BILL and SUE-ON HILLMAN: A 60-YEAR MUSICAL ODYSSEY
www.hillmanweb.com  ::  www.hillmanweb.com/book  ::  www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs


CKX-TV REMEMBERED
www.hillmanweb.com/ckx

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The Anniversary of the last Brandon CKX-TV broadcast
brings back a flood of memories.
We've had a long association with the now-defunct CKX Radio and Television studios.

Back in the early days of television in Southwestern Manitoba, one of the highlights of "going to town" was to join the crowd huddled around the window of the Strathclair Electric shop. Set up for public display was a Westinghouse 19 inch television set which pulled in a weak signal from Brandon -- 60 miles to the southeast. CKX-TV Brandon in the '50s provided a new and exciting source of entertainment and those homes that could afford sets were invaded by young and old who endured the faint, flickering and snowy black and white images to watch local news and weather, wrestling, Jackie Gleason, I Love Lucy, old movies and local celebrities.

Across this magic, flickering, black and white window to the world paraded a multitude of faces, places and sounds: movie stars, radio stars, variety performers, cartoons, TV actors, reporters, and singers. These small grainy images were all bigger than life, and unknowns became superstars overnight. The shows came from studios far and near: Hollywood, New York, Toronto, and Brandon... it didn't really matter where they came from... the performers were all fantasy-like figures in our minds. It was standing on this sidewalk, straining to get a better view of the small screen that I first "met" some of the local personalities and musicians that would provide me such interesting experiences in a few years. This event was one of my early experiences that promoted a life-long passion for music, TV, movies, and show business.

Our grain-buyer friend Howard Pahl invited people up to a spot at the top of his grain elevator where his TV antennae could pick up better CKX-TV reception.

I was thrilled to first appear on a series of live noon shows in 1962. College classmate Barry Forman and I had just put together The New Country Gentlemen band. We would skip noon clases at Brandon College and rush down to the studio. Along with Barry and I, the musicians for some of these shows were Jake Kroeger (vocals & guitar), Larry Clark (drums) and Audrey Lintott (vocals). We arrived in time to do a hurried rehearsal in the small graphics office. We had to be very quiet since the News, Weather and Sports were being broadcast live in the nearby studio. Then, during a final commercial break we dash into the studio to set up our amps and drums.

Around this time we even experimented with miming and putting remote appearances on 16mm film -- really a forerunner of MTV-style videos that wouldn't appear for over a decade later. The video I remember most was filmed at the Little Saskatchewan River dam east of Rivers. Barry and I mimed to a pre-recorded fiddle tune using an old fiddle and guitar. We started playing on the shore of the lake and then waded out into the water . . . playing all the while. We kept playing as we waded out to deeper waters until we were submerged with only my hat and our instruments floating on the surface. It made for a fun video that CKX-TV aired quite a few times.

Our CKX-TV Friday Noon Show on November 22, 1963 was interrupted by an important news bulletin. US President John F. Kennedy was reported shot while appearing in a motorcade in Dallas Texas. He had been rushed to hospital. We were all shocked, but resumed our show. At 1 pm we rushed to the teletype room to read the news reports as they came in over the wire. The news was not good -- half an hour later the White House Press Secretary announced that the President was dead. I spent the rest of the day in the College dorm TV room watching the emotional television reports.

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Later we had the luxury of being the first group to record our shows on video tape -- a huge unit that covered almost a whole wall and used huge spools of wide tape.  This took off much of the pressure of doing our daily shows live since it allowed us to record our shows at more convenient times. Our excitement over this development eventually turned to some frustration and embarrassment when CKX started to run re-runs of what we had done . . . over and over. I recorded many of these off our home TV on my audio reel to reel recorder.

In another decade the technology had progressed so that many of the shows that Sue-On and I did were time-shifted to Sony 3/4 U-Matic cassette machines. (I still have some of our shows on these tapes in our media library.)

