{"id":12440,"date":"2023-01-07T11:48:05","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T16:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/?p=12440"},"modified":"2023-01-07T12:03:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T17:03:40","slug":"remembering-ian-tyson-1933-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/2023\/01\/07\/remembering-ian-tyson-1933-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Ian Tyson, 1933-2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ian
Ian Tyson<\/figcaption><\/figure>Ian Tyson, an influential Canadian troubadour best known for having penned the hit songs \u201cFour Strong Winds\u201d and \u201cSomeday Soon\u201d as half of the internationally acclaimed folk duo Ian & Sylvia, died on December 29, 2022 at his ranch in southern Alberta at age 89. Folk DJ Charlie Backfish will pay tribute to him and his music during a special edition of his long-running weekly radio show Sunday Street<\/em> that airs January 8 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on WUSB 90.1 FM on Long Island, NY and online at wusb.fm<\/a> or https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/WUSB-901-s2324\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Born to British immigrants in Victoria, British Columbia on September 25, 1933, Tyson grew up in Duncan, BC. He was a rough-stock rodeo rider in his late teens and early 20s and took up the guitar as \u201cthe means by which to pass the time\u201d during a two-week hospital stay while recovering from a shattered ankle — an injury he sustained in a bad fall while competing in the Dog Pound Rodeo in Alberta. <\/p>\n

Tyson hitchhiked from Vancouver to Toronto in 1958 after graduating from the Vancouver School of Art and became part of the city\u2019s nascent folk scene centered around the coffee houses of its bohemian Yorkville neighborhood. There he met a young singer named Sylvia Fricker, who would become his musical and life partner for a while. They moved to New York, where noted manager Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Pozo Seco Singers, etc.) signed Ian & Sylvia to Vanguard Records and they became an important part of the early 1960s folk revival. <\/p>\n

\"IanThe duo released its eponymously titled debut album in 1962 before getting hitched two years later. They would go on to record and release nearly a dozen albums. Although Ian and Sylvia\u2019s 1964 sophomore release, Four Strong Winds<\/em>, featured primarily covers of songs by others, its original title track became one of Canada\u2019s best-loved songs and, along with \u201cSomeday Soon\u201d and Sylvia\u2019s \u201cYou Were on My Mind,\u201d has been covered by numerous other artists — a number of whom will be featured on Sunday Street<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to view a video of Ian and Sylvia performing Four Strong Winds for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC):<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=B3m7ckGhnsc<\/a><\/p>\n

As the folk boom began to wane later in the 1960s, spurred in part by the British Invasion, Ian & Sylvia moved to Nashville and began incorporating elements of country and rock into their music. They formed the band Great Speckled Bird in 1969 and becoming pioneers of country-rock, along with the Byrds and others. <\/p>\n

After hosting a national Canadian television music show from 1970 to 1975, Tyson realized his dream of returning to the Canadian West. His marriage to Sylvia had ended in divorce in 1975 and Tyson, disillusioned with the Canadian country music scene, opted to return to his first love \u2013 training horses in the ranch country of southern Alberta.<\/p>\n

Tyson Turns to Cowboy Songs and Western Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

His songwriting was greatly affected by his change in lifestyle \u2013 most notably on his third solo album, 1983\u2019s Old Corrals & Sagebrush<\/em>, comprised solely of traditional and new cowboy songs that he recorded after spending three idyllic years cowboying in the Rockies at Pincher Creek. Although Tyson didn\u2019t know it at the time, a cowboy renaissance was about to find expression at the first Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering that year in a small cow town in northern Nevada. Invited to perform his \u2018new western music\u201d at it, Tyson was a regular attendee at the gatherings for more than 30 years. Tyson\u2019s 1987 album Cowboyography also helped to re-launch his touring career across Canada and the U.S.<\/p>\n

Tyson seriously damaged his voice following a particularly tough performance at an outdoor country music festival in 2006. \u201cI fought the sound system and I lost,\u201d he said afterwards. With a virus that took months to pass, his smooth voice was now hoarse, grainy, and had lost much of its resonant bottom end. After briefly entertaining thoughts that he would never sing again, he began relearning and reworking his songs to accommodate his \u2018new voice.\u2019 To his surprise, audiences now paid rapt attention as he half-spoke, half-sung familiar words, which seemed to reveal new depths for his listeners, according to publicist Eric Alper. Although a heart attack, followed by open heart surgery in 2015, further damaged his voice, Tyson continued to release music well into his senior years \u2013 including the 2015 album Carnero Vaquero<\/em> and his last single, \u201cYou Should Have Known.\u201d Released in September 2017 on Stony Plains Records, the Canadian label on which he released 15 albums since the 1980s, that song unapologetically celebrates the hard living, hard drinking, hard loving cowboy life.<\/p>\n

