Ever Heard Of - The Paupers

As the first rock festival of its kind, Monterey International Pop in June 1967 was a watershed in rock history. Not only was it the first event to bring together a broad range of musical artists from across the contemporary scene, but it also coincided with the release of The Beatles’ groundbreaking Sgt Pepper album. Noted filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker was on hand to capture the proceedings for posterity, and in doing so, helped launch the international careers of many of the performers, most notably Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin. Others however, were not so lucky.

Monterey could have been The Paupers’ launch pad to international fame, yet in a way, the festival had a part to play in the group’s ultimate demise. Only four months earlier, the Canadian folk-rock band had seemed destined for international acclaim when Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman bought their contract and began hyping them as the next biggest thing since The Beatles. A month prior to the festival, the group had played a string of high profile shows at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, and had spent two solid weeks working up a suitable set list for the forthcoming festival. As Canadian rock journalist, Nicholas Jennings notes in his excellent book, Before The Goldrush, the opportunity to “blow away the competition looked good when the band was scheduled to follow mellow popsters The Association.”

Yet from the minute The Paupers launched into their set, everything that could go wrong did, and in the subsequent media frenzy, the group’s performance was all but ignored. Within six months, the group once hyped to surpass The Beatles, had lost not only its most inspirational member but was facing mounting debts. The writing was on the wall.

The disappointment of Monterey must have seemed a million miles away from New York’s Café Au Go Go, where only a few months earlier, on a freezing cold evening in March, The Paupers proceeded to demolished the headlining act, Jefferson Airplane, then making its East Coast debut. Performing in front of a media and record industry-packed audience that included The Beatles’ Brian Epstein and Albert Grossman, The Paupers couldn’t have picked a better time to make an impression.

Yet despite becoming the first Canadian rock band to snare a high profile American manager and a lucrative American recording contract, The Paupers never received the adulation and fame that they deserved. Along the way however, the group produced some of the finest music to emerge from Canada during the ‘60s, and live were arguably one of the most colourful, dynamic and electrifying groups on the North American stage.

The driving force throughout much of The Paupers’ career was drummer Ronn (Skip) Prokop (b. Dec. 13, 1946, Hamilton, Ontario). An accomplished musician, Prokop had been playing music in his hometown since the age of eight when he picked up the accordion. Deserting music for two years, he took up drums at 13 after joining the Preston Scout House Drum Corps. Such was Prokop’s prowess that, according to an article in the music magazine The Canadian, he ended up becoming an instructor and worked throughout Ontario. Prokop also won the national individual rudimental championships two years in a row and composed a percussion quartet that grabbed another national award.

Boredom crept in and Prokop subsequently took up guitar. In early 1964, he formed a folk trio, The Riverside Three, but this was ditched after six months in favour of playing in a local dance band. He then formed another folk trio, but soon found himself out of work when the local hotel he was playing at discovered he was underage and passed the word around. When The Beatles and Rolling Stones-led British Invasion landed on North American shores, Prokop realised that rock was where “it” was at and moved up to Toronto to start his own band.

In an interview for Canada Music Quarterly, Prokop told journalist Joey Cee that the decision to form The Paupers was driven by his desire to put together a band that used electric 12-string guitars. The Riverside Three had toyed with the idea, but somehow had never got round to realising Prokop’s dream. Perhaps for this reason, the first person that Prokop approached to join his new project was his former cohort, singer/guitarist Bill Marion (real name: Bill Misener).

Prokop and Marion immediately got to work looking for suitable players to join their fledging group. Next to join was guitarist Chuck Beal (b. April 6, 1946, Scarborough, Ontario), who was recruited via the Toronto Musicians’ Association’s notice board. Working at Larry Sykes music in Scarborough during the day and playing the bars along Toronto’s Yonge Street strip at night, Beal was intrigued by Prokop’s concept and duly accepted the offer. Equally important, he introduced his friend, Denny Gerrard (b. Feb. 28, 1947, Scarborough, Ontario), a self-taught guitarist, who had apparently purchased his first bass from Beal.

With Beal and Gerrard on board, and initially dubbed The Spats, the group spent two weeks rehearsing material in Beal’s basement, before venturing into Hallmark Recording Studios to lay down three Prokop originals – “Never Send You Flowers”, “Sooner Than Soon” and “Free As A Bird”. “Never Send You Flowers” duly attracted the attention of CHUM disc jockey Duff Roman, who, impressed by the song, offered to manage the band. With Roman calling the shots, “Never Send You Flowers” was released as the group’s debut single in mid-1965. The single soon found its way to Glen Walters aka Big G Walters, a disc jockey at CKEY, and following popular demand, soon became the station’s top hit.

