Nordheimer upright on which Cummings has composed for the last 24 years, writing songs with Bachman and the late Kurt Winter, as well as producing such solo hits as Break it to Them Gently and Stand Tall. “I got it for $200 in 1970,” he says, “and, touch wood, if I lost everything tomorrow, you would see me on the street with that piano singing for my food. That will never, ever, leave my possession.”

Cummings also owns a secluded mountaintop estate near Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, which he bought in 1976 (“It's worth about 11 times what I paid for it”) and what he calls a 10-acre “garden of Eden” in Victoria, facing Mount Baker. These are shared with his wife of 27 years, Cheryl DeLuca, a naturopathic healer, and two dogs: a short-haired collie and a tiny Jack Russell, “the best friends you could ever have.” The touring life wasn't conducive to child-raising, and besides, he concedes, “I was too selfish to have kids.”

One day, Cummings insists, there will be a book chronicling his story. “I've started it many times, and every time I think I've finished, something else great happens and I figure I have to write about that. But one day, I will. I'm too busy right now.”

[Moosedog]

Char, he is actually putting together a book of poetry. :)

[charlene]

He's a never ending talent..hard to believe he's gonna be 61 on dec.31.. wow.. and I'm still 39... hmmm.. amazing..
:biggrin:

[Moosedog]

I didn't realize we were the same age, Char! :) Here's a little eye candy for ya!

[Sundreme]

Good articles Char. I've always liked Burton. I never knew he was so interested in Judaism...pretty cool.

Incidentally, I went to Hebrew school for 5 years and I can only remember one of the four Passover questions in Hebrew. Go Burton!

[charlene]

here's some pics from last year:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%20cummings&w=13349149%40N00
and some great ones here:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%20cummings&w=14866778%40N02
and
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%20cummings&w=62598286%40N00

go to www.flickr.com and search Burton Cummings..lots of pics - click on the names of the photographers to see more at their flickr site..

[Moosedog]

Thanks, Char! :)

[Jesse Joe]

Burton Cummings was in Halifax a few weeks ago at Casino Nova Scotia. Liz Rigney of CTV News Atlantic interviewed him on Live @ 5. He seemed very happy, and was looking good, had his new CD in his shirt pocket, showed it to Liz and said I'le be wanting that back. lol !




http://www.officialburtoncummings.com/ (http://www.officialburtoncummings.com/)

[Jesse Joe]

This has a clip of a recent interview. If it has been posted already my apologies. :)

http://www.ezrock.com/media/806085/B...Interview+clip (http://www.ezrock.com/media/806085/Burton+Cummings+Interview+clip)

[Moosedog]

Got my copy of "Above The Ground" in the mail yesterday, and enjoyed watching the DVD. Some funny stuff, some very interesting behind the scenes stuff about the making of the album. :) Here's a scan of my autographed CD. :)

Vickie

[Jesse Joe]

Very good looking Vickie, He's got a great Signature. I've seen it many times before.

ENJOY ! :)

[charlene]

Burton look slike the King of all Things sitting there in his chair!
lol
He, like Gordon has great penmanship!
I'll pick up a copy when I can.. can't wait...

[Moosedog]

The signature kind of hides the fact that his chair is floating "Above The Ground"...which is the name of the CD. LOL

[charlene]

I noticed that and it is SO fitting for Burton, King of All Things..
;)

[Moosedog]

Char, I'm hearing he's gonna be "On The Hour" with your friend George S. on November 17th, although I don't see anything on the website yet. Hmmmm, Burton on TV on Gordon's birthday. Life really is good. LOL

[Jesse Joe]

It may be the repeat of when he appeared w/ Randy Bachman ? But then again maybe only him to promote that new CD/DVD. We will watch for it.

[charlene]

well I'm just gonna have to contact my boyfriend and see about this!
Burton could have done a pre-recorded bit like Gord did . He was in town last week so it's possible he got it done while he was here..he's doing publicity for the CD so I imagine he's traveling around the country... or not..
maybe he's camped out in TO for a while....
lol

[Jesse Joe]

I hear he may be in Whitby ! just kidding char ! lol :biggrin:

[Moosedog]

I know where he is. LOL

[charlene]

ok - give it up..where's Burton hanging his hat?

[charlene]

as I expected - the interview was pre-recorded last week and is not airing on the
17th..
an air date has not been set..