Sometime during '60s years we were the first group to make use of the large concrete stage that CKX built on the provincial exhibition grounds (still in use by the Brandon Folk Festival). Previous to this our fair remotes had been broadcast from one of the landmark exhibition dome buildings.

We were also one of the first groups in Westman to expand a weekly evening show into a series of live Co-Op Neighbour night appearances to towns within the broadcast radius. Kris Thor (MC) and Frank Woodmass (organ) would join us for these shows -- mainly in town halls of every town that had a Co-Op store.

After Sue-On and I married in 1966 she eventually joined the group and I changed the name of  the band to THE WESTERN UNION. Later when we started to tour the US and England we were billed BILL & SUE-ON'S HILLMAN EXPRESS or HILLMANS FROM CANADA and under these names we performed scores of live and taped weekly shows and specials through the years. We've recorded 12 albums in major recording studios through the years, but we have fond memories of our first 1970 album cover that was shot in the CKX-TV studio in front of the cameras of the day.

Sometime in the early '70s we were honoured to be invited to appear as the first group to be featured in the station's debut live colour broadcast and later anniversary specials.

We were also proud to tape a show on CKX-TV in which we were first to mime our live performance to some of our recorded album tracks. We had just released our 7th album that we had recorded in Newcastle while on our second music tour of England in 1977. We were proud of the recorded sound and since many performers were doing this on network shows we thought if would be a good experience to give it a try. It seemed to go very well.

Coinciding with our Canada summer tours in the  '70s that we, as The Western Union, did with Brandon singer Russ Gurr, CKX-TV featured us in a special.  I have a copy of the show on VHS tape. MTS actually used part of this as an opening to their popular one-hour documentary special on Russ.

Ironically, in the '90s Network CBC-TV filmed a feature biography on Sue-On and I. The Coleman and Company film crew followed the two of us around our Strathclair and Brandon homes, into the classroom, into our Soo's Restaurant, to a karate session, did some good videos on our three kids, and then wrapped it up by filming us on stage during a show we did at Clear Lake, Riding Mountain National Park. During that show we were joined by longtime music buddies, Barry Forman and Kerry Morris.

This show was broadcast many times in prime time on the CBC television network across Canada -- usually on Valentine's Day -- but sadly Brandon TV opted to run an old film in that time slot. The guys at the studio were very obliging and let us view the whole show on the studio monitors as it came in over the network . .  they even taped it for us. Thanks to the CKX tech guys who been so great to work with through the decades. Stills and script from the show are featured on our Website at:

PART I ~ PART II ~ PART III

Through the years we did a number of live remotes for business openings, car dealer promotions, etc. There were also numerous on-air interviews. Ones that come to mind are some of the shows we did with announcer Vince Dodds on the Golden Days of Radio. I have thousands of OTR shows in my collection, so I had brought some photos, tapes, a large Gates turntable and 16" ET discs for us to talk about. We also played some excerpts of old radio shows such as Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, Suspense, etc.

Noticing the popularity of our TV shows and Sue-On's natural on-camera presence, a local car dealership asked her to do a CKX television commercial extolling the advanced features of their latest sporty compact model. Around this time Japanese car companies were making many inroads into the Canadian auto market. The car company thought that hiring an Asian to promote their North American product would provide a neat way of minimizing the impact of the Japanese invasion.

The first part of the car commercial featured Sue-On in the studio going through the usual moves of opening doors and pointing out features. The commercial then cut to an exterior shot taken on the Grand Valley road. Now, Sue-On was driving the vehicle and leading a whole convoy of similar models. She led this stream of shiny new cars around the highway curves while waving to the cameras.  I couldn't help thinking that if she had suddenly hit the brakes the resulting multi-car pile-up would have made for a spectacular television event : )

Another day starting at the CKX-TV studios turned into a pretty busy day. I did a noon interview to promote the coming Call of the Wild Music Festival and the related CKX video for the event that I had hosted. It was a hurried interview as we had to rush over to the CNR train station to do some songs to welcome Princess Anne on her arrival into Brandon. We then went to the Agricultural Grounds where we played for a barbecue in her honour. She was very gracious and we had some great off-stage chats.

