Edwards, Bobby - Rainbow

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Electric Rainbow	02:38
	2	Disney Girls	04:49
	3	You're a Cutie With Your Slippers On	01:34
	4	Get Crazy With Me	03:18
	5	You, Y'look Good	02:34
	6	Lost Without Your Love	02:42

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Summer Song	02:45
	2	Sing Me	02:18
	3	So Right For Me	02:59
	4	Blue Finger Lou	02:14
	5	I'm No Stranger	03:50
	6	The Child	02:11

Photos

Videos

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Information/Write-up

Bobby Edwards was one of the key guitar voices of the Toronto studio era, a player whose sound threaded through Canadian television, film, radio, and commercial recording for more than five decades. Born Robert David Edwards on November 24, 1948, in Scarborough, he began playing guitar at ten and moved into professional work almost immediately. By his mid-teens he was already a studio regular under the quiet mentorship of pianist Norm Amadio, joining the circle of disciplined, sight-reading guitarists who defined the city’s recording landscape in the 1960s and ’70s.

The volume of work that followed was immense. Edwards became one of the CBC’s most in-demand guitarists, appearing on hundreds of broadcasts and variety programs during the network’s peak orchestral years. His guitar underscored everything from talk shows to children’s programming, including a long association with The Friendly Giant. Television brought him into the orbit of visiting American performers—Wayne Newton, Kenny Rogers, Bobby Vinton, Sonny & Cher, Lawrence Welk, Patsy Cline—and those encounters reinforced his reputation as the guitarist who could handle anything placed in front of him, stylistically or technically.

At the same time, Edwards built a parallel career as an arranger, writer, and bandleader, most visibly through his work for the Canadian Talent Library. His 1972 CTL album Fat City Suite in E Major, credited to Bobby Edwards & the Fat City Guitars, introduced an ambitious multi-guitar ensemble supported by reeds, vibes, harmonica, and rhythm section—an atmospheric mix of pop, jazz, and light funk that became one of CTL’s most distinctive releases. Other CTL projects soon followed, including the big-band-with-strings outing Rainbow and the instrumental showcase Guitars, Guitars, later issued by Attic Records. These albums captured the side of Edwards that most casual listeners never heard: a writer with a deep harmonic sense and the ability to shape a large ensemble around the voice of his own guitar.

His session work runs even deeper. Edwards appears alongside Ed Bickert, Hank Monis, Moe Koffman, Jerry Toth, Doug Riley, Jack Zaza, Terry Clarke, Guido Basso, and other pillars of Toronto’s studio ecosystem. Film scoring became another major thread, with Edwards contributing to a long list of Canadian productions at a time when local composers increasingly relied on seasoned studio players to anchor their cues. He also played a number of high-profile concert dates, including two command performances for Queen Elizabeth II and special orchestral tributes built around the music of Patsy Cline and Al Jolson.

In the 1980s he stepped forward as a solo artist with Twilight Drive on Duke Street Records—an album that merged contemporary jazz textures with layered arrangements by some of Toronto’s best horn and string players. Later independent releases under the Guitarisma banner brought him together with other elite guitarists for a looser, more personal series of collaborations. Through all of these projects, Edwards maintained the same hallmarks: clean tone, fluid phrasing, and an arranger’s ear for how guitar lines sit inside an ensemble.

Teaching became a major focus in the latter part of his life. Alongside his wife Maggie, a pianist and music educator, he operated music schools in Toronto and Bolton, passing on the discipline and adaptability that had formed his own career. Many of his students went on to become working musicians, carrying forward the studio tradition he had embodied.

Bobby Edwards died on September 15, 2021, in Newmarket, Ontario, at the age of seventy-two. His name may not have been widely known to the general public, but his playing is everywhere—on television themes, children’s shows, CTL albums, pop records, jazz sessions, and film scores. For anyone tracing the sound of Toronto’s studios from the late 1960s through the 1990s, Bobby Edwards stands as one of the essential figures: a guitarist, arranger, and musical problem-solver whose fingerprints remain on an entire era of Canadian recorded music.
-Robert Williston

Bob Mann: guitar
Brian Russell: guitars
Rick Homme: bass
Terry Clarke: drums
Brian Leonard: percussion
Guido Basso: trumpet
Arnie Chycoski: trumpet
Eric Traugott: trumpet
Rob McConnell: trombone
Bob Livingston: trombone
Moe Koffman: reeds, woodwind
Jack Zaza: reeds, woodwind
Doug Riley: piano
Albert Pratz: violin
Bill & Vicki Richards: violin
Otto Armin: violin
Andy Benac: violin
Adele Armin: violin
Barbara McDougall: violin
Walter Babiak: viola
Jack Neilson: viola
Peter Schenkman: celli
Ron Laurie: celli
Erica Goodman: harp

Singers:
Stephanie Taylor
Patti Van Evera
Laurie Hood
Debbie Fleming
Peter Mann
Paul Booth
Chris Dedrick

Arranged, produced, and conducted by Bobby Edwards
Engineered by Hayward Parrott, assisted by John Naslen
Recorded and mixed by Hayward Parrott at Manta Sound, Toronto, Ontario
Executive producer: Mal Thompson
Lacquering by Cub Richardson at JAMF
Repertoire consultants: Arthur Collins and Sheila Conner
Consultant: Rick Wilkins

Photography by Andre Pierre
Cover design and illustration by B.A.M.

Liner notes:
BOBBY EDWARDS – the Guitarist, is heard on record on most MOR (Middle of the Road) radio stations at least once a day in many corners of the world.
BOBBY EDWARDS – the Musician, is a guitarist, composer, lyricist, arranger and conductor.

This is a big band, big strings, big vocal group record which features Bobby’s arranging, conducting, six of his original compositions, three sets of his lyrics, and a short guitar solo in the middle of the last cut.

Why only one short guitar solo by Bobby on this album?
Stated simply; BOBBY EDWARDS – the Musician, wanted the scope and dimension that a great vocal group and a big band with strings could bring to his music. He got it!
To my ears this is the most exciting music CTL has produced. Don’t let the fact that Bobby is not playing guitar bother you. Mancini, Riddle, and Quincy Jones, don’t always play on their own records either.

But, anyone with ears, will know whose music they’re hearing.

So – here’s twelve chances to HEAR the music of BOBBY EDWARDS. It’s MOR spelled
… T.N.T.!!!

… FRED NAPOLI
singer, songwriter, broadcaster

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