[Moosedog]

Check this out...typical Burton story. LOL
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/George+Stroumboulopoulos+Tonight/Best+Story+Ever/ID/1238016555/

[podunklander]

well I'm just gonna have to contact my boyfriend and see about this!
Burton could have done a pre-recorded bit like Gord did . He was in town last week so it's possible he got it done while he was here..he's doing publicity for the CD so I imagine he's traveling around the country... or not..
maybe he's camped out in TO for a while....
lol

I know you meant to write that you have to contact "Pam's boyfriend" ;)

[podunklander]

Check this out...typical Burton story. LOL

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=729460928

darn! No speakers for the PC here at the hotel!!! I'll have to wait until I get home next week!!!

[charlene]

who is Pam's b.f.?
I'm talking about George Strombo who hosts "The Hour".. he's my boyfriend..
;)

[RM]

who is Pam's b.f.?


Manny Rahairmess

[Yuri]

For those who can tune into the CBC, Burton Cummings is Char's boyfriend's guest tonight at 11:00 pm on 'The Hour'.

[Moosedog]

Thankfully, I've got a good friend of mine who is going to make me a DVD of this interview! :) Burton's a hoot.....this oughta be entertaining. LOL

Vickie

[charlene]

yep he's on the boyfriends show. it was taped back in mid november i believe..
I imagine he'll tell his best story every about Gord in the front row and Burton doing his little imitation...
I'm really enjoying the new CD and the DVD that came with it..

[Moosedog]

Ahhhhhhhh, he told the Morrisson story again! LOL Burton gives a fantastic interview - what a cool guy. :)

[charlene]

burton is a great story teller..he should write a book...

[Moosedog]

He's working on it....a book of poetry. :)

[charlene]

I'd like a book about his life told the way he speaks when being interviewed and the way he talks. A book of poetry would be nice but I don't think some of his adventures would work as poems..I'd even like the book as an audio book in his actual voice..
lol
;)

[Moosedog]

The book of poetry, like many of his songs on the recent CD, actually ARE about his life. I'm not fussy.....I'll take whatever he's willing to do for his fans. I'm just grateful he still loves what he is doing and is continuing to produce new work. :)

[podunklander]

The book of poetry, like many of his songs on the recent CD, actually ARE about his life. I'm not fussy.....I'll take whatever he's willing to do for his fans. I'm just grateful he still loves what he is doing and is continuing to produce new work. :)

Vickie, please let me know when his poetry is published! It's great that you're keeping up with Burton's work...I have a hard time keeping up with the latest on all these great, talented people.

[charlene]

today's Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/Entertainment/article/562163 (pic) aand (Comments)
INTERVIEW
TheStar.com | Entertainment | Hard living Burton Cummings still standing

Hard living Burton Cummings still standing

PHOTO - FRANK GUNN/THE CANADIAN PRESS
“There are some singers who don’t lose (their voice) and I would like to try to be one of those .....” says Cummings. (Oct. 6, 2008)

Randy Bachman's injury pushed the Guess Who front man to record first solo album in 18 years

Jan 06, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (2)
Ben Rayner
Pop Music Critic

It becomes obvious, as the hotel door swings open into a wall of tobacco smoke, that Burton Cummings has not held onto that famous rock 'n' roll howl all these years by cutting cigarettes out of his diet.

Or by cutting anything out of his diet, by the looks of things. Delighted that his inquisitor will join him and a managerial type in their next round of smokes – "Always good to meet another brother in the great fraternity of smokers," he crows – he settles his portly frame back behind a half-eaten burger-and-fries plate and divulges the secret health regimen that allowed a 60-year-old Burton Cummings to sound reassuringly, robustly like the Burton Cummings of yore while recording his latest album, Above the Ground.

"Good Canadian beer and good Canadian cigarettes, man," says the former Guess Who singer, who turned 61 on New Year's Eve. "Yeah, my health regimen: I eat junk food, I do all the wrong things for a singer. But I do use my voice a lot. When I'm at home, I'll pick up a guitar and sing songs or go to the piano and sing. I think your voice is like any other muscle: if you don't use it, it'll let you down. But if you use it all the time ...

"There are some singers who don't lose it, and I would like to try to be one of those for another 10 or 20 years maybe."

The voice is there, then. But Cummings realized just how long it had been since he'd provided the world with any evidence that he could still write a song when his songwriting foil of four decades, Randy Bachman, went down for a shoulder operation in November 2007 and begged off touring duties in their Bachman-Cummings nostalgia act for a few months.

Was he going to keep schlepping around, sans Bachman, doing "American Woman" and "No Sugar Tonight" every night? Or was he going to stop dithering and do something with the stacks of songs he'd accumulated since his last solo album, Plus Signs, was released in 1990?