According to Beal, the sudden interest took the group by surprise. In The Canadian, he remarked: “We had all sorts of bookings coming in…and we only knew three songs. We rehearsed for another four months so we could play a show.” The band’s persistence paid off and in April 1965, The Paupers (as they were now called) made only their third public performance supporting The Rolling Stones at Maple Leaf Gardens.

The decision to change the name had been thrust on the band at an early stage when another outfit in the US was found operating as The Spats. Apparently, the new name emerged on the way down to a local restaurant. “We had 50 cents among us,” Prokop told The Canadian. “Bill said, ‘Why don’t we call ourselves The Paupers.” The name seemed rather fitting. Despite the Maple Leaf Gardens show, and regular appearances at the under 21 club in the Canadian National Exhibition during the summer, the group was virtually broke.

Nevertheless, The Paupers persevered and in the autumn, followed up “Never Send You Flowers” with a new single, the blues-inflected “If I Told My Baby”, which like its predecessor was issued on the local Red Leaf label. Unfortunately, despite its undoubted chart potential, and a great lead vocal by Bill Marion, the single fell on deaf ears.

The Paupers responded with the sultry “For What I Am”, which was issued on Duff Roman’s own label, Roman Records in December 1965. The song’s moody undercurrent hinted at a growing maturity in the fledging Prokop/Marion song-writing partnership, but like its predecessor it failed to chart. Perhaps for this reason, the group opted to issue a cover, “Long Tall Sally” as a follow up, but once again the Canadian record buying public stayed away.

Nevertheless, in the early months of 1966, The Paupers began to pick up more steady work, most notably at the Café El Patio in Toronto’s hip Yorkville district. It was here that the group’s luck changed courtesy of Bernie Finklestein (today singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn’s longstanding manager).

Finkelstein was an interesting character who first dabbled with managing a band while at school. Over the next few years he drifted from job to job – there are rumours that he slept in hot dog stands and laundromats, and at one point got by working as a caretaker in a local theatre. Somehow he ended up at the Café El Patio, making expresso coffees during the evenings, and cleaning the premises during the day. It was during an afternoon shift that he first caught The Paupers, who at the time were rehearsing for their debut weeklong engagement. Finkelstein was suitably impressed. Not one for mincing his words, he boldly told the group that the best acts around were those writing original material and immediately offered his services as a manager.

Up to this point, the group had been handling most of its affairs; apart from producing the band, Roman had little input other than acting as its publisher. However, as Prokop recalled to Ritchie Yorke in his book Axes, Chops & Hot Licks, “there had been a lot of hassles and uptightness”, and when Finkelstein arrived “with a lot of flashy ideas”, the group decided to dispense with Roman’s services.

Finkelstein’s fast-talking finesse soon got results when, in August, Arc Records offered to record the band. Marion however, was becoming increasingly unhappy about his role and duly handed in his notice. While the group’s lead singer cited “hassles regarding his song-writing” as his reason for leaving, according to Gerrard, the underlying factor behind Marion’s departure was that his wife had given him a “me or the band” ultimatum. Prokop adds that Marion also had a real desire to sing R&B, and was unable to find an outlet for this in The Paupers.

Marion’s departure scuttled the Arc deal, but Finkelstein simply walked across the road to the Mousehole folk club and asked singer/songwriter and guitarist Adam Mitchell (b. Nov. 24, 1944, Glasgow, Scotland) to join. The young Scotsman, who’d moved to Toronto at the age of 12, would prove to be the catalyst in raising The Paupers’ profile. Not only did he forge a prolific song-writing partnership with Prokop, but he was also blessed with a distinctive voice.

Growing up in Bolton, Ontario, Mitchell initially played drums but at the age of 17 switched to guitar with the advent of the folk boom. He briefly played in two folk groups, before working solo in local venues like the Riverboat and the Mousehole. Mitchell had caught the band earlier in the year and was impressed. “I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were really out of sight,” he told The Canadian. “I talked to Skip and we became close friends”. The afternoon Marion walked out, Mitchell was with the band the same day, rehearsing. (In an interesting side note, Mitchell was attending the University of Toronto during this period and majoring in French, but subsequently left before completing his arts degree.)

