Sounds of Triumph

Sounds of Triumph was a Toronto Christian music ministry run by Gord Driver in the late 1970s, when rock and pop were finding their way into Canadian churches and onto Christian radio. Driver was an audio enthusiast who had started out with a media outfit called Center Sound Productions and had turned up as a volunteer in the studio of 100 Huntley Street in its first days on air in 1977. Under the Sounds of Triumph name he produced radio programs, promoted concerts and put out a music publication, working from offices and studios inside the Evangelistic Centre at Yonge Street and York Mills Road, the Pentecostal church that rented its hall on Monday nights to a young evangelist named Benny Hinn.

Driver travelled often between Toronto and Orange County, California, where the Jesus music scene was at its height, and he brought its artists home with him. In September 1978 the California band Daniel Amos was on the cover of the Sounds of Triumph publication. Around the start of 1980 Sounds of Triumph sponsored the Toronto stop that closed out a leg of the Amos n’ Randy tour with Daniel Amos and Randy Stonehill. Larry Norman walked in near the end of the night and was coaxed onto the stage for a song, and local newspapers and two television stations covered the show.

The radio program carried the same name. In 1978 Driver issued a two-sided record to sell it to broadcasters: a three-minute theme on one side, playing at 45 RPM, and an eight-and-a-half-minute sample of the show, hosted by Driver, on the other at 33⅓ RPM. The theme was arranged by Carl Merenick of Papa Joe Productions and recorded at Doug McKenzie’s Master’s Workshop studio in Rexdale, with McKenzie co-producing and engineering. Behind singer Donna Jovkovic were Merenick on Rhodes electric piano, Mark Crawford on guitar, and three players from Simeon, the studio’s Christian house band: Joff Taylor on bass, John Dell on drums and Cam Shearer on clarinet. John Johnson took the saxophone solo, with Bruce Gregg and Lyal Moffat filling out the horns.

The pitch reached the American trade press. In February 1979 Record World named “Sounds Of Triumph,” Gord Driver among the religious programs considered strong enough for secular stations, which by law had to air some non-entertainment programming and were looking for shows that would not drive listeners away.

Driver’s ambitions outran his money. A fundraising dinner for a Christian nightclub, The Captain’s Table, lost money, and in the summer of 1980 his biggest project, Freeway Festival ’80, was booked into the Niagara Falls Convention Center in New York with some of the top names in Christian music. By the end of the weekend it had shrunk to a few concerts in a church parking lot in Orchard Park. Driver packed up and moved to Costa Mesa, California, and nothing more is heard of Sounds of Triumph after he left.

The record outlived the ministry. Its labels preserve a snapshot of the Toronto studio world that grew up around Christian music in the late 1970s, and of Master’s Workshop, which McKenzie built from a basement four-track into one of the country’s leading film sound facilities.

-Robert Williston