"This window opened up, so rather than just touring and playing the old songs as Burton, I thought: `Here's my chance to make this new album I've been thinking about for a few years,'" he recalls. "And next thing I know – bang-o! – the studio was booked for Jan. 11, 2008, and the flights were booked for my band, the Carpet Frogs, to come down from Toronto to L.A. Once I heard officially that it was gonna happen, it was like a bit of weight was lifted off my shoulders."

Perhaps conscious of past mistakes made in the studio, for Above the Ground Cummings stuck to the bluesy, meat-and-potatoes rockers and wistful hippie-dippy ballads upon which his and the Guess Who's careers were built.

The Carpet Frogs, a versatile Toronto outfit that's served as Cummings' touring band for most of the 2000s, were crucial to maintaining the record's likeably straightforward, classic-rock feel, says Cummings, who wanted to avoid making a studio record that sounded "synthetic and machinistic," and go for something that sounded more organic this time around. Thus, he shot up to Toronto for a few days of prep work with the Frogs in a Brampton rehearsal studio before recording began.

"This a real band that plays live, that works live and we just took that into the studio and recorded it. The album wouldn't be what it is without the Carpet Frogs," he says. "We're very good friends. We've been working together for seven or eight years now. You can get the high-dollar, hotshot studio players to come in, and they play great and it's all good and they get their huge cheque and they leave. And the next afternoon, these guys wouldn't remember one thing about these songs that they've played on and you'll never see them again in your life. There's a detachment to it.

"I've worked that way before. When I first went solo we had all these hotshot players: Jim Keltner, Jim Gordon, Jeff Picaro and Scotty Edwards on bass and Ray Parker Jr. on guitar sometimes, Jim Horner on sax. I had my choice of the cream of the crop of L.A. studio players and, don't get me wrong, those were good records. But to have my own band and take that band feeling into the studio, it sounds like a `band' record."

Curiously, after 40 years in the business and armloads of gold records, Cummings also managed to notch a personal "first" with Above the Ground: it's the only record in his career written and produced entirely by Burton Cummings and Burton Cummings alone.

"This is the first time I've ever written all the songs myself without one co-writer on anything. When I looked at the back cover and saw `All songs by Burton Cummings,' I thought: `Aaaw, isn't that nice to see?' After 33 releases, that's the first one," he says.

"I was exhausted by the end of that, but I'm proud it and I'm pleased with it. There was no interference, no intervention from anybody. There was nobody telling me, `Do this, don't do that!' or `Don't do this, do that!' So I've really made the album I wanted to make."

[Moosedog]

Update: Burton is currently working on quitting smoking. On December 25th, he had been two weeks tobacco-free. :) Go Burton!

[podunklander]

Update: Burton is currently working on quitting smoking. On December 25th, he had been two weeks tobacco-free. :) Go Burton!

WTG Burton woooHooooooooo. If he goes beyond 2 weeks...he'll beat my record for being tobacco-free. Good for him!!!

[Moosedog]

Another great article! Love where he indicates he is still "fairly sane". LOL

http://www.stylemanitoba.com/burtonwin08.pdf

[charlene]

Burton releases his new LIVE CD - recorded @ Massey Hall in 2010 and 2011.. I saw him in 2011 @ Massey and it was electric. He sings like he's 35, plays piano better than ever and makes an audience glad they were there. He's going to be 65 on New Years Eve..and still rockin like he always did..What an entertainer.

http://www.marilyn.ca/Video.aspx#clip791100 - video and performance

http://www.q107.com/Blogs/AkimboAblogo/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10455210 - radio and performance.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2295535229/ - on Q radio/CBC

http://player.q107.com/

Canadian tour dates - go see him! - http://www.examiner.com/article/burton-cummings-adds-western-canada-tour-dates

LIVE CD - "Massey Hall"- Massey Hall: Amazon.ca: Music

It's Burtonpalooza in Toronto this week!

[charlene]

Burton on CTV-their 40th anniversary shows were this past week. Lightfoot was interviewed at home earlier in the week. Link to that interview is another thread. This is Burton singing 3 tunes. Sounds like he's under 40... His new MASSEY HALL - recorded LIVE @ Massey is out now. http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.1011549

[charlene]

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/massey-hall/id571120988

contest - https://www.facebook.com/MusicVaultz

[charlene]

Happy 65th Birthday to the one and only Burton Cummings!! If any of you get a chance to get to a Burton Cummings concert then get to it!!
lol
The voice, the songs, the musicianship - all are awesome....

[Borderstone]

A belated birthday wish from me as well.

Loved his solo hit "Stand Tall" ansd of course his hits with The Guess Who.

