Big John Little and the Hot Toddies

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Origin: Niagara Falls, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Big John Little & The Hot-Toddies

Afro-American performers have a long history of playing in Montreal, dating back to the late 1800s. Their numbers and frequency greatly increased at the end of WWII to include names such as The Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, The Deep River Boys, The Delta Rhythm Boys, and many top names in jazz (thanks to Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonics, which featured St-Henri’s own jazz superstar Oscar Peterson). By the rock’n’roll era, acts like Frank Motley & his Motley Crew, The Avalons, Billy Martin & his Orchestra and Billy Horne were taking up extended residencies and even moving here for the city’s welcoming nature and more relaxed racial situation. These American musicians would add much to Montreal’s burgeoning jazz and R&B scene, which had been primarily comprised of locals of West Indian extraction and expats from Halifax.

By the 1960s, R&B or soul music had gained enough broad popularity among with young white audiences to give rapid rise to many local performers. In Montreal the Apollo, The Black Orchid, the Esquire Show bar, the Soul Heaven and the Uptown became the primary venues for such acts as Billy Martin & his Orchestra, Kenny Hamilton, Trevor Payne, the all-white group The Persuaders, the Senators (featuring Skipper Dean), the Soul Mates, Thomas Chapman (former guitarist in Billy Martin’s Orchestra), Pierre Perpall and Harrison Tabb.

Big John Little & The Rockers were based in the Niagara Falls, ON area. By March, 1959 they became The Hot Toddies who immortalized the classic hit single: “Rockin’ Crickets” (which climbed to #57 on the Billboard charts and apparently was one of Jimi Hendrix’s favourite records!). The racially integrated line-up consisted of: Big John Little on vocals & guitar, Bill Parnell, Dennis Lynne on drums, Billy Cardner on bass and Pierre Lévesque from Sherbrooke, QC on organ. As The Hot Toddies, they cut several singles released on both sides of the Canada-US border, with the band touring from Cleveland, OH to the Atlantic coast. They criss-crossed Ontario and Quebec, playing from Val D’Or to Gaspe, during which time that Big John even taught himself to speak French. By early 1962, they were back in Montreal, hanging out and playing at The Esquire Show Bar & Rockhead’s Paradise while recording their sole LP. Released in March 1962 at the height of the twist boom on the budget Montreal label Metro (a subsidiary of Trans Canada Records), the album would also see a second repackaging in 1964 on Rusticana as Big John & The Beetlers at the outbreak of Beatlemania. The LP cover shows a picture of Big John Little laying down with Denny Fox at far left, and left to right: Richard Jordan, Billy Cardner and Pierre Lévesque.
-Alexander Taylor