Mickey McGivern

Mickey McGivern was one of the great unheralded guitar figures in Canadian country music: a Pembroke, Ontario-born player whose sound travelled much farther than his name. During the 1960s and 1970s, McGivern became a first-call studio guitarist in Toronto, appearing on hundreds of country sessions for labels including Arc Records, RCA and Quality. Many of those albums were issued during an era when studio musicians were rarely credited, leaving McGivern’s playing deeply embedded in the Canadian country catalogue even when his name was missing from the jacket.

Born in Pembroke in 1931, McGivern began playing guitar as a boy and was already working professionally as a teenager. By the age of 17, he was on the road with The Kidd Baker Show, beginning a life spent moving between dance halls, radio stages, club dates, recording studios and touring bands. His early years included work with Kidd Baker and The Pine Ridge Mountain Boys, and by the mid-1950s he had formed his own group, The Golden River Ramblers. The band later led to radio work in Pembroke, where McGivern’s name became familiar to Ottawa Valley country audiences.

By the late 1950s and through the 1960s, McGivern was fronting Mickey McGivern and The Mustangs, a hard-working country band that toured widely and became a fixture on the Toronto club circuit. The group worked important rooms such as the Edison Hotel and backed visiting Nashville performers including Dave Dudley, Mel Tillis, Del Reeves, Stonewall Jackson, Bob Luman and Johnny Paycheck. That work placed McGivern at the centre of the cross-border country circuit, where Canadian musicians were expected to handle everything from honky-tonk shuffles and truck-driving songs to ballads, instrumentals and western swing material with little rehearsal and no margin for error.

McGivern’s greatest impact may have come in the studio. He became closely associated with producer Ben Weatherby and the Toronto sessions that fed Arc Records’ large country catalogue. His guitar appeared on recordings by Canadian artists such as Dick Nolan, Jimmy James, Dusty King, Irwin Prescott, Freddy McKenna, Artie MacLaren and others, as well as Canadian-issued albums involving American country names including Red Sovine, Donna Darlene and Ramblin’ Lou Shriver. In this role, McGivern helped define the sound of Canadian country records at a time when independent labels were documenting regional singers, touring performers and working musicians at a remarkable pace.

Although best remembered as a session player, McGivern also recorded under his own name. His albums included a duet project with Dean Hutchinson, the instrumental set Twelve String Guitar, and Hard Times with The Mustangs, featuring vocalist Billy Adams. His Marathon LP Down East Guitar Pickin’ brought his guitar to the foreground, mixing traditional country instrumentals with original compositions such as Cactus Pickin’, Sunday Guitar, Hillbilly Funk, Caribou Breakdown and Canso Causeway.

Down East Guitar Pickin’ also preserves something of McGivern’s own story through liner notes by William “Bill” Oja of Canadian Western Rider Magazine. In the notes, McGivern recalls being born in Pembroke, leaving school after his father died, working in Northern Ontario lumber camps, learning guitar from a camp musician nicknamed “Buckshot,” and later moving with his family to Toronto. He also describes his early recording work with Kidd Baker and Hal Lone Pine at CFRB, his East Coast travels, his time around CFCY Charlottetown and CHSJ Saint John, and his years on the road with The Mustangs.

McGivern also left a songwriting trail. His best-known co-write was Down on the Corner at a Bar Called Kelly’s, written with Johnny Paycheck and Aubrey Mayhew. Paycheck recorded the song in 1967, and it later appeared as a single in 1979, reaching the U.S. country chart. It was also recorded by Dick Curless, carrying McGivern’s name into the American country catalogue.

In 1996, McGivern was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame, formal recognition for a career that had stretched from Pembroke and the Ottawa Valley to Toronto studios, national tours and Nashville-linked club dates. He died in Pembroke, Ontario on June 29, 2018 at the age of 87.

-Robert Williston