[charlene]

Burton has a new website-he's collected EVERYTHING from his life/career and found all kinds of stuff after his mum died last year. She saved everything. He is prolific on his FB page and Twitter. It's astounding and outstanding that he shares all of it. : http://burtoncummings.com/

[Affair on Touhy Ave.]

While we're on the topic of Burton hope you don't mind me posting this rarity by The Guess Who.

The Guess Who ~ "When friends fall out" (live in 1968) - YouTube

Don't know how big the song was in Canada. Doubt it did anything here.

[charlene]

recent concert footage...BLC still rockin!!! http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTgUTKqvHiMXVtKp4-p3rVA/videos

[charlene]

Burton - Massey Hall - Thur.Sept.19,2013 - http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1202183/rock-n-roll-royalty-burton-cummings-returns-to-the-massey-hall-stage-for-the-fourth-annual-canada-s-walk-of-fame-festival

[charlene]

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2013/08/30/burton_cummings_doesnt_live_in_the_past_but_he_lov es_it.html

By: Richard Ouzounian Theatre Critic, Published on Fri Aug 30 2013

Burton Cummings didn’t just write “Stand Tall”; he lives it.

The 65-year-old Canadian rock icon is still out there, singing to the crowds just like he has for the past 50 years. On Sept. 7, he’s at the Rogers Centre and on Sept. 19, he’ll take to the stage at Massey Hall as part of Canada’s Walk of Fame Festival.

And although another one of his biggest hits is called “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon,” he’s driftin’ back to Winnipeg as he unwinds on the phone.

“I’m a North End boy,” he says proudly, “born on Lansdowne, grew up on Bannerman. Went to Edmund Partridge School and came back there a few years later to sign the first autograph I ever did in my life. Tiny stage. Only about a couple of feet square.”

Don’t get the wrong idea. Cummings isn’t a faded shadow of the man he was, rummaging through his memories. The voice has the energetic, ragged edge it did when he turbo-drove The Guess Who to fame.

“I don’t live in the past, but I love it. Hell, I love all my life. Even the parts I hate.” And then he laughs.

“It all started for me with my mother’s collection of 78s. A Guy Mitchell record. That’s what I remember first, around the time I started going to kindergarten. I’d play it over and over again. It was like two and a half minutes of time being frozen.”

But it took something else for Cummings’ initial fascination to find an avenue of expression.

“We were always sitting around on Sunday nights watching Ed Sullivan. I saw Elvis on that first night it all changed for teenagers. I saw people like Brook Benton and Bobby Darin, and I knew they were all making records for a living and they were only a few years older than me.

“Yeah, pretty early on I had my sights set on cutting records. It was the permanence of them, those ‘little three minute miracles’ as (record mogul) Ahmet Ertegun called them. That whole concept hit me very early.”

So Cummings looked around for some people he could make music with it and found them in a North End band called The Devrons.

“At first they were just a guitar band. My best friend, Ed Smith, was in the band, so I hung around with them. Soon I was singing a few songs, playing a bit of sax. We were a cover band. Gene Pitney, Bobby Vee, Frankie Avalon. Simple, simple, simple. I was 13, turning 14, but I wasn’t even the youngest guy in the group.”

Heady stuff for a young guy and Cummings shares that “we were treated like stars from around the time we were 15. We were in demand. We got all the benefits without taking any of the risks. We lived at home, went to school, then turned it on for the weekends.”

That dichotomy eventually caused a certain amount of trouble for Cummings because, as he puts it, “it screwed my head around and I was failing things at school because I was more interested in music than books.”

But that was soon all to become moot, because destiny was waiting for him one night in 1965.
“It was at a Gerry and the Pacemakers concert in Winnipeg,” Cummings recalls. “The Devrons opened, then The Guess Who, then the star act. I saw the guys from The Guess Who watching me that night. My gift was that I could sound like anybody. And I could scream. Chad Allan (then their lead vocalist) couldn’t do Eric Burdon. I could.”

So he joined the band and it was only a few months before Allan exited, leaving the 18-year-old Cummings as the lead singer of one of the hottest groups in Canada.

Cummings and Randy Bachman were drawn to each other, although their conflict was later to pull the group apart.

“Randy and I just clicked as songwriters. It was never work. We wrote ‘These Eyes’ in half an hour; ‘Laughing’ in less than that. It was never arduous at all.

“It seems kinda sophomoric to me now. I was still living at home with my mother and grandmother. Randy would come over at 11 on a Saturday morning and we’d sit around bashing out tunes.”

Except for the song that would take them to No. 1 for the first time: that one was a little different.

