Mary Saxton

Mary Saxton grew up in Edmonton and was singing in public before she was old enough to drive. As a preteen her mother drove her to Calgary to sing with Jimmy Fitzgerald and the Corvettes, and by 1964 she was back home fronting a five-piece called Mary and the Sensations, who turned up on CFRN-TV's Club 3.

Pace, a new Edmonton label, put out her first single in June 1966: 'Ask Any Girl', a Holland/Dozier/Holland song first cut by The Supremes, backed with 'Do the Jerk'. Billboard reported an excellent early reaction. That July she was one of the standouts at The Citadel Goes Mod, a six-night teen show at the Citadel Theatre. In November she went to Hollywood with The Lords to record at Gary S. Paxton's studio, and the sessions produced 'Losing Control' b/w 'Is It Better to Live or to Die', released in February 1967. The press started calling her Canada's answer to the Motown sound, and decades later the Pace 45s became prized on the UK northern soul scene.

On August 1, 1967, in time for Klondike Days, the all-Edmonton compilation Direct From the Rainbow Ballroom came out with Saxton singing 'Just for You' and 'Big City Guy' and joining The Lords on 'Go Ahead and Make a Fool of Yourself'. The liner notes called her Canada's most promising female vocalist.

Later in 1967 producer Ray Schwartz, who went by Ray Short on CHED radio, put her together with Mavis McCauley, Mo Boyer, Dermond Murray and Bob Ego as Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. Their single came out that November as the first release on Fountain Records, which Short and Wes Dakus had lined up with Capitol for national distribution: the Flower Pot Men's 'Let's Go to San Francisco', backed with McCauley's 'Countin' Cracks in the Sidewalk', where Saxton sang backing vocals behind McCauley's lead. Around this time Saxton was also writing, and her song 'What's Happening Baby' was registered with Schwartz Publishing.

Quality Records signed her as a solo artist and released 'Sad Eyes' in the second week of September 1968, backed with 'Take My Heart', which Murray had written with Schwartz. Geoff Chapman of the Calgary Albertan singled out her voice, put her in the company of Lulu and Sandie Shaw, and predicted she would go far. Quality later reissued the record with 'Take My Heart' as the A-side. The album Sad Eyes followed in 1969 on Quality's Birchmount label as part of the Canadian Artists' Collection, produced by Ray Schwartz at Park Lane Music in Edmonton. McCauley wrote most of the songs, Paxton contributed 'Big City Guy', 'Losing Control' and 'A Tear', and Don 'K' of CHED Radio wrote the liner notes, crediting her with the soul of Aretha, the softness of Diana and the smoothness of Dionne.

The same year she and Barry Allen shared the vocals on Born to Be Wild (Birchmount BM 515), an album credited to The Rising Sun, with Southbound Freeway and The Lords backing them on different tracks, McCauley arranging and Allen engineering. Around then she also sang with Southbound Freeway for a short time, trading places with Mo Boyer, until Bob Alexander took over as the band became The Freeway.

In 1971 she helped form The Elastic Band, which toured for about two years without landing a record deal. She turned up on a CBC transcription LP (LM 413) in 1975 alongside Robert Paquette, Tom Kelly and Graeme Card. Mustard Records, an Edmonton label run through Damon Productions, issued her single 'Man for All Seasons' b/w 'Let the Sunshine In' in 1976, produced by Karl Erikson and Barry Allen. 'Georgia Eyes' followed in the summer of 1977, showing up in RPM's Kamloops radio reports in July and climbing to #12 on Vancouver's CKLG that August.

Her second album, Mary Saxton, came out on Mustard in 1978. Erikson and Norman E. Rooke produced it at Damon Sound Studio and wrote most of the material, with strings arranged by Gerry Dere. The band drew on some of the best players in the West, among them Barry Allen, Jim Vallance, P.J. Perry, Wallis Petruk, Nancy Nash and Susan Gilmour. Saxton co-wrote 'I'm a Woman (In Love With My Man)' and 'Hang Up Your Coat' and wrote 'A Little Bit of Love' on her own.

In 1979 she joined Nancy Nash and Rosalind Keene in the Vancouver vocal trio Touche. Their six-song album on Magnum, produced by Brian Griffiths at Little Mountain Sound with Jim Vallance, David Sinclair and Bob Buckley among the players, included the single 'Take a Look (But Don't Touch)'.

In 1980 Radio Canada International recorded her for Ladies in Lights, a showcase of Canadian women in music, where she sang 'Don't Say No to Love', 'Love Is on Our Side' and the title track with arrangements by Curt Watts. RCI's notes introduced her as "a dark-eyed entertainer of charm and warmth."

She later added vocals to Susan Jacks' recording of 'Mary Did You Know'.

-Robert Williston