Recollection Volume 7 – Be True Newfoundlanders

Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron. Today computron chooses…

Album: Be True Newfoundlanders
Artist: Dick Nolan
Released: 1968
Format(s) I own it on: Vinyl

I’m pretty sure this album came into my collection one day when my father dropped off a few boxes of vinyl records that had been sitting in his parent’s house since the ’60s. I had never heard of Dick Nolan before or since. I never got around to listening to this record, and this is kind of the point of this project, to listen to everything.

Nolan, a Newfoundlander living in Toronto, returned to his native Newfoundland apparently has made a lot of country records and could be seen often at a Toronto country and western bar on Queen West called The Horseshoe Tavern… never heard of it. Or at least that’s what the liner notes tell me.

Looking at his catalogue, the man was prolific, releasing a handful of albums each year. Amongst his album is a live record recorded at the Drake Hotel. It seems the hotspots of Toronto today, were the hotspots for Toronto’s country scene then. I still prefer The Gladstone.

A lot of this record feels like it was designed to be the background music for a National Film Board short film. I think you could fairly say this sound is cliché. The country is a tad too country for my liking.