BY GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST
Toronto Star
The jaunty beret, the capricious moustache, the warm, affirming smile, the bright eyes and inquiring, upturned brow … these are the features his family, friends and countless admirers are remembering today as legendary Toronto guitarist, band leader, composer and music producer Domenic “Donnie” Troiano is laid to rest at Forest Lawn in North York, following a funeral mass at St. Luke’s Parish, near his longtime home in Thornhill.
One of the nation’s most influential and innovative rock musicians during the 1960s and 70s, and a revered session player, record producer, TV and movie score composer and jazz recording artist in the following decades, Troiano succumbed last Wednesday night at his mother’s home after a 10year struggle with prostate cancer. He was 59.
Born in Modugno, Italy, Troiano and his family came to Toronto in 1949. A little more than a decade later, he was immersed in the city’s burgeoning rock and R&B music culture, and, along with other budding guitar slingers, used to study The Hawks’ Robbie Robertson at Concord Tavern Saturday matinees. By age 17 he had taught himself to play from chord books and by studying the work of his musical heroes.
While he defined what contemporaries call “The Toronto Sound” during stints with Robbie Lane and The Disciples, Ronnie Hawkins, The Five Rogues, Mandala, and Bush — bands in which he became known as “the guitarist to beat” in Toronto in the years following Robertson’s long ascendancy — and carried the hopes of a generation of Canadian guitar slingers to the world as Joe Walsh’s replacement in the American band The James Gang, and as Randy Bachman’s in The Guess Who, Troiano remained a polite and even humble presence in the industry, musician’s musician who eschewed the trappings of fame and excess that ravaged many of his peers.
“Donnie was the last person ever to talk about his achievements,” says Lane, one of the guitarist’s closest friends from the age of 14, even before he and Troiano formed The Disciples, the band that a few years later would replace Robertson and The Hawks as Arkansas rockabilly singer Hawkins’ posse. “You had to drag stuff out of him. In fact, I was unaware of how widely he was respected, how far his influence had spread, until four months ago when I was contacted by a professor at some American university looking for information to add to a comprehensive web site he was building, devoted to Donnie and his music.”
Lane, who is still performing “for fun” and hosts a radio show Saturday and Sunday afternoons in 1050 CHUM, paid tribute to his longtime friend on the weekend with a special segment featuring many of his recordings and the onair memories of his musical contemporaries, including former wife, singer Shawne Jackson. “Donnie was two things — a giant musician and producer, and a giant human being
who really cared about people.”
George Olliver, singer and frontman for the bands (Whitey And The Roulettes, The Rogues) that would become Mandala following Troiano’s split with the Disciples, was one of the guitarist’s last visitors a week ago.
“He knew I was there, but it was impossible for him to speak – but he managed a smile. I remember when I first saw him play in 1962 at Le Coq D’Or with Ronnie Hawkins on Yonge St. We were around the corner at The Bluenote on Yonge and Gerrard. He was an impressive guitar player even then. Everyone was coming in to check him out. What I heard in his playing was raw emotion. It was very soulful music, straight from the heart. It was mindboggling to have him join our band just two weeks later. And from the minute he came in, he was the leader.
“He knew exactly what he wanted, and he had great ideas. He was headstrong in those days, very focused, and what he wanted always turned out to be the best thing for the band.”
Three years later, Olliver and Troiano parted ways, and though the guitarist went on to form the groundbreaking jazzinfluenced rock trio Bush with Toronto bassist Prakash John and drummer Whitey Glan, his reputation had already spread south via Mandala’s recordings with the prestigious American R&B label KR Chess and tours of the U.S. The band’s first single, “Opportunity”, is still credited by local musicians as the cut that took the Toronto Sound — distinguished by a “heavily distorted, sustained vibrato guitar, a very dangerous noise,” says veteran Toronto bassist Dennis Pinhorn — to Los Angeles and beyond. In 1968 Mandala (with singer Roy Kenner, who had replaced Olliver and would later join The James gang with Troiano), recorded its only album, Soul Crusade, for Atlantic Records.
