Information/Write-up
Norma (Beth) Locke, a singing star of the big band era in Canada, was born in Montreal in 1923. Noticed first by the public in a musical at an Ottawa high school, Locke with her warm contralto voice was a regular of CBC Toronto where she starred in a number of national radio shows over the years. She recorded mostly with her husband’s band, Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen, from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s. The band was formed in 1931 before a gig in Vancouver, where it also made its radio debut in 1934 on CJOR. Kenney began touring in Eastern Canada in 1937. Kenney signed a contract with RCA Victor in 1938, and began recording for its Victor and Bluebird labels. Norma Locke, joined the band in 1944 and soon reached fame as a premier big band vocalist. orma Locke peaked during the war years. In a way she was our Vera Lynn, a symbolic link between the oppressive war abroad and the sweetness of home.
Like Glenn Miller’s music, the melodic, sweet tunes of Mart Kenney seemed to hit a sentimental spot with Canadians, who were going through a rough time and were being rationed even in basic necessities. People flocked to attend Kenney’s record launches organized by RCA at the Montreal record plant. The band toured across Canada between 1943 and 1945 and broadcasted weekly on The Victory Parade live from army depots and war plants. Kenney was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1980.
-Jean-Pierre Sévigny
Georgia Dey (Pearl Collicut). Again a singer for which we unfortunately don’t have much information; she died in Florida in 2006. The little we do know comes from Mart Kenney’s autobiography: Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen published in 1981. Her real name was Pearl Collicut and in 1938, she replaced Eleanor Bartelle in Kenney’s band. The previous year, Pearl had won a singing contest at Edmonton’s Tivoli Ballroom, and Kenney was in the audience. She made her debut with the band at Vancouver’s elegant Orpheum Theatre. She was on Kenney’s first recording sessions for RCA in Montreal and stayed with the band until 1940. Her big hits with the Canadian ballroom crowds were “Heart of Mine” (recorded in 1939), “Sometime” – (the flip side of Kenney’s theme “The West, A Nest and You, Dear”), and Cole Porter’s “My Heart Belongs To Daddy.” Kenney also did arrangements of novelty tunes built around what he called the “kind of whimsical quality” of Georgia’s voice: the “swellelegant” (a hip word on the big band circuit in the 1930s) “Mulberry Bush”, ‘Just a Jitterbug” and the fashionable “Lambeth Walk”, the rave of London society.
-Jean-Pierre Sévigny
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