“Everybody likes to claim credit for writing ‘American Woman’ now,” snarls Cummings. I love to hear (Jim) Kale go on about what the lyrics meant and how he helped write it in 10 minutes. Bulls---.”

It’s a story Cummings loves to tell.

“We were playing out in Scarborough, at this curling arena called Broom and Stone. We were doing two shows at night. I was out back talking to some guy and then I heard Randy and the boys start this great riff to bring me back in.”

Cummings starts to sing that famous intro. “Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, dum . . . boom!”

“I just raced onto the stage and sang whatever came into my head. I jammed words along with the music. It was all stream of consciousness. Let me make it clear. It was never a song. It was a riff from Randy and then I laid some words on it.”

Fortunately, the band found a kid had been bootlegging that night’s concert with a new invention: the cassette recorder. Instead of getting mad, they listened to it and jotted down what Cummings had ad libbed and he later firmed up the words.

“It had nothing to do with politics. What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said ‘American woman, stay away from me,’ I really meant ‘Canadian woman, I prefer you.’ It was all a happy accident.”

But that was the last happy event involving Cummings and Bachman.

“Randy converted to Mormonism. He was giving us books about the faith, he tried to get me to go to the temple. That was the beginning of the end. He didn’t want us to have an aspirin, let alone a beer. We just became enemies, almost as easily as we had become friends. That’s how it was.”

Bachman left the group and, a few years later, Cummings did as well. He started an impressive solo career with a string of different hits, songs like “I’m Scared.”

“That was my mother’s favourite song of all. I was in New York City at Christmastime. It was cold and damp. I was walking back to my hotel, but my hands were freezing and I ducked into this beautiful church to warm them up. The Cathedral of St Thomas. Absolutely gorgeous.

“But as I sat at the back of the empty church, alone, warming my hands, I got spooked. I felt something otherworldly, powerful. When I got back to my hotel, I wrote the words down. It’s a song about wondering. Not being an atheist, but wanting something to hang onto in the here and now.”

Cummings kept on and he’s still writing and singing today.

“I still love the two hours onstage,” he insists. “But I’m gonna be 66 soon and it’s the other 22 hours of the day I have to worry about. When it gets lame, it’s time to quit.

“Yeah, I’m a year older each year. But so is the public. Their lives changed and so has mine. But when I do these songs, hell, everything is the same again for a while.”

FIVE FAVE PERFORMERS

STEVE MILLER: “He’s got such energy and he’s five years older than me. I think if he can do it, then so can I.”

TONY BENNETT: “He’s got such incredible class and longevity and he always still sounds fresh. It’s amazing.”

PAUL MCCARTNEY: “I heard he sang 37 songs one night not long ago. And I get tired after 20.”
GUY MITCHELL: “The first singer I ever remember. My mother loved him, which meant I had to love him too.”

DAVID FORMAN: “I’ve never met the man, but he wrote ‘Dream of a Child,’ which may very well be the best song I’ve ever recorded. What a magic work!”

BURTON HAS POSTED THIS ON HIS FB page to clarify a couple of items that are wrong in the article:

JUST TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT...!!!!!

I did a rather lengthy phone interview with a guy from the Toronto Star last week and overall, it was okay...but I was blatantly misquoted about "American Woman"...here's what I was quoted as saying in the article...

“Everybody likes to claim credit for writing "American Woman’ now,” snarls Cummings. I love to hear (Jim) Kale go on about what the lyrics meant and how he helped write it in 10 minutes. Bulls---.”

I wasn't referring to Kale...I was talking about Bachman...
I once saw in print how Bachman was casually commenting about how he wrote American Woman in about ten minutes...of course it pissed me off...American Woman was NEVER A SONG until those words came to life...PERIOD !!!
At any rate, the quote above was in the Toronto Star for all the world to see, and all I can do is tell you here that I was misquoted. This is what happens when an interviewer doesn't record the interview. We end up seeing someone's IDEA of what I said...Don't get me wrong..Richard Ouzounian was very pleasant and a pretty cool guy...it's just that I didn't say that about Kale...it was Bachman who claimed he "wrote" American Woman in ten minutes...
Well at least I've said my piece in public and perhaps now that's straight...

Regarding that Star article, now I see the bit about Edmund Partridge...I never attended Edmund Partridge, but I played there with the Deverons...and what I told the reporter was that it was the very first place I ever signed an "autograph"...
I was very, very young...Boris Pawluk was still in the Deverons...
So that's another "discrepancy"...I only ever went to 2 schools in my entire life...Luxton and St. John's...