With Mitchell on board, The Paupers embarked on mammoth rehearsals at the Hawks Nest, practising for no less than 14 hours a day! Following Ronnie Hawkins’ example with The Hawks (later The Band), Prokop adopted a taskmaster role and “cracked the whip” during rehearsals while Finkelstein charged band members for infractions. The strict regime had an immediate effect as The Paupers quickly developed a tight stage act. “When we came out,” says Prokop, “the group was completely changed. We had a lot of funky, good-time material.”

Debuting at the small Broom & Stone club in late August, The Paupers were an instant success, and the following month landed an important slot at the highly publicised 14-hour pop show, sponsored by CHUM radio, and held at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens alongside 14 top local bands.

Over the next few months, the group became one of the biggest draws in Yorkville village, first at the Café El Patio and later at Boris’s Red Gas Room. By this stage, the band had developed a captivating stage show, which according to Nicholas Jennings, was “built around earth-shaking drums, a wailing guitar and Denny Gerrard’s mind-boggling bass.”

Gerrard was indeed fast becoming a local legend. Donning his trade-mark Sluggo cap, the inspirational musician would later be voted best bass player two years in a row by US critic Ralph Gleason in Playboy magazine’s annual jazz poll. Beal’s guitar playing was also enthralling, as Nicholas Jennings notes, “it was like an early version of U2’s Edge, full of repeating, tape-looped notes and weird effects.” Overnight, The Paupers had become big fish in a small pond. The more lucrative American market beckoned.

Fortunately, the band didn’t have long to wait for such an opportunity. Opening for The Lovin’ Spoonful at Maple Leaf Gardens in mid-December, Finkelstein ran in to Harvey Glatt, promoter and owner of Ottawa’s Le Hibou coffeehouse, who suggested that he should approach MGM Records in New York.

Armed with a four-song demo, Finkelstein flew to the Big Apple early in the new year and to his surprise, MGM agreed to sign the band to its subsidiary, Verve Forecast; a first for a Canadian band. Buoyed by the response, Finkelstein headed over to Greenwich Village and looked up Howard Soloman, the owner of the Café Au Go Go, who offered the band a gig opening for Jefferson Airplane in early March. Finkelstein accepted the booking and headed back to Toronto where The Paupers were riding high with “If I Call You By Some Name”, the group’s debut single with Mitchell. Peaking at number 31 on the RPM chart in February, the single eventually sold around 35,000 copies.

The stage was set for the group’s debut US appearance at the Café Au Go Go. As those witnessing concur, from the opening bars of “Think I Care”, The Paupers were in their element. By the time they were done, the place was theirs, and critics were not slow in showering the band with praise. Writing in the Village Voice, Richard Goldstein exclaimed: “They have a power and a discipline I’ve never seen before in a performance.”

Following the show, Albert Grossman came back stage to visit the band. As Prokop told The Canadian, “We saw this cat with long, white hair down to his shoulders and Ben Franklin glasses and we didn’t know who he was. About four days later, he approached Bernie and we had a meeting and signed contracts.”

Finkelstein, who had been made a lucrative offer to co-manage the band, subsequently sold his rights to the group for $20,000 and used the money to set up his next project, the experimental folk-rock outfit, Kensington Market. One of Grossman’s first moves as manager meanwhile was to renegotiate the group’s contract with Verve Forecast, which allegedly had been signed for no front money!

Following the success of the New York show, The Paupers released a new single, the bluesy “Simple Deed”, and while it didn’t quite sell as much as its predecessor, still managed to climb to a respectable number 21 on the RPM chart.

The group then returned to New York during April to cut its debut album with producer Rick Shorter. During the two-week recording sessions, both Gerrard and Prokop also found time to moonlight on other projects, most notably on Peter, Paul and Mary single “I Dig Rock And Roll”.


	With the album in the can, The Paupers flew to San Francisco the following month to play three sets of shows at the Fillmore Auditorium. Opening for local acidheads, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and concluding with a support slot for soul sisters, Martha & The Vandellas, The Paupers’ breezy folk-rock and sunny melodies went over well with the San Francisco audiences. That same month, Verve Forecast issued a new single, “One Rainy Day”, which apparently sold so poorly that the group pulled it out of the marketplace themselves. Despite the setback, The Paupers’ live shows continued to attract positive reviews. Writing about a gig at Hollywood’s Whisky-A-Go-Go, journalist Bill Kerby reported in the L.A Free Press: “It is joyfully unnerving to see a group bound together by other than mutual regard for dope, stardom, pedestrian ideas of musical mediocrity, and vague dreams of overnight billions.” Everything bode well for the up and coming Monterey festival.

