The Guess Who are a Canadian rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Initially gaining recognition in Canada, the group also found international success from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s with numerous hit singles, including “No Time”, “American Woman”, “These Eyes”, and “Share the Land”. Several former members of The Guess Who, notably Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman (of Bachman–Turner Overdrive), have found considerable success outside the band. The band was inducted into The Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1987. (More from Wikipedia)
That brings me back to the original topic at hand: If Germans and Dutch could fluently speak the language of rock and roll, how much easier is it for Canadian rock musicians to blend in seamlessly with the larger rock world. Canadian rock stars are common, even if not everyone knows that they are Canadian: Neil Young is a long-time favorite of mine who is from Toronto, Ontario; the Guess Who, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, had numerous hits in the 1960’s and 1970’s and had a spinoff band as well called Bachman-Turner Overdrive, with lead singer Burton Cummings also having a lucrative solo career; Steppenwolf evolved from a Canadian rock band called the Sparrows (Mars Bonfire, a former Sparrow wrote their massive hit “Born to be Wild”); and the band that Janis Joplin headed for her final album, Pearl (after she left Big Brother and the Holding Company), the Full Tilt Boogie Band is from Stratford, Ontario. Even the seemingly quintessential American band called The Band was actually composed of Canadians with the exception of Levon Helm; they once released a single under the name the Canadian Squires.
(April 2013)
Masquerading as the Wonder Who? – at the same time that the Who and the Guess Who were current – the Four Seasons released a version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” with Frankie Valli singing an exaggerated falsetto. And there is the excellent cover by the Jimi Hendrix Experience of “All Along the Watchtower”, which seems to be on everyone’s short list of the greatest Bob Dylan covers of all time.
(March 2015)
