Alta Blues

Alta Blues was the band Bill Hills put together when he came home to Calgary. In the 1960s Hills had been a founding member of Children Blue, the city's first electric blues band, a group modelled on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He moved on to Shaker, spent time living and playing in Toronto and Vancouver, and then returned to Calgary to start Alta Blues, a six-piece that toured across Canada.

The lineup on the band's first record had Hills singing and playing harmonica and saxophone, Doug Bruce on guitar, Barry Corley on drums and vocals, Lyall Herrington on bass and vocals, and Danny Meichel on saxophone. Three singers, two saxophones and a harmonica over guitar, bass and drums pushed the group toward the horn-driven, R&B end of the blues.

That record was Cherry Red, a four-song 7-inch EP pressed at 33 1/3 RPM. The band produced it themselves at Smooth Rock Studios, Steve Graupe's studio on Beaver Dam Road N.E. in Calgary, which had opened in the spring of 1980 with a 24-track MCI setup. Three of the songs were originals: 'Cherry Red', 'Better Man' and 'I Found Out'. The fourth, 'That's The Truth', came from the Chicago slide guitarist J.B. Hutto. The EP came out on Slick Records, with the band's songs published through Buffalo Publishing, both operating from 2013 - 35 Ave. S.W. in Calgary, and it was made through World Records under the number WRC5-2239. The sleeve carries no date, but catalogue evidence places it around 1981. The Slick name surfaced again twenty years later on Hills' own debut CD, Ought To Be A Law (Slick 003), which marks him as the man behind the label.

Alta Blues returned in 1983 with a single in a picture sleeve, 'Buffalo Shuffle' backed with 'Love To Sing The Blues', on The Label, an Alberta imprint, catalogue number DWM-4533, manufactured by Doug Wong Music of Calgary. The A-side borrowed its name from the band's own publishing company.

Hills next joined guitarist Johnny V Mills in Johnny V and the Houserockers, the first house band at the King Edward Hotel when it became Calgary's home of the blues. After that came the 9th Ave All Stars, the Thomas T Band and his own Bill Hills Blues Band, whose Ought To Be A Law was named best Canadian blues CD of 2001 by Real Blues Magazine. His acoustic duo Hills and Lemelin took best Canadian acoustic blues CD of 2009 for Neither Here Nor There, and by 2019 he was back at the King Eddy fronting the Fabulous Aces. Along the way he worked with or opened for Otis Rush, Pinetop Perkins, John Hammond, Son Seals, James Cotton, Paul Butterfield, Mose Allison and Dr. John.

Danny Meichel was born in Simcoe, Ontario on April 20, 1951, and spent more than forty years playing in Calgary's music, arts and theatre community. Through the 1980s he worked with Mark Dicey, Janet Turner and Lyle Pisio in a constellation of bands including Scum de Terre and tokyosexwhale, the circle that laid the groundwork for improvised music in the city. Later he recorded Lost In A Chinese Attic (2007) with the Bent Spoon Trio, played with the Musk Cup, played tenor saxophone on three tracks of Giant Sand's proVISIONS (2008), appeared on Kris Demeanor's Lark, and played many shows for the theatre company Green Fools. He died in Tokyo on April 19, 2009, a day short of his 58th birthday, while realizing a lifelong dream of playing music in Japan. His duo album with drummer Chris Dadge, Mannington, followed in 2013, and samples of his live recordings anchor some of the heaviest passages on Joyfultalk's 2022 album Familiar Science.

-Robert Williston