“Donnie was more than a great musician, he was also a great businessman,” Olliver continues. “He was always reading up on production news, the latest trends in recording and management deals, and he was able to parlay that knowledge into a lucrative career as a songwriter, and an awardwinning music score composer and producer for TV shows (including Night Heat, Diamonds, Hot Shots Top Cops, Juvenile Justice, Counterstrike, and Secret Service) and movies. One of the songs he wrote for Bush, ‘I Can Hear You Calling’, was recorded by Three Dog Night as the Bside of the multiplatinum hit ‘Joy To The World.’ He made a fortune.”
Olliver and Troiano collaborated recently on remixing the reissue of Live At The Bluenote with George Olliver and Gangbuster, the classic 1980s recording of Toronto’s legendary soul/R&B band.
“I remember saying to him that in his 59 years he has lived four lives – he got to produce and back up some of the great artists of our time, including Diana Ross, Moe Koffman, Joe Cocker and Etta James. He performed on and produced several classic recordings, and he’s personal friends with many of the world’s greatest musicians. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame in 1996, and had his best work released on Universal Music’s 20th Century Masters compilation series, and then he reinvented himself as a composer of soundtracks. There’s not much he didn’t do, and I know that when he passed, he was at peace with himself.”
R&B band The Majestics’ singer Jay Jackson, a friend since 1965 and for many years Troiano’s brotherinlaw, remembers the guitarist as “a straight ahead, standup guy who always did what he said he was going to do, personally and professionally. “As a musician, he was always a step ahead of everyone else. His love of music was a joyful thing from the time he started to amaze people at the age of 17. He mastered rock, R&B, soul and jazz, and he was able to call on everything he’d ever learned in an instant. He brought respect to his instrument, and I believe he influenced every important guitar player who came after him. "The best thing about him was that he never set a standard for himself … he was always growing, and never looked at the end, never counted the steps.”
To Ronnie Hawkins, who recently recovered from a bout with cancer, Troiano was “a member of an endangered species, one of them semigeniuses who live for their music yet remain polite and human and real. Donnie was a good ol’ buddy … he was always there for you.”
Hawkins, who claims he was cured with the help of a B.C. psychic known only as Adam, put the healer in touch with Troiano when the guitarist’s condition was diagnosed almost a year ago. “But it didn’t do any good …”
David ClaytonThomas, who also recruited The Rogues and Mandala as a backup band in his postShays days in mid1960s Toronto, and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame with Troiano in 1996, describes his lifelong friend as “just a great guy, a very strong character, personally and musically. He brought everything he had to the table. He was a magnificent guitar player who had the fire and presence of Robbie Robertson, but also a really advanced technique. He played with all his fingers.”
From his home in Mexico, expatriate Canadian songwriter and megahit record producer Adam Mitchell remembers Troiano and Mandala were the only threat to his band The Paupers during Yorkville’s golden age. “Donnie was a real pro, a guitar player’s guitar player. From the time he picked up the instrument he knew that’s what he wanted to be, and he methodically set about doing just that. Apart from the music, he was a very pleasant guy, always accommodating, always ready to step up for his friends.” Freddy Keeler, guitarist with The Shays and another of Toronto’s hottest rock gods in the 1960s, recalls Troiano as “a rival, the guy to beat. “He’d visit every jazz guitarist who came to town and ask for lessons and tips, and it was the jazz stuff that made him unique.”
Troiano’s first guitar idol was Chuck Berry, but, says Toronto guitarist Bernie LaBarge, “He loved Wes Montgomery as well … I always think of Donnie as a jazz guy. “In performance he was completely mysterious, hypnotic, soulful, bluesy and mesmerizing from the first time I saw him with Mandala. That was at my high school when I was 13, and I told my mother the next day to remember the name Domenic Troiano, because he was going to be famous. “We didn’t meet until 1980, at a jam at the El Mocambo, but Donnie has always been my hero and my mentor. “To me, the three great guitar players of their time were Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison and Domenic Troiano.”
In Troiano’s memory the Metronome Canada Culture Heritage Foundation has established a $1,500 annual scholarship to a Canadian guitarist pursuing post secondary guitar education. Details can be obtained from Metronome Canada Foundation, 118 Sherbourne St., Toronto ON, M5A 2R2, by phone at (416) 3670162, or via the Internet at www.metronomecanada.com.