 The many decades of our TV appearances are fondly remembered and described in some of our other Gig Notes sections, but radio was also important to us. Jocks and programmers often featured our recordings and as a special favour they even played our album tracks over the test patterns during sweeps periods. This was a boon for royalties, especially since we owned both composer and publishing rights for half of our recorded material. The many CKX-TV remotes we did for car companies, special events, and the summer and winter fairs provided great exposure.

Back when FM radio was rather special. . . with no annoying commercials and featuring programming that wasn't usually found on AM radio, we had fun sitting in with well-known musician Gordie Carnahan. He spun our records, we chatted, and had phone-in contests. Gordie had been featured fiddler on CKX-TV back in the '50s in the live shows that pre-dated our later programs. He and Russ Gurr and the Roy Brown orchestra were known all over the Westman area. We had our own local radio and TV stars in those days and CKX is fondly remembered for its service to the Westman area stretching all the way back to 1928. Its loss was a lamentable blow to our community.

Sadly, Brandon's CKX Radio and Television are no more -- a casualty of the ever-changing and competitive world of broadcast and Internet communications. CKX-TV had started broadcasting on January 28, 1955, a memorable day for TV-starved SW Manitobans, but previous to this, CKX radio dated all the way back to 1928. The station went dark on October 2, 2009 -- a lamentable day which left our part of the province without a service that had been an integral part of the community for so many years.

The many decades of our TV appearances are fondly remembered and described among the hundreds of anecdotes in the GIG NOTES section of our online music years bio

BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN: A +60 YEARS MUSICAL ODYSSEY
www.hillmanweb.com/book
 www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs

HILLMAN EARLY TELEVISION YEARS: '60s and '70s
www.hillmanweb.com/h700.html

From our Online Career Bio I've shared a few links to some of our CKX anecdotes:

EARLY '60s
1. The New Country Gentlemen on CKX-TV
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#gentlemen

2. CKX-TV: Live On Air
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#tv

3. WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?
Hi-Yo Silver ~ The Lone Ranger Is In The Studio
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#masked

4. Kennedy Assassination: Where Was I?
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#kennedy

5. Before MTV. . . There Was CKX
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#mtv

6. A Young Rich Little: Live on our TV Show
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#rich

7. Fireballs in the Studio
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/02.html#fireballs

1966: SUE-ON ARRIVES - NAME CHANGES to
WESTERN UNION to HILLMAN EXPRESS to BILL & SUE-ON

8. TV Remotes
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/03.html#remotes

9. Birth of the Western Union
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/03.html#union

10. Western Union: CKX-TV Album #1 Cover
www.hillmanweb.com/albums/alb01.jpg
www.hillmanweb.com/albums/kxnwu2.jpg

11. She Can Sing. . . But Can She Drive
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/03.html#drive

12. The Golden Years of CKX
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/07.html#ckx

13. Broadcast "Firsts" in Westman
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/07.html#firsts

14. "Green" White and Blue at CKX
www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/08.html#green
Colour Broadcast Photos
www.hillmanweb.com/cards/70/ckxall.jpg

HILLMAN EARLY TELEVISION YEARS: '60s and '70s
www.hillmanweb.com/h700.html

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L-R: John Skinner ~ Barry Forman ~ Sue-On Hillman ~ Jake Kroeger ~ Bill Hillman

LISTEN TO 100 HILLMAN RECORDINGS
www.hillmanweb.com/cd

BILL and SUE-ON HILLMAN: A +60-YEAR MUSICAL ODYSSEY
BOOK CONTENTS
PDF Version

9. TRAVEL ADVENTURES

Off-Site Reference

CKX REMEMBERED CONTENTS