Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band

Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band was considerably stranger than a conventional rock group. The eleven-member Edmonton ensemble combined rock music with theatrical comedy, costumes, props and deliberate absurdity. They existed only briefly, but one outrageous performance in front of 2,700 people won them a GRT recording contract and produced one of the more peculiar Canadian singles of 1973.

Behind the spectacle were musicians connected to some of Edmonton's most active groups and recording circles, including Manna, Troyka, CKUA's Acme Sausage Company sessions and the emerging production work of Holger Petersen.

Several of those connections ran through Manna, an Edmonton group active around 1970 and 1971 with Larry Reese, Tom Cairns, Jan Randall, Chuck Carson and Bev Ross. Manna wrote original material that moved between rock, folk, comedy and more experimental ideas, and was managed by the young Holger Petersen, already broadcasting Natch'l Blues on CKUA and learning record production through the station.

In April 1971, Manna won the union category of Edmonton's first Kiwanis Music Festival rock competition at the Jubilee Auditorium. The prize was a recording contract with GRT. Manna never fulfilled the promise of that deal, though the same Edmonton musical circle soon produced another group that would.

That group was Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band.

The name appears to echo Spiny Norman, the giant imaginary hedgehog from Monty Python's “Piranha Brothers” sketch. Holger Petersen later described the band as a “Monty Python/Frank Zappa kind of thing,” while Billboard compared it retrospectively to the Bonzo Dog Band.

A contemporary report by Jon Faulds in The Journal shows that those descriptions were hardly exaggerations.

When Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band entered the Kiwanis rock competition, the eleven-piece group turned the Jubilee Auditorium into fifteen minutes of chaos. There were balloons and vegetables, flowered dresses, bobby sox, black magic outfits, pointed hats, masks, phoney noses, paper streamers and confetti. A leprechaun stalked the amplifiers. An interloper in a trenchcoat joined the proceedings. One performer wore an alligator mask.

At the centre of it all was Tom Cairns, whom Faulds identified directly as “Spiney Norman.” The former Manna drummer appeared in an orange cardboard box on roller skates.

The musicians surrounding him were no less unusual. Former Troyka guitarist Bob Edwards appeared in a miniskirt. Larry Reese, previously a guitarist and vocalist with Manna, played French horn in shaggy leggings. Ross Harvey became “Magic Master Ross Harvey,” delivering mock incantations over a hat. “Wailing” Dave Bird played a boogie on an eggplant. John Butler appeared with Cairns in the accompanying photograph.

The joke worked because the musicians underneath it could play. Faulds wrote that Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band contained some of the most talented rock musicians Edmonton had produced.

One of the adjudicators was Doug Riley, pianist, arranger and leader of Dr. Music. His reaction to the performance was succinct: “That's the kind of band I like.”

Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band won the union category. The prize included a contract to record a 45 for GRT Records of Canada and a summer appearance at the Edmonton Exhibition Youth Pavilion opposite the Stampeders.

That victory explains the existence of the group's only known commercial record.

GRT issued ‘Rocky Granola’ / ‘It's Called Either Henry Or Harold’ as 1230-49 in 1973. Both songs were credited to Harry Foont, a name for which no convincing independent songwriting career has yet been found. Ross Harvey arranged both sides and Holger Petersen produced them. Publishing was shared between Doggy Doo Music and Kitchen Table Music, two Edmonton companies connected directly to Harvey and Petersen.

For Petersen, the single arrived at an important moment. He was only beginning to establish himself as a record producer, working through CKUA and recording blues artists including Walter “Shakey” Horton and Johnny Shines. ‘Rocky Granola’ therefore belongs among his earliest commercial production credits, several years before he founded Stony Plain Records in 1976.

The precise musicians who played on the GRT session have never been established. Petersen is strongly documented as a drummer with the group, Edwards as guitarist and Reese as part of the ensemble, and later Edmonton histories also connect Dwayne Osepchuk with the band. Those same histories often reduce the group to a four or five-piece lineup. At the time of its Kiwanis victory it had eleven members.

Ross Harvey's involvement extended beyond arranging the record. Doggy Doo Music was registered in Edmonton under his name. Harvey later left music for politics, serving as the NDP Member of Parliament for Edmonton East from 1988 to 1993 and later leading the Alberta New Democratic Party. One of the men behind ‘Rocky Granola’ eventually sat in the House of Commons.

The identity of Harry Foont remains unresolved. Given the group's surreal humour, the possibility that the name was a pseudonym is difficult to ignore, though there is no evidence identifying Foont with Cairns, Harvey, Petersen or any other known member. The songwriting credit therefore stands exactly as it appeared on the record.

‘Rocky Granola’ did receive some contemporary exposure. By June 2, 1973, RPM Weekly listed the record among Canadian radio additions. No national chart placing has been found, and Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band did not make another GRT single.

The record might easily have disappeared with the band.

Instead, Holger Petersen brought it back.

In 1991, Stony Plain Records marked its fifteenth anniversary with the double-CD Collected Works / 15 Years of Stony Plain Music, coordinated by Petersen and Richard Flohil. Among recordings by Walter “Shakey” Horton, King Biscuit Boy, Long John Baldry, Sylvia Tyson, Solomon Burke, John Hammond, Amos Garrett and others, Disc One ended with track 23: Spiny Norman's Whoopee Band, ‘Rocky Granola’.

Petersen had produced the single eighteen years earlier, before Stony Plain existed. When he assembled music to represent the road that had led to the label, he chose to bring ‘Rocky Granola’ with him.

By then the people involved had travelled in very different directions. Petersen had become a central figure in Canadian roots music. Larry Reese moved into acting, film and education. Ross Harvey entered politics. Bob Edwards continued recording and performing. Tom Cairns remained preserved in one extraordinary newspaper photograph and the memory of a fifteen-minute performance as Spiney Norman.

Very little of the band survives: one GRT single, a contemporary newspaper report, several photographs, a radio add and one track on a Stony Plain anniversary collection.

But for fifteen minutes at Edmonton's Jubilee Auditorium, Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band had eleven musicians, balloons, vegetables, dresses, roller skates, an alligator, an eggplant, a French horn and 2,700 people watching.

They won. And that is why ‘Rocky Granola’ exists.

-Robert Williston

Known Personnel

Tom Cairns: “Spiney Norman”; drums with Manna, exact instrumental role with Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band unconfirmed

Bob Edwards: guitar

Larry Reese: French horn in the documented Kiwanis performance; guitar and vocals in other groups

Holger Petersen: drums

Ross Harvey: performer, arranger

Dwayne Osepchuk: member; instrument unconfirmed

Dave Bird: performer; instrument unconfirmed

John Butler: performer; instrument unconfirmed

Contemporary coverage describes Spiney Norman's Whoopee Band as an eleven-piece ensemble. The remaining members and the precise personnel of the 1973 GRT recording session have not yet been established.

Selected Discography

1973

‘Rocky Granola’ / ‘It's Called Either Henry Or Harold’

GRT 1230-49

Both songs written by Harry Foont

Arranged by Ross Harvey

Produced by Holger Petersen

Published by Doggy Doo Music / Kitchen Table Music (BMIC)

1991

‘Rocky Granola’ included on Collected Works / 15 Years of Stony Plain Music

Stony Plain SPCD-1166