Trombone - Teddy Roderman

Born: March 31, 1914 – London, England

Died: September 21, 1980 – Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦

Johnny (John Edward) Burt was the arranger, conductor and pianist who gave the Canadian Talent Library its sound. For ten years he chose its artists, ran its sessions and wrote many of its charts, and in the process helped prove that Canadian players and Canadian studios could make records as good as anything coming out of New York or London.

Born in London, England, Burt was brought to Toronto as an infant. He studied piano as a child and later took composition lessons, briefly, with John Weinzweig. By the early 1930s he was playing piano in the city's dance bands under Luigi Romanelli, Jack Slatter and George Wade, working the hotel ballrooms and Lake Ontario moonlight cruises that radio carried across the country. Summers with Romanelli meant a residency at the Manoir Richelieu in Murray Bay, Quebec. On CFRB he led his own jazz trio with Murray McEachern on clarinet and saxophone and Danny Perri on guitar, and he was already writing orchestrations for dance bands, radio shows and singers, including charts for Jack Shaindlan and Paul Whiteman in the United States.

In 1937 the English bandleader Ray Noble came to hear Trump Davidson's band, with Burt at the piano, at Toronto's Club Esquire. Noble had made hundreds of records in England but had never led a band in public there, and he hired fourteen Canadians, largely from Davidson's band, for a tour of the British Isles. They sailed from New York on the Normandie in May 1938 and opened in Glasgow on June 6. Each show began with a spotlight on Noble at the piano playing his theme, 'The Very Thought of You', before Burt slipped onto the bench for the rest of the set. When the tour ended in September, Burt stayed behind. Being London-born, he could join the British musicians' union on the spot, and he went to work as pianist and arranger for Canadian bandleader Billy Bissett at the Café de Paris.

Back in Toronto in 1939 he joined Joe DeCourcy's dance band. In 1941 and 1942 he arranged for Paul Whiteman's orchestra in the United States, then spent three years as a Royal Canadian Navy bandsman at HMCS York in Toronto.

After the war Burt became one of the busiest arrangers at the CBC, writing for the orchestras of Geoffrey Waddington, Jean Deslauriers, Samuel Hersenhoren, Paul Scherman and John Adaskin, whose talent show Opportunity Knocks commissioned three of his compositions. His trio, now with Stan Wilson on guitar and Sam Levine on bass, played CBC Radio from 1946 to 1948. He led his own orchestra on Johnny Burt and Company in 1952 and on network shows starring Elwood Glover, Wally Koster and Gisèle MacKenzie, and when television arrived he wrote many of the arrangements Joyce Hahn and Wally Koster sang on the weekly Hit Parade. His orchestra's theme was his own 'Theme for Susan', and he also scored films for the National Film Board.

The Canadian Talent Library was a non-profit trust launched in 1962 by Lyman Potts and Standard Broadcasting, owner of CFRB Toronto and CJAD Montreal, to record Canadian musicians for radio at a time when almost no one else would. Burt conducted its first session on July 27, 1962, at RCA Victor's studio on Mutual Street in Toronto: two orchestras of top Toronto players and two dozen of his arrangements, all taped in stereo in about six hours. His Johnny Burt Strings album from that day became CTL 5001, the first record in the library. In 1963, after his third CTL album, he was put in charge of the library's next 150 productions, and he served as music director until 1972. He picked the artists and supervised their recordings, working with players and singers such as Peter Appleyard, Moe Koffman, Henry Cuesta, Rob McConnell's Boss Brass and a young Gordon Lightfoot. Some 240 Canadian stations subscribed, and the BBC and broadcasters in the United States and Australia used the records too.

His own CTL albums moved through every setting the library offered. CTL 5004 and CTL 5014 paired strings, French horn and woodwinds with the trombone of Teddy Roderman and carried his originals 'Theme for Susan' and 'Mike Fright'. Johnny Burt Trombones (CTL 5042) put five trombones in front of vibes, marimba and celeste. CTL 5055 set twelve strings, harp, flute and accordion loose on 'Bali Ha'i' and 'Sweet Leilani'. In 1968 he fronted a full pop-concert orchestra with harpsichord and celeste on CTL 5100, issued by RCA as CTLS-1100, with Erich Traugott, Guido Basso, Moe Koffman, Eugene Amaro and Peter Appleyard among the players and 'From This Moment On' leading off. There was a Christmas album with orchestra and chorus (CTL 5154), and he wrote the string settings behind Bert Niosi's alto saxophone (CTL 5044) and John Perrone's Spanish guitar (CTL 5120). For RCA he also recorded Dance to the Trombones (RCA Camden CAS-997), Around the World (RCA PCS-1199) and a second big band album (RCA CAS-2406).

In 1972 he made the most unexpected record of his career. …Come Summer (CTL 5160), credited to The Johnny Burt Society, put six singers (Stephanie Taylor, Lynne McNeil, Kathy Collier, Les Leigh, Harvey Paterson and Vern Kennedy) in front of a twelve-piece band featuring Moe Koffman, Ed Bickert, Peter Appleyard, Guido Basso and Eugene Amaro. Their bright, harmony-stacked takes on 'Cherish', 'The Candy Man', 'Speak Softly Love' and 'Is This the Way to Amarillo' turned the 58-year-old big band arranger into a sunshine pop producer.

Burt kept recording for the library into the late 1970s, ending with an orchestral album (CTL 5213) that took on 'Evergreen', 'We're All Alone' and the theme from Star Wars, and he arranged and conducted Canadian sessions for Muzak. More than 20 of his compositions were recorded for the Chappell Library of Background Music.

Burt grew up in Toronto alongside Percy Faith and Robert Farnon, and both left for careers in the United States and England. He stayed, and spent five decades building the bands, broadcasts and records that let Canadian musicians be heard in their own country. He died of cancer in Toronto on September 21, 1980, at the age of 66.

-Robert Williston