Don Messer (1909 to 1973) was the most famous fiddler in Canadian history. His band, Don Messer and His Islanders, was heard three times a week on CBC radio from 1944 and seen every week on CBC television’s Don Messer’s Jubilee from 1959 to 1969. In the mid-1960s the show ranked second in Canada only to Hockey Night in Canada. When the CBC canceled it in 1969, the protest reached the House of Commons. Messer entered the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989.
Why Messer matters
Messer turned the Down East fiddle style of the Maritimes into a national sound. Two generations of Canadians learned what a fiddle tune was by hearing his theme, Goin’ to the Barndance Tonight, come out of the radio. He played clean, straight, and without show, and folklorists credit him with pulling the many regional Canadian fiddle traditions into one style that other players copied. His records are still where Canadian jammers go to learn the standard repertoire, and the Maritime Fiddle Festival’s top trophy carries his name.
Life and career
Donald Charles Frederick Messer was born on May 9, 1909, in Tweedside, New Brunswick, the youngest of 11 children. He started violin at age five. He learned tunes from local players, including his uncle Jim Messer, Bowman Little, and Charlie Bell, and Scottish and Irish songs from his mother. By age seven he was playing barn dances, weddings, and square dances. At 16 he moved to Boston, where he studied for three years with Henry Davis and Edith Hurter. That was his only formal training. He returned to New Brunswick in March 1929.
That year he began his radio career on CFBO in Saint John. In 1934 his studio band started a program for the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, the forerunner of the CBC, from CHSJ in Saint John under the name the New Brunswick Lumberjacks. Singer Charlie Chamberlain joined at that time. The studio band grew to as many as 19 players, including Ned Landry on harmonica and Julius “Duke” Nielsen on bass and banjo. For live shows around the Maritimes and New England, Messer led a smaller group called the Backwoods Breakdown.
In September 1939 Messer moved to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to become music director at CFCY. There he formed the Islanders with Chamberlain, Nielsen, pianist Jackie Doyle, clarinetist Ray Simmons, and drummer Bill LeBlanc. By 1944 the CBC carried the show nationally three times a week. It became the most popular program on Canadian radio and stayed that way into the 1960s. Singer Marg Osburne joined in 1947. Long-serving members included drummer Warren MacRae, pianist Waldo Munro, and guitarist and fiddler Cecil McEachern. From 1942 to 1952 the band cut 35 78 rpm records for Apex, including Rippling Water Jig, Woodchoppers Breakdown, Don Messer’s Breakdown, and Spud Island Breakdown. The band made its first tour of Ontario in 1949.
Television came in 1956 with regular appearances on the CBC station in Halifax. On August 7, 1959, CBC launched The Don Messer Show nationally as a summer replacement. It continued that fall as Don Messer’s Jubilee, produced in Halifax. Each half-hour episode followed the same plan: the barn dance theme, two fiddle tunes from Messer, songs from Osburne and Chamberlain, a guest, the Buchta Dancers, a closing hymn, and Till We Meet Again under the credits. The show stayed in the national top ten for its whole run. In 1961 it outdrew The Ed Sullivan Show in Canada. Guests included Stompin’ Tom Connors, Catherine McKinnon, and Graham Townsend.
The CBC canceled the show in April 1969 while it still ranked in the top ten. Viewers protested across the country, and members raised the matter in the House of Commons. Messer moved the show to CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario, in syndication and kept it going until his death. The National Film Board released the documentary Don Messer: His Land and His Music in 1971. Messer died of a heart attack in Halifax on March 26, 1973. He was 63.
Playing style
Messer played the tune. He did not decorate it. Folklorists Dorothy and Homer Hogan described his style as “clean, straight-ahead and neat as a well-tended farm” and marked by “down-to-earth simplicity.” He kept a strict dance tempo, held the melody in the plain register, and let the band’s piano and drums carry the drive. On television he left the talking to the announcer, and he played two tunes an episode and no more.
His repertoire was Down East: hornpipes, jigs, reels, and breakdowns from the Scottish and Irish traditions of the Maritimes, plus his own tunes and pieces by Al Cherny, Andy DeJarlis, Jim Magill, and Graham Townsend. He owned 14 fiddles. One is now at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, though Messer insisted his music was not country or western. The tunes, he said, were two or three hundred years old and had been passed down as folk music.
Influences and legacy
Messer learned from his uncle Jim Messer and from the dance fiddlers of southwestern New Brunswick. His Boston teachers gave him his only formal training. His band launched or boosted the careers of Ned Landry, Graham Townsend, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Catherine McKinnon, and Fred McKenna.
Fiddlers across Canada paid him tribute on record, among them Graham Townsend, Bill Guest, and Reg Hill. The Maritime Fiddle Festival created the Don Messer trophy in 1986 for the fiddler with the highest points at the festival. His papers and music library are held at the Nova Scotia Archives. In 1997 the Messer estate gave one of his fiddles to Ontario fiddler Frank Leahy, who built a stage show around it called Don Messer’s Violin.
Signature tunes and songs
Goin’ to the Barndance Tonight Don Messer’s Breakdown Rippling Water Jig Woodchoppers Breakdown Spud Island Breakdown Highlevel Hornpipe Cotton Eyed Joe Till We Meet Again.
Essential recordings
The Down East Dance Music of Don Messer and His Islanders (Apex) Don Messer’s Centennial Souvenir Album (Apex, 1967) The Very Best of Don Messer (MCA, 1973) The Good Old Days (1979) The Best of Don Messer (Universal Music, 2005)
Awards and honors
Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Honor (1985) Maritime Fiddle Festival Don Messer trophy created in his honor (1986) Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, with Charlie Chamberlain and Marg Osburne (1989) City of Charlottetown plaque at his former home
Watch and listen
Messer plays Blind Man’s Reel on Don Messer’s Jubilee. Watch how still he stands and how plain he keeps the melody.
Messer and Cecil McEachern play Woodchopper’s Breakdown, one of the band’s early Apex hits.
What to learn from Messer
Learn Don Messer’s Breakdown. It is the tune Canadian jams expect you to know, and it has no tricks in it. The technique to steal is his plainness. Play the melody with a straight tone, no slides, no extra notes, at a tempo a square dance set could follow for ten minutes. Most fiddlers add too much. Messer built the biggest fiddle audience in Canadian history by leaving things out.
Sources
Don Messer, The Canadian Encyclopedia Don Messer, Nova Scotia Archives Hall of Fame, Canadian Country Music Association Don Messer, Wikipedia
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the bluegrass fiddle guide for more Canadian fiddlers. Ned Landry played in Messer’s radio band, and Graham Townsend was a Jubilee guest who later recorded a tribute to him. Al Cherny and Andy DeJarlis wrote tunes the Islanders played.