Hank Snow is a gifted baritone crooner and flattop guitar picker. Wilf Carter, who died in 1996, was a rustic hill-‘n’-range singer complete with yodels. Although their styles were dramatically different, the two Nova Scotia natives were founding fathers of Canadian country music and helped give it an international presence.

Snow, born in 1914 and still going strong, became one of country music’s biggest stars of the post-World War II era. He remains a giant of the famed Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee and, in his lengthy career, has enjoyed many top-of-the-chart singles, has staged worldwide tours, and has sold upwards of 100 million records. Along the way, he discovered a fondness for early Nashville-style instrumentation and rhinestone suits.
 

Fishing village “bluenosers” from Nova Scotia, Wilf Carter, left, and Hank Snow — guitarists, songwriters, and Grand Ole Opry performers — are godfathers of country music in Canada. Viewed here in 1964, they rarely performed together. [Photo, cour tesy/Toronto Telegram Collection, York University Archives]

Carter, born in 1904, built up a huge following in Canada, the U.S., and Australia as a country and western music pioneer and author of such hits as “The Capture of Albert Johnson,” “Prairie Sunset,” and “There’s a Love Knot in my Lariat.” He recorded more than 500 songs, performed live into his 80s, and was the first inductee into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. A competitive rodeo rider and self-taught musician, he never veered from his Stetson-’n’-buckskin persona.

Clarence Eugene (“Hank”) Snow was born in the sleepy fishing village of Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, but his boyhood years were far from tranquil. He was beaten regularly by his grandmother, at the age of eight saw his parents divorce, and was kicked out of home by his mean stepfather at age 12. The effects of his upbringing have stayed with Snow all his life. When he established the non-profit Hank Snow International Foundation for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect of Children he told reporters, “I really didn’t have a childhood.”

He spent the next four years as a cabin boy on a Maritime freighter where he sang and played harmonica in the off-hours. Upon his return, he bought a $5.95 guitar from the Eaton’s catalogue and began appearing at his hometown clubs with famed American country/bluesman Jimmy Rodgers and Wilf Carter, his earliest role models.

In 1934 he landed a regular guest spot on Halifax radio station, CHNS — but he sang for free. Snow was on welfare that year when his wife Minnie gave birth to their son, Jimmy Rodgers Snow.

However, Snow and his Rainbow Ranch Boys were subsequently hired by CBC Radio and in 1936 he signed with RCA Victor’s Bluebird label in Montreal — the start of a 45-year relationship that stands as a music industry record.

Billed as “Hank Snow, The Singing Ranger,” he began releasing singles that made him a Canadian star. But Snow was determined to crack the lucrative U.S. market. In 1946 he worked his travelling show (which included his trick horse, Shawnee) from West Virginia to Hollywood but returned to Canada in frustration.
 

Hank Snow has performed with such country music luminaries as Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams Sr., Willie Nelson, and Chet Atkins. Viewed here in 1959 with Elvis Presley, Hank Snow launched Presley’s career in Tampa, Florida, in 1955. [Photo, courtesy The Friends of Hank Snow Society]

However, he was meeting American stars like Ernest Tubbs. And Snow’s career turned around overnight with the 1950 release of “I’m Moving On,” which went straight to the top of the country charts and “The Hit Parade.” That song held down No. 1 in the Billboard chart for an unprecedented 49 weeks and has since been covered by more than 25 artists including Ray Charles, Rex Harrison, and Al Hirt.

In 1951, Snow signed on with Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry radio show along with legendary Hank Williams Sr. That year, he placed four more singles in the Top 10 of the country charts, and in 1952 he was named Cashbox magazine’s “Best Country Artist” on the strength of the No. 1 single, “I Don’t Hurt Anymore.”

Now that he was one of C&W’s hottest acts, Snow’s performance fee skyrocketed from $25 to $500 per night, and he soon purchased a three-acre home in Madison, Tennessee.

Snow can lay claim to giving the great Elvis Presley his first gig, in 1955, as one of the support acts at his All-Star Jamboree in Tampa, Florida. He later helped convince RCA Victor to sign up the young singer and steered him into the hands of his notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

In addition to his steady solo releases, Snow has collaborated with country luminaries like Chet (“Mr. Guitar”) Atkins on two early 1960 albums and Willie Nelson on the 1985 release, “Brand on my Heart.”

In 1985, Snow owned 30 guitars and more than 50 rhinestone suits. But he never distanced himself from his fans, touring war camps in Europe, Vietnam, and Korea, playing charity shows for underprivileged children and other causes, and condemning the slick production and suggestive themes of rock and New Country music.

