Red Shea, 70
Musician was Gordon
Lightfoot's 'ultimate extra guitar'
SANDRA MARTIN
Globe and Mail
June 12, 2008 at 12:37
AM EDT
TORONTO — Musician Red Shea, who played
lead guitar with Gordon
Lightfoot and later with Ian and Sylvia Tyson, has died of pancreatic
cancer in Aurora, Ont. Mr. Shea, whose real name was Laurice Milton
Shea, was 70.
With his brother Les Shea and
bassist Bill Gibbs, Mr. Shea formed the
Red and Les Trio in the late 1950s. They played on Country Hoedown, a
popular musical variety show that launched in 1956 and ran for nine
years on CBC.
It was on Country Hoedown, in
1960, that Mr. Shea met Gordon Lightfoot,
who was a member of the Singin' Swingin' Eight. Mr. Shea began playing
lead guitar in The Lightfoot Band in 1965 and “was a pivotal figure” in
Mr. Lightfoot's early career, according to music journalist Larry
Leblanc. He appeared on many albums including, The Way I Feel, Did She
Mention My Name, Sit Down Young Stranger, Summer Side of Life, Sundown,
Cold on the Shoulder and Gord's Gold.
Dedicated Lightfoot fans still
talk about Mr. Shea's “breathtaking”
guitar solo in The Canadian Railroad Trilogy, a performance that was
recorded live at Massey Hall in 1969 and released on the album, Sunday
Concert.
Mr. Shea left the band in
1971, and was replaced by Terry Clements,
although he returned briefly for a time in 1975.
“Red Shea was the ultimate
extra guitar on Gordon Lightfoot's records
and stage performances,” guitarist Randy Bachman, formerly of The Guess
Who and The Bachman Turner Overdrive, said in an e-mail Wednesday. “He
augmented every song with some sparkle and magic and made Gordon sound
and look good.”
It was Mr. Shea, he said, who
inspired him to try his hand at
songwriting. “He is mentioned in the song Lightfoot which Burton
Cummings and I wrote after seeing Gordon, Red and John Stockfish at a
night club in Montreal back in the sixties. It was an evening of
magical, all-original Canadian music and it inspired Burton and I to
write our own music” he said. “Red will be missed, but remembered every
time one of those songs is played on the radio,” said Mr. Bachman, who
hosts Vinyl Tap on CBC Radio.
In 1972, Mr. Shea replaced
guitarist David Wilcox in Great Speckled
Bird, the country rock band that Ian and Sylvia Tyson had formed in
1969. The band played on the weekly show that Mr. Tyson hosted on CTV
in the early 1970s and also toured with the Tysons until they broke up
as a couple and an act in 1977. “He was a dear friend and I will miss
him very much,” Mr. Tyson said through his manager Wednesday. “We
always had a lot of laughter together in our friendship.”
His former wife, Sylvia Tyson,
echoed those sentiments. “Aside from
being a great player, which he certainly was, he was just great to be
around,” she said. “Red always had a joke or a story or a pun or
something that he would come up that would just keep things on an up
level.”
Mr. Shea also played with The
Good Brothers and did a long gig in the
band on The Tommy Hunter Show, which had replaced Country Hoedown in
1965 and ran until 1992. “ The Tommy Hunter Show was good for him,”
said Ms. Tyson. “He had found it increasingly hard to be on the road.
It wore him down too much. He was basically a home guy.”
In more recent years, Mr. Shea
taught guitar.
He is survived by his wife,
Lynn (née Claremont), three children
and four grandchildren. A Memorial Service will be held at 11 a.m.
Friday at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, Aurora.