Artist / Band

Reg Hill

Origin Brockville, Ontario → Avonmore, Ontario, 🇨🇦

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Biography

Reg Hill, one of the all time greats in Canadian Hoedown Fiddling, started playing the instrument in High School in Avonmore, Eastern Ontario, purely out of necessity. Reg had been singing and playing Spanish Guitar with a small Western Group that he and a fellow classmate had formed and as they had to hire an old time square dance fiddler for each engagement, Reg decided to give the fiddle a try.

His mother, who came from a large musical family and could play a lively jig or breakdown, encouraged her son and would often play along with Reg accompanied by his older brother Sid on Guitar or the family organ.

It was during these years that Reg gained a knowledge of the bass fiddle, mandolin, banjo, piano and later on when the band changed from Western to Modern and Jazz music he learned the tenor saxaphone. Even though he plays these different instruments, his favourite is the old-time fiddle and he claims Don Messer has been a great inspiration to him through the years. He says Don has been his favourite fiddler since the first days of radio of the Islanders on the C.B.C. Network.

Incidently Reg has appeared on the Don Messer Jubilee TV program three times along with two other members of the Ottawa Valley Melodiers.

Reg joined the Ottawa Valley Melodiers in 1954 and with the group has played on a number of radio stations - CFRA and CKOY in Ottawa, CJET Smith Falls, CKIC Kingston and CHOV Pembroke where they aired thirteen weeks series of half hour music to the now defunct C.B.C. Coast to Coast Dominion Network.

As for TV the group has worked out of CJOH TV in Ottawa where they appeared on an original CTV Network program ‘Cross Canada Barndance’. At the time of writing the Melodiers have a local TV show out of CHOV TV in Pembroke, Ontario.

Most of the selections in this album are original compositions by Reg but he has included in this album two traditional favourites of his late mother, namely ‘The Peek-a-boo Waltz’ and one he has named ‘Granny’s Breakdown’ as a tribute to her memory.

Reg now lives in Arnprior, Ontario with his wife Ramona and their four children Eddy, Shirley-May, Tommy and Gordon, one of whom he hopes will eventually take up the old time fiddle and carry on the family tradition.