Yonge Street: Toronto Rock & Roll Stories

Rumour has it that in sleepy 1950s Toronto they used to roll up the sidewalks when the sun went down. There was no rock 'n' roll or R&B music until the fateful day when Arkansas wildmen Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm pulled up in front of Le Coq d'Or Tavern and unleashed the "devil's music" on unsuspecting Toronto. Travelling back to those colourful days, Part 1 reveals the city's appetite for the popular and rebellious new sounds reaching up from the border. Between the exodus of African American performers like Curley Bridges and Mouse Johnson to Toronto, and Elvis performing at Maple Leaf Gardens, a whole generation of young local performers like Ronnie Robertson and Bobby Dean Blackburn were inspired to begin making their names on the flourishing Yonge Street strip.

By the early 1960s, the Toronto music scene spilled into Yorkville. Folk music began to thrive and young performers like Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell found a home. But Yonge Street was still the headquarters of the more raucous, wild rock 'n' roll bands. Part 2 sees Robbie Robertson, and The Hawks, create a distinctive guitar style that became synonymous with the "Toronto" sound. Then, as the Toronto music scene exploded, white bands were soon jamming with black musicians, heavily influenced by R&B and creating a distinct new sound all their own.

By the mid-60s, Yorkville had become the mecca for folk music until Dylan went electric and everything changed. Clubs for rock 'n' roll and psychedelic music became part of the same lineup as the folk music of coffeehouses. Artists like Neil Young, Rick James and The Myna Birds, John Kay and The Sparrow, John & Lee & the Checkmates, and The Paupers were all big names playing the Yorkville clubs, but Canadians didn't have the airtime support needed to sustain them. Toronto musicians had outgrown Toronto, so they left to find fame and fortune in the U.S. The Rock Pile, at 888 Yonge Street (now CTV's Masonic Temple studios and home of MTV) became a focal point for great bands like Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jeff Beck, and Frank Zappa on their pit stops to Toronto. Finally, Part 3 looks at the early '70s and how the proliferation of strip clubs drove the final nail in the coffin of the Yonge Street music scene.