It was not just to Stevedore Steve that things were happening; things were changing everywhere with the advent of the mid-1970s. The Parti Quebecois was looming over the horizon; Joe Clark was the new rising star of the Tories; the old Canada was being transformed into the realm of the global village. Since the Centennial bash in 1967, Canada was felt grown up. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was the first Canadian Prime Minister to offer us youth and vigour, hope and belief in our national potential. Then the FLQ came and struck terror into our hearts, the War Measures Act was used to round up innocent people who had no rights or privileges. And then we nearly lost the world hockey crown when the Russians came shooting in 1972. These things brought us a new sense of reality that was a little hard to swallow.

With this kind of background the Canadian music scene was shifting gears as well. With the new Canadian Content rules and the Juno Awards in place we experienced a hyper-jump in certain parts of the industry. In the trenches though things appeared calm, much as they always had been. It was in the "Industry" that things were happening at break-neck speed. Changes in structure, in tax laws, in Canada Council grants were all happening withing a short period of time. The seediest sides of the business were no longer deemed acceptable: no longer would unsigned contracts, unpaid royalties, ignoring artistic rights be acceptable in the Canadian Recording Industry Association. It was necessary to clean up the acts of those establishments who were obvious embarrassments. With newer music companies taking advantage of the so-called plusses, it was either adapt to change or else.

The last real bastion of the old world ways of the Canadian music industry was the Country Music scene. For whatever reasons, artists were still being treated as ignorant fools, not paid their fair share of royalties, and most were still held under dubious contracts to two-bit publishing and recording companies.

Winston 'Scotty' Fitzgerald, one of the greatest, most successful Cape Breton fiddlers to record, was in Toronto around that time; he asked to be driven to an address in Don Mills, an internal suburb of the city. He knocked at the door and went into the house for fifteen minutes before returning to his friend in the waiting car and announcing: "That's the first time I've ever been paid."¹ He was given $500. by George I. Taylor, President and owner of Rodeo Records, parent company to the Banff and Celtic labels, as well as eastern Canadian distributor of Aragon Records of Vancouver. Scotty had recorded albums for the Celtic label in the 1950s and early 60s, many having been sold in Scotland and throughout Canada.

Things got so bad that Cape Breton fiddlers - many of whom had recorded for Rodeo - stopped recording altogether from about 1965. One of them was Dan Joe MacInnis:

Coupled with the sleeve design, the distribution and marketing of the material were also managed by the recording companies, as was the case with the early 78's, and Dan Joe accepted this practice as the acceptable way to do business. Despite the fact that the new vinyl format was more durable and user-friendly, Dan Joe was not enticed to become personally involved in the marketing aspect which would allow him to distribute some LP's, at least locally, so that he could realize some share of the profits from sales. In summary, the only aspect of the recording which involved Dan Joe was his actual performance of the music - everything else was left for the exploitation by the recording industry itself. Dan Joe simply did not ask questions about the business side of this enterprise, and that was fine with the industry representatives! ²

It seems that the prestige of having a recording on a major label, being able to receive some airplay on the radio, was enough to entice most artists to record. Eventually the Cape Breton artists started to realize that they were being duped by these companies, that their handshake contract was a one way street. Again, Sheldon MacInnis explains in his book:

By 1965, Dan Joe, like other fiddlers, began to lose interest in the recording studio, probably because of his busy performing schedule of concerts and dances, which consumed much of his time and provided him with a great deal of satisfaction; the negative experiences surrounded the use of person recorders; and the lack of monetary return from commercial recording industry. this caused a dislike and even mistrust of the recording industry by many fiddlers who had recorded earlier.³

Mac Beattie, bandleader for the Ottawa Valley Melodiers, who composed many of the songs recorded by the group on its 11 albums during its 30 year career, was only ever paid 2 cents a copy for every album sold. He never received  mechanical or public performance royalties until after his death in 1982. Again it was George Taylor of Rodeo Records who held out. Somehow he had managed to get his hands on Beattie's public performance royalties, something that he was not entitled to. Through fancy bookkeeping mechanics, many of the artists were lead to believe that they actually owed the record company money.

