Copperfield-Skye

Copperfield~Skye was a Calgary act built around the songs of Ray Copperfield, the stage name of Ray Dobranski. By December 1987 it was booked for the New Year’s Eve gala at the Chateau Airport, the Canadian Pacific hotel connected to Calgary International Airport. The hotel invited guests to “Fly into 1988” with a $50 gala dinner, followed by dancing to “the spirited sounds of Copperfield-Skye” and a midnight toast.

In 1988 the act released a single on Starbright Records and Tapes, a small label working out of 3516 First Street N.E. in Calgary: ‘Lost Time’ backed with ‘Book of Tricks’, both written by Copperfield. The label’s address and telephone number were those of Sundae Sound, the Calgary studio founded by Doug Wong and Nigel Blagborne in 1981. Rob Bartlett, a Sundae Sound engineer who by the mid-1990s co-owned the studio with Dave Horrocks, recorded both sides.

Dobranski registered ‘Lost Time’ with the United States Copyright Office in May 1989, giving ‘Make Up for Lost Time’ as the title on his application. He also wrote for other singers. In 1991 RPM reported that Ethel Oakley was making her debut on the ATI label with his song ‘You’re My Reason for Living’.

Guitarist Josh Onderisin also played in Copperfield~Skye, bringing a long Ontario recording career with him. He played acoustic and electric guitar on Christopher Kearney’s 1972 Capitol debut alongside David Bromberg and Chuck Aarons, then became lead guitarist in the Ian Thomas Band, playing on Goodnight Mrs. Calabash in 1976 and Still Here in 1978. In 1980 he played on Segarini’s On the Radio.

His most famous appearance on a record sleeve involved no guitar at all. Hugh Syme, the Ian Thomas Band’s keyboard player, was also Rush’s art director, and for the cover of A Farewell to Kings in 1977 he needed a marionette king. He picked Onderisin as the skinniest person he knew, and photographer Yosh Inouye shot him on a throne at the site of a recently bulldozed warehouse in Buffalo, New York. Syme moulded Sculpey clay onto his kneecap to look like a ball-and-socket joint and drew in the puppet strings afterwards.

According to his widow, Onderisin settled in Calgary after leaving Ian Thomas and performed with Copperfield Skye across Western Canada until his death in 1996. The single’s labels name no musicians, so whether he plays on it is not known.

Notes: Ray Copperfield is Ray Dobranski. The labels print the act’s name with a tilde; it also appears as Copperfield-Skye and Copperfield Skye.

-Robert Williston