Terry Gillespie & Crystal Axe

Born in Canada, raised in the United States,Terry Gillespie returned home in the 60s. By the time he came back to Canada, he’d already been infected, inspired and influenced by the blues. He had dug deep into the still- segregated world of the blues by smuggling himself into blues bars to hear — and later play with — Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and a youngster called Buddy Guy. “I was 17 when I heard those guys, maybe 16. The drinking age was 21, but I was tall, and I’d wear shades and a sports coat and draw a skinny moustache on my upper lip. “Once, a cop checked me out, asked whether I was drinking beer and I said I was. The whole joint fell silent to see what he’d do about it. ‘Get the kid a pop,’ he said, and let me stay. And the crowd applauded.” Settling in Ottawa, Terry helped form Heaven’s Radio, a pioneer rock band that had a strong measure of national success well before the Canadian content regulations came into force at the beginning of 1971. By the mid-70s there was a single on United Artists, and — later — two LPs on Posterity, the well-remembered label owned and operated by local radio mogul Harvey Glatt. The band’s influence was considerable in the heady days when, suddenly, Canadian music was coming of age. In the years since Heaven’s Radio disbanded (there was a brief revival of the band in 2007) he built a steady career playing solo or with a band that often includes musicians from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and South Africa. Terry and his wife Kathleen spend their winters in Jamaica, where that island’s distinctive music has added to his own eclectic sound. He’s the “artist in residence” and Kathy is the reservation manager for a number of small rental cabins on an idyllic, uncrowded beachfront part of the island, and they have long become accepted in the local community. Playing daily with Jamaician musicians immersed him in a different musical culture — in the same way that it had when he discovered the blues in Detroit in his teen years and as it did in Ottawa playing rock and blues. Thandi Klassen, Nelson Mandela’s favorite entertainer, said to him:”Music wants you, poor you”. Terry Gillespie has sometimes been called a musical shaman, Canada’s king of roots music and Mr. Groove — and all for good reason.