Hamilton Blues Lovers: Throwback Thursday! 5 Rising Sons, Harrison Kennedy on American Bandstand, Varga

This is part of our new recurring series of 'Throwback Thursday' posts where we celebrate the wonderful past of the local music scene (specifically pre-2000). If you know of any videos, old posters, trivia bites, etc that would be perfect for this, please email us at blueshamilton@gmail.com

Burlington's The 5 Rising Sons

Biographical highlights (from GarageHangover.com)

Originally called Rising Songs until they found out about another band with the same name.
Members: Ron Canning (lead guitar), Mike Kotur (guitar), Pete Davidson (organ and vocals), Dave Best (bass), Robin McMillan (drums), Bruce Ley (later joined on organ and bass)
Recorded with Columbia Records and Yorkville Records.
Singles: 1965 (as Rising Sons): Land of 1,000 Dances/Don’t Look Away, 1966 (as The 5 Rising Sons): Annie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore/She Just Likes Me, 1968 (as Willapus Wallapus): To Jone/Sacrificial Virgin)

Media links:

Burlington Gazette story on the band (and 2015 reunion)
The Willapuss Wallapuss entry in CanuckistanMusic

Comment from Garage Hangover by drummer Robin McMillan

We all went to different schools in Burlington and played the Hamilton and Burlington areas for approx. one year. My dad was the sales manager of Elgin Ford on Bay Street in Toronto and he had a three day extravaganza at the dealership in Toronto for the new Mustang, hot rods, dragsters and lots of other fast cars from Ford. He hired us to play all the music in the afternoons for the Friday, Saturday and special Sunday shows as well and bought a lot of commercial time on CHUM, CFRB and all the major newspapers and included us in all the ads.

Before you knew it there were over 30,000 people at the shows and of course to see the cars and we didn’t look back. We got bookings from all over.

With all the hype we were invited to make a couple of records which helped up quickly up the ladder from a local Burlington group to huge jobs in Toronto … the Hawks Nest, Club 888 and many others, and one of the thirteen bands CHUM picked to play at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“Annie” was in the top ten in Winnipeg, the Maritimes and CFOX in Montreal as well as CKOC, CKPC and tons more stations in Canada and played although not charted on CHUM.

Bruce joined the group the day after the Toronto Sound Show in Sept 1966. Peter on organ left to go to college in London but still kept in touch with us.

We recorded under the name of Willapuss Wallapuss just for the fun of it. Yorkville’s idea because we were a very young group and they thought it was cute I guess but it got play. “To Jone” written by Bruce Ley, who actually has done quite well writing songs for kids TV shows. Actually her name is Joan but spelled Jone don’t ask me why.