The Recording Age: 1920 - 1975

The advent of recording and radio in the early 20th century had a dramatic effect on older fiddling traditions. Wide dissemination and the appeal of the new media inspired great imitation, creating a somewhat artificial hierarchy between those fiddlers who were heard on radio and records and those who weren't. This led to a new class of "professional" fiddlers whose styles and repertoire tended to overshadow the more varied personal approaches of former times. In some areas where local traditions were not recorded (much of the west and north, for example), people often abandoned them in favour of what they were hearing through the new media.

The first fiddlers to make commercial recordings in Canada were from Québec and Cape Breton. The Berliner Gramophone Company recorded several medleys of Jean-Baptiste Roy in Montréal for its Victor label in 1917-18. Columbia and Starr followed soon after. Québécois fiddlers who recorded in the 1920s and 1930s included J.B. Roy, Romueld Gagnier, J. Alex Donato, Antonio Gauthier, José Zaffiro, Arthur-Joseph Boulay, Isidore Soucy, Willie Ringuette, Fortunat Malouin, Joseph Ovila LaMadeleine, Joseph Allard, Joseph Larocque, Albert LaMadeleine, Leon Robert Goulet, Jean Carignan (with George Wade and His Cornhuskers), Percy Scott, Dennis O'Hara, Tezraf Latour, John Lajoie, La famille Lajoie, Joe Bouchard, Sylvio Gaudreau and Bernard Morin. Some tunes recorded by these early French-Canadian fiddlers became popular in the rest of Canada under English names, eg, "Reel de Ste. Anne" ("St. Anne's Reel") and "Reel de la tuque bleu" ("Snowshoe Reel"), both recorded by Joseph Allard. In the 1940s Albert Allard, Omer Dumas, Les Frères Pigeon, Tommy Duchesne, Henri Houde, Théodore Duguay, Gérald Lajoie, Edmond Pariseau, René Alain and Gérard Joyal joined the ranks of recorded fiddlers in Québec. Many of their recordings can now be accessed online at The Virtual Gramophone, a website operated by Library and Archives Canada.

Cape Breton fiddlers also began to record in 1928, beginning with Big Dan Hughie MacEachern and his Caledonian Scotch Band (led by Dan Sullivan on piano) for Columbia's Irish series in New York, followed by Colin Boyd for Brunswick, and The Inverness Serenaders (led by Alcide Aucoin from Cheticamp) and Alick (Alex) Gillis for Decca in Boston. In 1935, Bernie MacIsaac founded the Celtic label in Antigonish, Cape Breton, recording Dan J. Campbell, Angus Chisholm, Angus Allen Gillis, Hugh A. MacDonald and Dan R. MacDonald, followed by Bill Lamey and Johnny Wilmot in the 1940s, then Wilfred Gillis, Winston "Scotty" Fitzgerald, John A. MacDonald, Little Jack MacDonald, Joe MacLean, Joe Murphy, Dan Joe MacInnes, and Donald, Jimmie and Theresa MacLellan, among others. As in the case of the early recordings of French-Canadian fiddlers, these early 78s were influential in establishing certain tunes as standards, eg, "McNabb's Hornpipe," as recorded by Fitzgerald, and "Glengarry's Dirk," as recorded by Chisholm. Several local radio shows in Cape Breton featured live fiddlers from the 1930s through to the 1960s, but gradually shifted over to playing commercial recordings. --Canadian Encyclopedia of Music