Richard Flohil honored in Toronto . . .
Dick Waterman
Blues booster Richard Flohil honoured
Brought B.B. King, Muddy Waters here
Jan. 16, 2006. 02:24 AM
He's always out there. Wherever there's live music, sooner or later you'll
spot the chatterbox in the corner holding court — usually surrounded by young
women bewildered by his astounding repertoire of amazing stories about famous
blues and folk artists — and apparently oblivious to the band.
His friends call him Flo. They know better than to call him Dick.
But with his endless banter, the apparent indifference notwithstanding, he's
always listening, always ready to pass on the good word about good music.
In lieu of a trophy that more adequately recognizes his unique contribution
over some 40 years to the Toronto blues community — and the larger Canadian
roots music nation in which he has been a ubiquitous and often irritating
presence since he emigrated from Britain in the late 1950s — independent music
promoter, journalist, editor and publicist Richard Flohil will be honoured tonight
with the Toronto Blues Society's Blues Booster award.
The absurdly named doorstop will be handed over at the 9th annual Maple Blues
Awards at the Phoenix Concert Theatre during a celebration emceed by Juno-
and Grammy Award-winning blues legend Colin Linden. Also on the bill are
performances by Halifax's Garrett Mason, Vancouver's David "Hurricane" Hoerl and
Ottawa's Roxanne Potvin.
The award acknowledges the debt they and countless other Canadian artists and
musicians owe this indefatigable, loquacious Yorkshireman. At 71, he remains
a mercurial, renegade spirit; a manic, white-maned huckster with a passion for
music that equals any of the great performers.
"I met Richard in 1969 at Grossman's Tavern in Toronto when he came to see
the band as we were just starting out," says Canadian blues legend Donnie "Mr.
Downchild" Walsh from his winter home in Costa Rica.
"He offered to help us get more bookings and became our manager for a short
while — for free! Since then he has helped innumerable musicians, myself
included, in furthering their careers.
"I've never seen Richard in sneakers and nobody has ever seen him eat a
vegetable. Please don't tell him where I am, `cause I owe him money!"
Almost every musician who ever met Flohil owes him something — directly or
indirectly. In an October 2005 radio interview with Alberta broadcaster and
Stony Plain Records chief Holger Petersen — a client of Flohil's boutique public
relations operation for 25 years — B.B. King credited the fledging promoter who
first presented him at Toronto's Massey Hall in 1968 with engineering a
defining event in his life.
He arranged a meeting with ailing New Orleans blues and jazz guitarist Lonnie
Johnson, one of King's heroes and former sideman to Louis Armstrong and Duke
Ellington. It took place in the kitchen of Toronto restaurateur Howard
Matthews, husband of singer Salomé Bey.
"Richard is the face that comes into my mind when I think of Toronto," King
said. "I will always be grateful to him for that."
Toronto Blues Society president and blues and world music promoter Derek
Andrews admits that Flohil's musical tastes stretch way beyond the blues. He's a
long-time freelance music journalist, editor of Canadian Composer, the now
defunct magazine of the precursor to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music
Publishers of Canada (SOCAN). Plus he's the current editor of the music trade
magazine, Applaud, and has been a member of boards and committees of countless
folk and blues festivals, and major and independent music awards
organizations. He has established himself as one of Canada's most valued unofficial music
business historians, advisors and gatekeepers.
"But it started with his appreciation of the blues," Andrews says. "He
brought B.B. King to Toronto for his first real concert, as well as Lonnie Johnson,
Buddy Guy and Bobby `Blue' Bland. He brought Muddy Waters here. As a promoter,
Richard was ahead of his time. He did everything right. He recognized the
importance of the work behind the names. He's a maverick and very much his own
man, and he will never adapt to business structures, but he is incredibly
generous with musicians, and he comes by his integrity naturally."
With a private school education and a thorough training in British rural
journalism, Flohil settled in Toronto in 1957 by default, hoping eventually to
acquire a U.S. green card that would allow him to take up residence in the city
of his dreams, Chicago, home of the blues.
"Back in England trad jazz had already led me to classic blues, but what was
available to me — single 78s and EPs by Muddy, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf,
Sleepy John Estes, Bessie Smith — was just skim off the top of what I knew I
could hear in America," he says.
"I'd travel to Chicago hunting these guys down, and there I met Bob Koester,
who ran the seminal blues label Delmark Records when Big Joe Turner lived in
his basement. Bob was my guide. He introduced me to the artists I would
eventually bring to Toronto, with my first concert promotion partner, Beverley
Lewis, a pathologist who shared my passion for the blues."
His reputation as a blues maven attracted the attention of the organizers of
the 1965 Mariposa Folk Festival, where Flohil was seconded to present a blues
workshop featuring Son House, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Sippy Wallace.
"At that festival I heard Gordon Lightfoot, Ian & Sylvia, Buffy Sainte-Marie
and Phil Ochs for the first time," he says. "Their music changed me. It
didn't make me like the blues less, because the blues is present in every form of
American music, but Mariposa sure opened my eyes."
Flohil snickers at suggestions that he somehow brought the blues to Toronto.
It was here already, he says, and thanks to pioneer roots music promoter
Bernie Fiedler, in Yorkville's Riverboat.
Local performances by artists of the calibre of Jimmy Reed and Lionel
Hampton, Terry & McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt and Josh White had already turned on a
new generation of musicians attuned to the music they listened to late at
night on their transistor radios beaming in from Detroit, Buffalo, even Memphis.
"When Ritchie Yorke and Peter Goddard started writing seriously about music
in the big Toronto newspapers in the mid-1960s, it made a huge difference,"
Flohil says.
"For the first time a promoter could find and identify an audience. Before
them, the blues was just bubbling along. It was never reviewed, never advanced,
never even listed. Those writers gave people like me a way to reach a specific
community and build a concert platform for these artists. They deserved it."
As much as Canada's blues musicians and audiences owe him, Flohil says he
owes the blues more.
"I booked B.B. King when he was just beginning his rise. By the time of the
show, "The Thrill Is Gone" had exploded, and I made money on tickets that cost
$2.50 and $4.50, after paying B.B. his $2,000 fee. That hooked me. Presenting
music would become my life."
And he owes that life to the blues as well.
When the Bobby Bland/Buddy Guy double bill bombed two years later, Flohil
quit his 2 1/2-pack-a-day cigarette habit to pay off the $1,200 debt.
"I quit the next morning. Best thing I ever did. God bless the blues."
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henry prokop
or as they say downunder...
Beauty Dick!
You deserve it.
All the best
Henry
----Original Message Follows----
From: Dick Waterman <Jinx...@aol.com>
Reply-To: Jinx...@aol.com
To: BLU...@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG
Subject: Richard Flohil honored in Toronto . . .
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 09:50:58 EST