"Cinch" Sings

Wayne Franklin Arthur was born in Princeton, British Columbia, and grew up partly in Kamloops, close to ranch country and the working people who would later fill his songs and stories. By his own account he was a bit of a rascal and always up to something. Friends called him Cinch, and the name followed him through every job he held: logger, ranch hand, cowboy, summer camp wrangler, teacher, rodeo announcer and mountaineer.

As a young man he worked the forests of the B.C. interior and came through more than one close call, including the day a felled tree came down directly on top of him. He later settled in Sundre, Alberta, on the Red Deer River at the edge of the foothills. There he taught school, raised his family and worked closely with Pioneer Lodge southwest of town. In his spare hours he rafted the river, hunted, fished, rode and wrote poems and songs about all of it.

Music ran alongside everything else. Cinch had a warm, easy voice and a natural yodel that could fill a hall, and over thirty years he made at least four recordings, beginning with Songs of Pioneer in 1965. His first LP, "Cinch" Sings, was produced and engineered by Ernest Klumpp at E.K. Recording Studios in Calgary and issued on the Vocal label (EKLP-100) in 1976. Side one mixed traditional songs with his own, opening with 'Chocolate Ice Cream Cone' and 'She Taught Me to Yodel'. Side two was all Cinch originals: 'Western Mountain Ranges', 'Ski Yodeler', 'Millionaire Farmer', 'Simple Things', 'I've Found a Friend' and 'Profile of a Man'. Cinch played guitar, with Trevor Haug and Danny Knapp on bass and Paul Ungless on piano.

Alberta Gold followed on Triple A Records (AAA 7651-S), recorded at Sound West Studios on 16th Avenue NW in Calgary. This time he wrote every song and produced the album himself, and he wrote it about home: 'Alberta Gold', 'Springtime in Alberta', 'Alberta Born', 'This Land' and 'In the West Country', with 'Let a Little Yodel' keeping his signature sound up front. Becky Arthur sang with him, Trevor Haug moved over to lead guitar, Richard Bell played bass and drums and Gary Krueger added keyboards.

Cinch's move north to Peace River was meant to be a short stay, and it became permanent. He finished his working life as a ranch improvement co-ordinator within Alberta's provincial grazing reserves, and he was soon known all over the Peace Country. He performed for many years with the Misery Mountain Boys, who were invited to play Expo 86 in Vancouver, and later played fiddle with the Peace Valley Boys, a bluegrass band. He was in steady demand as a rodeo announcer, an emcee at bluegrass festivals and community banquets, and a speaker at conventions, prayer breakfasts and men's retreats. Plenty of people who knew him from teaching scripture had no idea he had ever made a record. His fourth recording, It's a Cinch, came out in 1995.

All along he kept writing, first for his grandchildren and then, at the urging of friends and family, for everyone else. After more than fifteen years of work he published Saddle Up With Cinch in 2016, a 424-page collection of stories and poems running from his Kamloops boyhood through the 1950s, 60s and 70s: ranch work, wilderness trips, summer camp sessions, hunting trips, close brushes with danger and the characters of rural Alberta and British Columbia. He launched it with readings and songs at the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre.

Cinch married Anne (née Jesson), whom he grew up with in Kamloops, and together they raised four daughters. Though he made his home in Peace River for decades, Sundre and Mountain View County are where the best of his stories took place.

-Robert Williston