We pulled this tape out of a thrift store and assumed at first that it was some quick cash-in thing from our city's Olympic year. A bit more digging, and we see that Harold Anderson and the Calgary Ranch Boys were a legit country outfit with their roots in the first half of the 20th century. [center][img width=500px]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1733175465074x390157758712728960/richtext_content.jpeg[/img][/center] [center][img width=558]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1733175486799x329271480833341000/richtext_content.jpeg[/img][/center] Last Ranch Boy plays on Harold Anderson put in a 10-hour shift on Remembrance Day playing fiddle at the Ogden Legion. It was a long day, he admits, but enjoyable. "There were so many people who knew me from years back," he said. "People would come up to me and say, 'My grandparents used to dance to your music."" Calgarians started dancing to Anderson's music more than 60 years ago when he formed his orchestra, the Calgary Ranch Boys, and they're still dancing to his tunes. He has been performing as part of the downtown Stampede entertainment for more than 50 years. Anderson was born in Calgary in 1927 and raised on a farm west of DeWinton, south of Calgary. His parents loved music and thought young Harold should take lessons. "I was taking lessons on four instruments at once," he said. "I was studying the violin, mandolin, guitar and banjo." He practised two hours a day, a half hour on each instrument. And he did it willingly. "I didn't have to be persuaded," he said. "I was enjoying it." By the time he was a young teenager, he felt confident enough to turn professional. "I was 14 or 15, and decided it would be a good idea to put on a Friday night dance at the Alexander School (the one- room school in the area)." He recruited his friend, Willy Willis, who played the button accordion, and "by golly, we used to have some good dances." Despite the Depression, he managed to make a living from his music, playing wherever and whenever he could. He played at political meetings when William Aberhart was organizing his Social Credit revolution, and he played at theatres when vaudeville was still alive in Calgary. "We played the Variety Theatre and the Strand," he said. "Sometimes we'd do a show at the Variety, and then we'd have 20 minutes to get to the Strand to do a show. The Variety paid $2.50 for three nights. The Strand paid more - we got $3 for three nights." Sometimes the wage for a night's performance was a box of oranges. A musician was in the big money if he got $5 for playing a dance. "In those days, most guys were on relief," Anderson said. "You could get some of the best musicians in Calgary if you could guarantee $1 a night, plus hotel rooms and meals-we'd be on the road for three or four nights." The Calgary Ranch Boys became local celebrities as they started to do live radio broad- casts on CJCJ and other local stations. "We would broadcast twice a week on CJCJ," Anderson said. "On Tuesday, it was old-time and western music. On Saturday, it was modern. We were versatile. We'd just switch instruments. The drummer would play sax, and I would play the drums. "Sometimes we were country; sometimes we were jazz." In the late 1940s, the Calgary Ranch Boys played regularly at the Barn Dance at the Currie Riding Academy, on a site now occupied by Chinook College in Calgary's southwest. "We played upstairs in the hayloft," he said. "The horses were in the stable below us. "CJCJ had a remote studio right there on the stage, and we'd broadcast from there on Tuesdays." In the summer, the Ranch Boys would head for B.C. "We would work out of CFCJ in Kamloops in the morning, and in the evenings we'd do dances in local dance halls." The musicians weren't paid for the radio broadcasts, performing on air for the exposure. "For a while, we did two 15- minute shows each morning on CJCJ, one at 7 a.m., the other at 8 a.m.," Anderson said. "Sometimes we'd be playing a country dance until 3 or 4 a.m., and we'd drive back and go straight to the radio station." Anderson has played in the Palace, the Palliser and the Banff Springs Hotel. When the only club in the Calgary region was the Lone Pine Supper Club, off Sarcee Trail, he played there. "Back in the days when beer parlours couldn't have entertainment, we'd play at the Noble Hotel during Stampede week," said Anderson. "When the manager knew the inspector was coming, he'd send us upstairs to a suite until the inspector left." Stampede has always been a busy time for the Calgary Ranch Boys. They first started playing as part of the down- town entertainment in 1948, and haven't missed a year since, although Anderson is the only original member of the group still living. One of Anderson's biggest admirers is Stu Bradley, a veteran square dance caller and a member of the Stampede's downtown attractions square dance committee. He has worked with the Ranch Boys at Stampede for more than 30 years. He said Anderson's mu- sic is vital to the Stampede's downtown entertainment. "That fiddle-playing and country music really stirs up enthusiasm," said Bradley. "It's a great tradition." And Anderson is a tireless keeper of that tradition, he said. "Harold plays for two hours without a stop," Bradley said. "The younger ones have trouble keeping up with him." Anderson's family has always been involved in performing. Marie, his wife of 47 years, played some of the same gigs when she was a professional singer. "She was known as the Elks' Nightingale because she sang at the Elks Club for years," Anderson said. Sons Bob and Nor- man, still part of the band, started when they were young. While it hasn't made him rich, music has always been Anderson's career of choice. "I branched out for a while selling cars," he said, "but music has always been my main living." Besides playing, he sold musical instruments and taught music lessons. Though he's 82, he has no intentions of quitting the career he loves. "What would I do if I retired?"
