Bed Time Story

Websites:  https://citizenfreak.com/artists/110049-hewitson-jeff-and-the-fugitives, https://citizenfreak.com/artists/90804-ardels
Origin: Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

The Bed Time Story emerged in Toronto in the late 1960s, formed by musicians who had already spent much of the decade shaping the sound of Ontario’s dancehalls. When the Ardels dissolved in 1968 after years of steady work on the Etobicoke and Toronto circuits, vocalist Doug Dixon and guitarist Jim Pernokis carried their momentum forward into a new project with organist Bob Kendall, bassist John Kubko, and drummer Chuck Slater. Dixon and Pernokis entered the new group as an unusually seasoned pairing, having spent the mid-sixties fronting the Ardels through dozens of high-school dances, university parties, and Toronto club dates. Their tight musical rapport—built on Dixon’s commanding stage presence and Pernokis’s sharp, economical guitar style—gave The Bed Time Story a level of cohesion rare for such a young band. Although the band inherited the Ardels’ roots in R&B and club-friendly soul, The Bed Time Story developed a sound that was distinctly their own—more organ-driven, more contemporary, and more reflective of the changing musical climate of the late sixties.

Unlike many newly formed Toronto groups, The Bed Time Story entered the scene with genuine studio experience behind them. Dixon and Pernokis had already navigated the pressures of professional sessions during the Ardels’ Hallmark and Cancut years, earning RPM reviews and regional airplay. That prior discipline translated directly into the new band’s rehearsals and arrangements, giving their early recordings a confidence uncommon among local soul-rock acts. Their early shows followed the familiar route through high schools, community halls, and weekend dances, but Kendall’s Hammond lines immediately broadened their musical range, giving the group a deeper, fuller sound. Dixon drove the early vocals with the same conviction that had made him the Ardels’ focal point, and the rhythm section—tight, quick, and built for dancers—kept them in demand across the Toronto suburbs.

Their sound also reflected the larger shift happening in Toronto at the time. The same club and dance-hall network that had carried the Ardels into the orbit of Stan Klees and Walt Grealis now pushed The Bed Time Story toward a more modern, organ-centred approach, closer to the emerging Canadian R&B identity taking shape around Le Coq d’Or and the city’s university circuit. By 1967 the band had drawn the attention of Columbia Canada, who released their debut single, “Raise Your Hand” / “Careless Life.” Their choice of “Raise Your Hand”—the 1967 Eddie Floyd Stax classic written by Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, and Alvertis Isbell (Al Bell)—was significant. The song, though not a major chart hit in its day, had become a live favourite for its driving groove and call-and-response energy, famously championed onstage by Janis Joplin and later Bruce Springsteen. Performing it well was viewed as a marker of a band’s R&B legitimacy, and The Bed Time Story’s version leaned into those strengths: a confident organ-led arrangement, Pernokis’s crisp guitar lines, and Dixon delivering the kind of full-voiced soul performance that the material demanded.

Shortly after the release, Dixon stepped away and the group brought in Jeff Hewitson, the powerful Peterborough singer already known for his work with The Fugitives. Hewitson—coming off his charting RCA single and long regarded as one of Peterborough’s strongest mid-sixties R&B voices—pushed the band into their most distinctive phase. His voice—raw, urgent, and steeped in soul—shifted The Bed Time Story toward a grittier, more emotionally charged sound.

In 1968 Columbia issued their poignant and topical second single, featuring Hewitson’s own composition “Got to Find Someone (A Day in the Life of Steven Truscott)” backed with “Feel the Sun,” written by organist Bob Kendall (C4-2814). The A-side referenced the widely followed 1959 Truscott case, in which fourteen-year-old Steven Truscott was convicted of the murder of twelve-year-old Lynne Harper and sentenced to death—a conviction later determined to be wrongful, with the sentence commuted to life imprisonment; he remained in custody throughout the 1960s, including at the time of the single’s release, was paroled in 1969, and was formally cleared in 2007 when the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the conviction. Its lyric line, “where the sun shines so brightly but it doesn’t shine on me,” offered a poignant, indirect commentary on a young man shut away from the world. The song’s lyrics go further still, adopting the first-person voice of an imprisoned youth reflecting on the “summer of 1959,” the stolen years of confinement, and the desperate hope that “somebody” might one day “set me free.” “Feel the Sun,” by contrast, provided a gentler, more melodic, and hopeful counterpoint. The single was produced by Greg Hambleton.

An RPM Weekly report from July 13, 1968 captured how the industry viewed them at the time. Under Columbia’s Canadian Content column, RPM noted that “The Bed Time Story have been appearing regularly throughout the Toronto area and should get a giant boost for appearances with the release of ‘Got To Find Someone’ and ‘Feel The Sun.’ This group has been on the Toronto scene for some time and have acquired a very tight sound which has been captured on this their second release for Columbia. The Bed Time Story were formerly The Ardells.” This remains the only known RPM reference to the group and confirms both their active presence and the industry’s awareness of their lineage from the Ardels.

By 1969 the group briefly adopted a new name, Backbone, in an effort to shed their teen-band image, but no further recordings emerged and the band quietly folded. The players, however, moved on to notable roles: Bob Kendall joined Edward Bear, contributing organ and harmonies during one of the band’s most visible periods; Chuck Slater became the drummer for Ocean, whose gospel-rock single “Put Your Hand in the Hand” became an international hit; and Dixon and Pernokis later regrouped in Pastime with former Ardels members, keeping parts of their earlier repertoire alive well into the 1990s. Hewitson returned to the Peterborough scene, continuing as a working singer and multi-instrumentalist. What began in the early sixties as a handful of Etobicoke teenagers trading licks at church dances ultimately carried through to major-label studios and into the pedigrees of Edward Bear and Ocean. The Bed Time Story sit squarely at the midpoint of that arc—a brief, vivid bridge between Toronto’s garage-R&B foundations and the more polished pop-soul sound that followed.
-Robert Williston

Jeff Hewitson: vocals
Jim Pernokis: guitar
Bob Kendall: organ
John Kubko: bass
Chuck Slater: drums

Related acts:
The Ardels: https://citizenfreak.com/artists/90804-ardels
Jeff Hewitson and the Fugitives: https://citizenfreak.com/artists/110049-hewitson-jeff-and-the-fugitives