Introduced by David Crosby of The Byrds, who hyped the band to the 30,000-strong crowd, The Paupers duly took to the stage on the evening of June 16, and immediately ran into problems. What exactly went wrong on the day is not entirely clear but those involved suspect that the presence of a strong batch of LSD, which was circulating the grounds, was the main culprit. Apparently Gerrard dropped some acid before the show which may account for why his bass playing seemed out of sync with the rest of the group. Technical problems also afflicted the group as Beal’s amp crackled on and off. Ralph Gleason, who had championed Gerrard in Playboy earlier in the year, later said that the band was one of the festival’s real disappointments.

Following the Monterey debacle, the group was sent on a $40,000 promotional tour covering 40 cities, and taking in venues like the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, the Boston Tea Party and the Café Au Go Go in New York. At the last show, it was the turn of The Paupers to be upstaged, on this occasion by visiting British dignitaries Cream.

Despite the tight touring schedule, The Paupers still found time to “live it up” on the road. Speaking to Ritchie Yorke, Prokop remembers one particularly memorable incident in Las Vegas. “Denny Gerrard made $3,500 on the poker machines, but the next day he lost it all, and his shirt as well. Really, he arrived back at the hotel one morning with no shirt on.” Apparently, the bass player had walked two miles from a casino because he’d lost all his money!

Grossman meanwhile was beginning to lose patience – the band was spending a huge amount of money on the road but had no hit records to justify the expenditure. According to the band’s drummer, Grossman seriously considered dropping The Paupers at one stage, but was persuaded to give the band a second chance. Faced with mounting debts, the group went on a money-saving spree, travelling to gigs in Prokop’s station wagon.

If the group’s declining fortunes weren’t enough to worry about, Gerrard’s behaviour was becoming increasingly more erratic as his consumption of psychedelic drugs reached crisis point. On one occasion while the band was touring through Pennsylvania, Gerrard asked Prokop to stop the station wagon so that he could relieve himself. The bass player never returned. Three days later the group received a phone call from Gerrard who had ended up somewhere in Philadelphia!

By December, the group had had enough and asked Gerrard to leave. However, as Beal admitted to Nicholas Jennings, the group was a lesser force without their inspired bass player. “Denny did for the bass what Hendrix was doing for the guitar. Nobody had seen anything like this.”

His replacement, Brad Campbell, was recruited from The Last Words, a popular Toronto band that had released three singles between late 1965 and early 1967. Only one, “I Symbolise You” issued on Columbia, had troubled the charts, reaching #28, and no doubt Campbell was delighted to be offered the job. At the same time, The Paupers expanded the line-up by bringing in keyboard player Peter Sterbach, formerly a member of The BTB 4 (Big Town Boys 4).

Amid all this activity, Verve Forecast had released the band’s debut album Magic People, which peaked at a rather disappointing #178 on the Billboard charts. Despite the poor placing, the album has some strong moments, most notably in its kaleidoscopic drum-driving title track. Other highlights include the infectious folk-rocker “You and Me”, the haunting “My Love Hides Your View” and the angst-ridden “Think I Care”, generally considered to be The Paupers’ definitive song. The track was lifted as a single in early 1968, but flopped.

While The Paupers failed to make any headway in the charts, they continued to live up to their reputation as a live act. On February 24, the group returned to Toronto and played a memorable set at the Canadian National Exhibition supporting The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Nevertheless, the pressures of travelling on a tight budget were beginning to take its toll, with each man reduced to living off $2. First to crack was newcomer Peter Sterbach who dropped out sometime in early 1968. Skip Prokop, who also entertained thoughts of leaving the band during this period, apparently changed his mind when the label agreed to do a second album.

Returning to New York in early May, the group’s new producer Elliot Mazer hooked The Paupers up with keyboard player Al Kooper, who had recently been ousted from his group, Blood, Sweat & Tears. Turning his creative energies to The Paupers, Kooper’s presence bolstered the group’s performances and the resulting album, Ellis Island, remains a hidden gem of late ’60s rock.

