Information/Write-up
Born Debora Ann Harbottle on July 9, 1959, in Clarksburg, Ontario, she later became professionally known as Deborah McCullough and recorded under the stage name Roni Sommers during her 1980s country career. She was raised in Ontario and was later publicly associated with Stratford, Ontario, where press coverage identified her as “hailing from Stratford.”
Sommers entered the Canadian country scene in the early 1980s and quickly found strong collaborators in producers Dallas Harms and Michael Francis, two major figures in the Ontario studio community. Her early singles performed well on Canadian country radio and led to national attention in 1984 when she received the CCMA Vista Rising Star Award, placing her among the key emerging artists of that period.
Her album High Caliber, recorded in Toronto at Lawson Studio and Manta Sound with top session musicians, became her defining release. Country Music News ranked it among the Top 10 Canadian country albums of the year, and the record produced a series of follow-up singles that extended her radio presence through the mid-1980s. Sommers made national television appearances on The Tommy Hunter Show, The Family Brown Country Show, and Sun Country, and toured extensively across Canada with her band.
In 1987 she scored one of her strongest chart moments with the self-written single “I Wouldn’t Do That to You,” signalling her growing confidence as both a performer and songwriter. Through the late 1980s she continued to record, write, and tour, balancing mainstream radio country with more contemporary pop-country elements.
Sommers stepped away from commercial recording in the 1990s to raise her family but continued performing. In later years she returned with new work that leaned more toward acoustic, country-folk, and bluegrass influences, reconnecting with the songwriting roots that shaped her early career.
She remains one of the noteworthy independent Canadian country voices of the 1980s, with High Caliber standing as the key document of her recording era.
-Robert Williston
Mike Francis: electric Spanish guitar, acoustic guitar
Jim Pirie: acoustic Spanish guitar
Nino Smeriglio: electric steel guitar
Vic Sabrino: guitar
Dave Brown: electric bass guitar
Barry Keane: drums
Bruce Cassidy: Fender Rhodes
Fred Smith: alto saxophone, tenor saxophone
Jack Zaza: flute
Roy Kenner: special effects
Robert Ackroyd: background vocals
Sheree Jeacocke: background vocals
Joanne Noble: background vocals
Music and vocal arrangements by Michael Francis
Produced by Dallas Harms and Michael Francis; and M.B. Recording – M. Brooker Productions Co.
Engineered by Bob Shanks and Hayward Parrott, assisted by Ron Searles
Mixed by Hayward Parrott
Mastered by George Marino at Masterdisk Corp., New York, NY, USA
Recorded at Lawson Studio, Toronto, Ontario
Recorded at Manta Sound Company, Toronto, Ontario
Album graphics by Graphicon Co., Hamilton, Ontario
Photography by Tom Zsolt, Toronto, Ontario
Hair and makeup by Jenny Hanson, Toronto, Ontario
Special thanks: the Believers and the Doers; Mike Francis; Dallas and Marie Harms for guiding my “tender feet”; Virgil Romance and, I think, the United People; Mike Francis and his “55 Gallon Drum” for helping me find my mind when I got lost; the wonderful people who made “Pride – Roni Sommers” happen; fellow musicians Mike McNeil, Bruce Cassidy, Jim Pirie, and Dean Hasselbaink (steel drummer); Mum and Dad for discipline, morals, dignity, and all the encouragement; Michael for being there in all my songs.
-Roni
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