Snow still lives outside Nashville and performs occasionally at the Grand Ole Opry. In 1979 he was elected into America’s Country Music Hall of Fame and received a special JUNO award from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (with the presentation made by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau). He is also a member of the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Country Music Association’s Hall of Honour, the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame (Nashville), the Jimmy Rodgers Hall of Fame (Meridian, Mississippi), and the Nebraska Western Hall of Fame.

Perhaps his most lasting legacy will be the new Hank Snow Music Centre in his Nova Scotia hometown. Opened on June 17, 1996 by the Friends of Hank Snow Society, this museum (housed in a renovated Canadian National Railway station) has a full range of Hank history and memorabilia — including his canary yellow 1947 Cadillac convertible.

While criticized in some quarters for having become Americanized, Snow remains a staple on Down East country radio stations, alongside Carter. While for years there were rumours of a rivalry between the two, in his autobiography, The Hank Snow Story, Snow relates, “I met Wilf and we became close friends and did tours together in Canada. He gave me his old bronc-riding saddle which I still have.... It told me what a fine friend he was to part with such a treasure.”
 

Dubbed “Montana Slim” by Bert Parks, Wilf Carter, in the 1950s, was the biggest draw in country music. His travelling troupe, which included daughters Carol and Sheila, was labelled “The Family Show with the Folks You Know” when it toured Canada and the United States. [Photo, courtesy The Charles J. Humber Collection]

Hailing from Port Hilford, Nova Scotia, Wilfred Arthur Charles Carter was one of nine children. He drove oxen teams by the age of nine to supplement his minister father’s salary. When a travelling show came to town, the youngster spent his quarter-a-day wage to attend (against his parents’ orders) and was dazzled by a performer called “The Yodelling Fool.”

At 16, Carter quit school to work as a farmhand. In 1920, he and a friend took the weekly grain harvest train out to Calgary; however, he headed to the horse farms instead. Carter spent several years as a cowboy and became a rodeo rider under the tutelage of former Calgary Stampede champion Pete Knight.

He would sing and strum guitar in the bunkhouses and Calgary streets and, in 1930, was hired by radio station CFCN to appear on its weekly hoedown broadcast for $5 per week. A stint as a Canadian Pacific Railway tour guide/entertainer allowed him to hone his Western-style vocals and Swiss-style yodels in the echoes of the Rocky Mountains.

In 1934, Carter was recruited by RCA Victor (Montreal) and released his first single, “My Swiss Midnight Lullaby.” The song became the first-ever hit on Canadian radio and, the following year, Carter took the advice of well-connected American millionaire G.B. Mitchell (whom he had met on a trail ride) to try his luck south of the border.

He arrived for his audition at CBS radio in New York in his usual cowboy attire, was immediately hired, and given a daily 15-minute radio slot. Dubbed “Montana Slim” by his announcer Bert Parks, Carter became a hit and his show was carried on more than 250 CBS affiliate stations between 1935 and 1937. At one point he was receiving some 10,000 fan letters per week, more than CBS singing star Kate Smith.

With his folksy manner, Carter became the voice of the Depression for many Canadians. However, in 1940 he and his wife Bobbie were involved in a serious car crash which left him unable to play live for almost a decade.

A record crowd, approaching 50,000, packed Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition in the summer of 1950 to welcome him back to the stage. And during the 1950s his travelling troupe (which included his daughters Sheila and Carol) was the biggest draw in Canadian country music — and toured the U.S. — billed as “The Family Show With The Folks You Know.”

Carter’s traditional Country & Western image would soon fall out of step with the new Nashville country scene and its pop overtones. However, his Canadian profile remained high through regular guest spots on CBC-TV’s “The Tommy Hunter Show,” and he continued to tour and record into the 1990s.

A big thrill for Carter came in 1970 when he was asked to be Grand Marshal of the Calgary Stampede and played to full houses for the week. In 1991, he staged his Last Roundup Tour — at the age of 87 — selling out all nine Canadian dates.

Carter died of a stomach tumour at his Scottsdale, Arizona, home on December 7, 1996. He was 91. He is a member of the Canadian Country Music Association’s Hall of Honour, Canada’s JUNO Hall of Fame, the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame (Nashville), and the Horseman’s Hall of Fame (Calgary).

Tommy Hunter remembers Carter as one of the most requested guests on his weekly TV show. “It was just down-home songs, simple songs,” he told Canadian Press of Carter’s appeal. “There’s a lot of people who will shed many tears at the passing of Wilf Carter because he was a wonderful man.”

Michael Beggs