Lacking the consistency of the group’s debut outing, the record’s strength lies in its individual tracks. These range from extended hard-rock workouts like Southdown Road and Numbers (featuring Brad Campbell on lead vocal), to more reflective pieces such as Prokop’s Oh That She Might, which features a rare vocal outing from the drummer. Another noticeable difference on the album is the group’s experimentation with exotic sounds – one particular track, Ask Her Again, features Prokop on the koto, a Japanese stringed instrument (a present given to the drummer by Peter, Paul & Mary after a Japanese tour).

With the album in the can, the band realised that it needed to reproduce Kooper’s keyboard parts in a live format, and duly recruited former Fraser Loveman Group member Jonn Ord (b. April 3, 1945, London, England) during July. As Ord recalls, “I had a little trio called The Nuclear Tricycle that was playing in a bar on Yonge Street. It was a summer job for me and I was at university. Skip heard about me and came in to see me. I went out to Brad Campbell’s house in Oakville to meet the band and they played me the album. I was able to play off the keyboard parts pretty fast and they thought it would be a good fit.”

The quintet quickly reconvened to Ord’s parents’ farm in Fenwick, in the Niagara peninsula. Rehearsing intensively for a week in a nearby farmhouse, the new Paupers line-up soon launched in to a small tour taking in Detroit, New York and Chicago. The band’s debut show at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in the first week of August proved memorable, not least because the club still had bullet holes in it from the race riots earlier in the year.

During this period, some of the band members flew to New York between dates to do studio work. Ord, who was involved in the session work alongside Campbell and Prokop remembers working with Richie Havens on his album Richard P Havens, 1983, and also providing support for an obscure female singer called Leonda. The sessions, as Ord points out, appear to have soured relations between band members and ultimately may have sown the seeds that led to the group’s collapse the following month. “I found out that the band was in a state of conflict and frustration, perhaps partially because some musicians were recording and the others were stuck on the road. In the end, the band broke up and everyone went home to Toronto.”

Things had come to ahead in early September when Prokop announced his decision to leave the band after The Paupers’ engagement at the Electric Circus in New York. Although, he would subsequently form his own outfit, the big band Lighthouse, Prokop nearly joined Janis Joplin’s new group, soon to become better known as The Kozmic Blues Band, but declined her offer.

The offer had been made during the Richie Havens sessions as Ord recalls. “Janis dropped into the sessions and we had some jams with her. Our mutual manager Albert Grossman was looking for musicians for her new band from among his own musicians. Harvey Brooks from The Electric Flag came in with her at one point and he was also looking for musicians for her.”

Prokop confirms that a number of tracks, including a version of “Hey Joe”, were recorded in the studio with Joplin and have yet to see the light of day. Joplin’s insistence on retaining Sam Andrews from Big Brother & the Holding Company for her new band project however, ultimately led Prokop to back out. Following an appearance on Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield’s Live Adventures album and supporting Mama Cass at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Prokop pieced together Lighthouse.

Brad Campbell meanwhile landed on his feet, taking up the offer from Joplin. He would remain with the troubled singer until her untimely death, appearing in both The Kozmic Blues Band, and its successor, the Canadian-dominated Full Tilt Boogie Band. According to Pete Frame, he would later work under the pseudonym Keith Cherry. Campbell currently lives in Milton, Ontario.

With Prokop and Campbell out of the picture but with debts of $40,000, the remaining members decided to carry on. “I recall advocating that we reform The Paupers in Toronto as the band was well known and we could probably do well with a change of members,” says Ord. The Paupers quickly recruited local drummer Roz Parks from The Creeps and Magic Circus fame and perhaps more importantly, in terms of credibility, brought original bass player Denny Gerrard back in to the fold. Though Gerrard had spent most of 1968 recovering from his drug exploits, he had recently returned to studio and live work with Toronto’s highly rated blues combo, McKenna Mendelson and was in fighting form.

The group soon returned to the local club scene, debuting at the Night Owl on October 30. Journalist Ritchie Yorke writing that November in the local RPM magazine, reviewed the show and captured perfectly the new line-up’s potential. “They emerged as a tight, cohesive musical unit, devoid of pseudo-hippiness and brimming over with confidence.”

True the group may have found a new confidence, but this was soon shattered by Gerrard’s inability to keep on the straight and narrow. As Ord recalls, “we did well for a while getting quite a bit of work and playing a lot. Then Denny started to lose it again…missing rehearsals and eventually not showing up for an important concert. The other band members said they had been through this already and that nothing worked. Roz and I were very fond of Denny and tried everything to make things work, but in the end we had to fire him and found a new bass player.”

