Music
Burton Cummings honoured by the Canadian Music Hall of Fame
by Dan MacRae
January 26, 2016
Guess Who? Well, that'd be silly. We already told you who.
The most famous musical moustache in our nation’s history will soon be dusting cookies at the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
Burton Cummings has been selected as the act getting the big ritzy “welcome to the HOF” treatment this year. (Think Alanis in 2015.) Not only does the Winnipeg singer-songwriter join some impressive company as a Hall member, he’ll have the honour of being the first person to place their name plaque on the wall of the Hall’s new location at Calgary’s National Music Centre. He’ll probably have his food comped as well. That’s a thing that sometimes happens at these ceremonies.
The career of Cummings will be celebrated as part of this year’s telecast with the promise of a “special induction tribute” on the slate for April 3’s shindig at the Saddledome. If this brand of industry acknowledgement feels a smidge overdue, this seems like as good a time as any to point out that The Guess Who were inducted back in 1987 and that this induction is for the solo work of the group’s frontman.
The bulk of Cummings’ celebrated output tends to be from the Guess Who portion of his career, but his solo stuff found a sweet spot with record buyers and the national recording industry. “Stand Tall” was a relative crossover hit in The States, the full-lengths My Own Way To Rock, Dream of a Child and his self-titled debut all went multiplatinum domestically, and there’s a tidy collection of Juno Awards he’s collected along the way. Cummings’ impact on the Salsbury House restaurant chain wasn’t mentioned in the press release, but ideally it will pop up during the tribute portion of the Junos.
Here’s a bit of what Cummings had to say about his HOF solo status:
“I wish my mother had lived long enough to see this. She would have been over the moon about it. I’ve received many acknowledgements through the decades, but truthfully, I cannot say that any of them outweighs this one.”
