Down Home Saturday Night

Reg Freer was an old-time fiddler, singer, guitarist and bandleader from Kerwood, Ontario. Billed on record as R.B. Freer, he began playing music at the age of 12 after his grandparents bought him a guitar. He later played weddings, receptions, showers, dances and other community events around Kerwood, Watford, Strathroy and the surrounding Southwestern Ontario area. His music also travelled with him during his wartime service in England, Italy, Holland and Belgium, where, according to the liner notes to The Best of R.B., it “opened many doors.”

Freer’s orchestra played old-time dance music, country songs, waltzes, polkas, reels, jigs and popular standards. His players included Margaret King, a Watford music teacher, church organist and pianist; Marg Walker of Ailsa Craig, who played bass and piano and also worked with the Parkhill group The Vesteraires; Tom Levitt of Strathroy on guitar; and Morley Winter, a St. Thomas commercial artist and drummer. Later recordings also featured Gerry Clement, Mike Graham and Herb Burnard.

Freer released three known albums: The Best of R.B., More of R.B. and Down Home Saturday Night. Despite the title, The Best of R.B. appears to have been his first LP, not a later compilation. Its liner notes say friends had encouraged him to make a record and that he “finally has.” More of R.B. followed as his second record, while Down Home Saturday Night, recorded September 29, 1978, was identified in its notes as his third.

One of Freer’s most personal songs was “Hemrider’s Lament,” described in the notes to More of R.B. as a hospital song that began as a poem during his stay at Strathroy-Middlesex General Hospital. Another favourite, “Let Me Be Your Little Sweetheart,” was learned from one of his army buddies overseas.

-Robert Williston