As Jonn Ord notes, Gerrard’s departure proved a catalyst for Mitchell’s own exit from the group. “Adam became discouraged and decided to leave also, so we replaced him with James Houston who had worked with Roz in The Magic Circus.”

Adam Mitchell meanwhile embarked on a brief solo career, before moving into production work for the likes of McKenna Mendelson Mainline and McKendree Spring (who covered his song “Cairo Hotel” from Ellis Island). In 1970, however, he became professionally involved with Linda Ronstadt and produced her album Silk Purse. Mitchell also emerged as a successful songwriter, and during the ‘70s saw his compositions covered by John Waite, Olivia Newton-John and Kiss to name a few. A long-awaited solo album, Red Head In Trouble, finally appeared in 1979. Mitchell currently resides in Nashville where he works as a successful producer and songwriter.

The Paupers meanwhile ploughed on for a few months, mixing James Houston originals with neo-classical material that Jonn Ord added in, but internal differences eventually drove the band apart. “We had many different directions in the band and little coherence,” says Ord. “Mel, the bass player was very good but didn’t have his heart in it, and eventually it wasn’t worth putting all the effort into it and feeling we were not working together, so we broke up for good.”

While The Paupers’ potential was never fully realised, the degree of talent within the band can be gleaned from the band’s best work, and the subsequent achievements of group’s members, Brad Campbell, Adam Mitchell and Skip Prokop.

Following a successful career with Lighthouse, Prokop leant his talents to a diverse range of projects, including working with street kids, running an advertising agency and doing jingles. Like Mitchell, he also issued a solo album, All Growed Up, in 1979 and in recent years has played in a reformed Lighthouse. Living in London, Ontario, he is currently writing a book documenting his colourful career.

For the other original members, the future was decidedly mixed. Denny Gerrard continued to make sporadic appearances on record throughout the late ‘60s and ’70s, most notably on Jericho’s superb eponymous album for Bearsville Records in 1971, and in his work with Rick James’s pre-Motown bands, Heaven and Earth and Great White Cane. Still revered by his contemporaries, Gerrard remains a local legend. In 1997, after years of inactivity, he made a rare appearance on record, playing with Mike McKenna’s blues band Slidewinder.

Gerrard’s friend Chuck Beal briefly worked as a music producer and manager but was last heard of working at the Canadian National Institute For The Blind, producing the talking books series.

The Paupers’ co-founder Bill Marion meanwhile had embarked on a brief solo career, recording a lone single, “Flower Girl” for the small Nimbus label in 1967 before forming the music production company Cranberry Roadhouse Productions. In 1969, he reverted to his former name, Bill Misener and became a staff producer and manager for RCA’s Sun Bar Productions, later writing for and producing the Quebec group, The Morse Code Transmission. Resuming a solo career in the early ‘70s, he recorded a string of albums for the Grit, CTL and Polydor labels, and enjoyed a sizeable national hit in January 1972 with the single “Little O’l Rock ‘N’ Roll Band”. He subsequently became a successful jingle writer and sang on TV commercials.

The group’s later members also remained active, but kept a much lower profile. Jonn Ord played the Toronto music scene for several years, acquiring a music degree at York University. His band backed up Chuck Berry at the Electric Circus in the summer of 1969 and played the Toronto club scene for several years. While Ord subsequently pursued a non-musical career, music is still very much a part of his life and he recently returned to playing regularly on the local scene in the Georgian Bay area in Ontario. Roz Parks, also dropped out of performing. Changing his name to Ron, he has recently released his debut solo album entitled Golden Rocket.

James Houston meanwhile formed his own band, Houston, which issued a lone single “Sally Bumper” and eponymous album for Tuesday Records during 1970. Following a rare solo single for Yorkville Records – “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time”, he also dropped out of the music business. His current whereabouts are unknown.

While The Paupers’ musical exploits have been largely overlooked by the public and media alike, interest in the group was rekindled in 2001 with the release of the excellent Dig Deep CD compilation. Bringing together the group’s two albums with non-album tracks, it is a fitting epitaph to The Paupers’ legacy.

Available online at Amazon.com - Order this item used now

Many thanks to the following: Skip Prokop, Jonn Ord, Denny Gerrard, Bill Munson, Stan Endersby, Nicholas Jennings, Martin Melhuish, Joey Cee, Ritchie Yorke, Peter Goddard and Philip Kamin.
Photos courtesy of Carny Corbett.

To contact the author with corrections or additional information, email: nick_warburton@hotmail.com



By Nick Warburton