Tyson was a Much-Honored Artist During His Lifetime<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tyson earned numerous awards and accolades over the years. A Juno Award recipient for country male vocalist of the year in 1987 and a Canadian Country Music Hall of Famer since 1989, Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame \u2013 along with his former wife and singing partner, Sylvia, three years later. He became a member of the Order of Canada in 1994, received a Governor General\u2019s Performing Arts Award in 2003, and was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2006. ASCAP paid tribute to him during the 20th annual Folk Alliance International Conference in 2008, while he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.<\/p>\n

January 7 Sunday Street Tribute to Ian Tyson will Feature Music, Stories and Reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the January 7 edition of Sunday Street<\/em>, Backfish will explore Tyson\u2019s wide-ranging career. He\u2019ll share some recently-recorded reflections from Tom Russell, a widely acclaimed folk and Americana singer-songwriter, painter and essayist who co-wrote may songs with Tyson and recorded Play One More: The Songs of Ian and Sylvia<\/em> (2017), featuring some of the duo\u2019s lesser-known songs. <\/p>\n

\"A
A Tom Russell painting of his longtime friend, mentor and musical collaborator Ian Tyson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to come forth with words about the passing of Ian Tyson, wrote Russell in a Facebook post shortly after he died. \u201cMy friend and mentor for so many years. He was the best man at our wedding in Elko. We co-wrote at least 10 songs including Navajo Rug [the 1986 Canadian country song of the year], Claude Dallas, Rose of San Joaquin, When The Wolves No Longer Sing, and Ross Knox. We had a good talk a little while ago. My thoughts go back to many great memories of co-writing songs in a cabin in the Rockies. It\u2019s a sad day. He\u2019ll be with me forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are links to view videos of Russell and Tyson performing Tyson\u2019s classic \u201cSummer Wages\u201d and their co-write \u201cNavajo Rug\u201d in Calgary in 2019:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w4Rk-E_spoI<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VGlbCQ_DjdE<\/a><\/p>\n

The three-hour radio show will also feature stories and observations from Tyson himself, Sylvia Tyson, and Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliot, interspersed with music. \u201cMany of Tyson\u2019s songs, as well as his vocals on the songs of others will be part of the three-hour program, according to Backfish. Besides Tyson himself, Ian and Sylvia, The Great Speckled Bird, and Tom Russell, listeners will hear from Neil Young (who covered \u201cFour Strong Winds\u201d on his 1978 album Comes A Time), Gordon Lightfoot (who Ian and Sylvia mentored and whose song “Early Morning Rain” was the title track of their 1965 release), Greg Brown and Bill Morrissey, Lucy Kaplansky, Fourtold, Gretchen Peters, James Keelaghan and Jez Lowe, Marianne Faithfull, Cindy Church, Corb Lund (an Alberta-based Canadian country artist with whom Tyson performed a series of concerts in 2018 and who told CBC News in a 2019 interview \u201cHe\u2019s kind of our Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen. He\u2019s a guy who\u2019s most embodied the region in art, musically at least.”), Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott, The McDades, Michael Martin Murphey, and Bob Dylan (who recorded Tyson\u2019s song “One Single River,” along with the Band, in Woodstock, New York, in 1967).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Tyson, an influential Canadian troubadour best known for having penned the hit songs \u201cFour Strong Winds\u201d and \u201cSomeday Soon\u201d as half of the internationally acclaimed folk duo Ian & Sylvia, died on December 29, 2022 at his ranch in southern Alberta at age 89. Folk DJ Charlie Backfish will pay tribute to him and his music during a special edition of his long-running weekly radio show Sunday Street that airs January 8 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on WUSB 90.1 FM on Long Island, NY and online at wusb.fm or https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/WUSB-901-s2324\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[154,266,359,411,8732,8734,8728,6015,506,3621,569,3394,3354,8731,1001,8735,1140,8730,1177,1187,8729,5303,8727,1340,1404,1541,1739,8736,2011,5503,2607,2626,4841,8452,2885,2955,8733,3041],"class_list":["post-12440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acoustic-radio-waves","category-featured-articles","tag-albert-grossman","tag-ascap","tag-bill-morrissey","tag-bob-dylan","tag-canadian-country-music","tag-canadian-country-music-hall-of-fame","tag-canadian-folksingers","tag-canadian-music-hall-of-fame","tag-canadian-singer-songwriters","tag-canadian-songwriters-hall-of-fame","tag-charlie-backfish","tag-cindy-church","tag-corb-lund","tag-country-rock","tag-folk-alliance-international","tag-fourfold","tag-gordon-lightfoot","tag-great-speckled-bird","tag-greg-brown","tag-gretchen-peters","tag-ian-sylvia","tag-ian-and-sylvia","tag-ian-tyson","tag-james-keelaghan","tag-jez-lowe","tag-juno-awards","tag-lucy-kaplansky","tag-michael-martin-murphy","tag-neil-young","tag-rambling-jack-elliott","tag-stony-plain-records","tag-sunday-street","tag-sylvia-tyson","tag-the-mcdades","tag-tom-russell","tag-vanguard-records","tag-western-music","tag-wusb","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticmusicscene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embe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