"It was a joke," explained Marie Beattie, Mac's wife. "Oh, I remember the last time Mac and I had dinner with Taylor; they were busy discussing Mac's next album and when I asked where Mac's royalties were I got a swift kick in the leg and a nasty glare (from Mac). He didn't want me to jeopardize his recording career. I used to get so mad at Mac! He'd tell me that he was well aware of the fact that Taylor was ripping him off, but when it came time to confront him about it, he'd just back off." ⁴

Mac Beattie was acutely aware of the fact that as an ageing country act he would have great difficulty getting any kind of recording deal elsewhere.

(Mac Beattie, 1980, courtesy Marie Beattie)

I looked up some of the contracts signed by artists with Rodeo Records in the offices of Holborne Distribution who purchased the Rodeo catalogue just before Taylor died in the early 80s. The one page documents had no dates, no terms, no publishing deals, no managerial deals and no end. They simply stated that so-and-so has entered into a recording agreement with Rodeo Records, signed (by the artist and George I. Taylor) without witness. After Mac Beattie's death, an autobiography which contained some poorly made sheet music was self-published by the family.

Marie: "He (Taylor) claimed that I had to give him a cut because he owned the publishing."

Marie persisted. Mac was gone now and it Taylor would have to deal with her. When she cornered Taylor about a compilation album he had released without permission of the artists (The Saga of Canadian Country and Folk Music) he claimed that it was just a promotional album, that none of them were in the stores. When she purchased one in Ottawa she kept the receipt sealed in the white plastic bag as proof that the albums were being sold for profit. Taylor backed off and allowed her to publish the book.

Interestingly enough, Holborne still distributes recordings by many of the Rodeo artists, many of which have been re-released on CD and Cassettes based on the contracts signed by these artists who lacked professional guidance and council, who knew nothing about these kinds of deals, and nothing about royalties.

Rodeo is only an example of what was the practised norm in the music business at the time. Examples of rip-offs ring through the most sacred halls of the recording industry world-wide. Executives were quick to pounce on un-suspecting musicians. Arc Records, Marathon, Condor, Aragon and others, including some of the more reputable major labels, were all guilty of this sinister activity. Boot Records, following on the heels of this practice, and having continued in the lineage of Canadian Music Sales and their Dominion Records label, were no exception. It was just the way things were done in the music biz at the time.

When Stevedore Steve signed with Boot, he signed up with friends. Little attention was paid to the language of the recording contract, and certainly there was no mention of who was responsible for what. Did signing a recording deal automatically mean that you were also signed to a publishing deal with another company? Was this also a managerial deal? Was there any mention of how royalties were to be paid, how often and to whom? Was legal representation present at the signing of these deals? There are a thousand other questions and most of the answers are predictable.

Such was the state of affairs.

Stevedore Steve escaped most of the madness, probably because of his close relations to Connors, one of the principal partners of Boot Records, until the boom dropped on his head in the mid-1970s.

With the release of his third Boot album, Lester The Lobster & Other Hits of Stevedore Steve, the mighty Stevedore was flying high. Even Connors didn't have a greatest hits album at the time. In the liner notes:

Then, in 1970 he toured Ontario. It was during this tour that he met record producer, Jury Krytiuk. This meeting led to a recording contract first with Dominion Records and then later with Krytiuk's Boot Records. It has been a fruitful relationship which has produced many national hit records including "Lester the Lobster" which hit the number one spot on the national country charts.⁵

Meanwhile, Steve was on the road a lot. He was experiencing a lot of frustration and difficulty with the record company. He would travel to places that had no advanced copies of his records for local radio stations. If there was a music store in town, it would not have his albums in stock. If his private stock, purchased off the company for sales off the stage, was running low, he had a hell of a time replenishing it.

"I'd phone them, I'd tell them, 'By god, get me some albums man! People are crying for them and I'm all out.' But they just wouldn't send the damn things. I'd miss out on so many sales."
 
Whatever the reason, Steve was getting very upset with the company. He thought that it must be some sort of conspiracy, that maybe the company didn't want him eclipsing the career of Connors, or even coming close. As far fetched as that might seem, in Steve and Gini's minds, while out on the road earning a living, it festered a line of mistrust.

In 1977 the Foote's received a letter from Revenue Canada: they owed over $12,000. in back taxes. They couldn't understand it - they had been operating the same way as before, nothing had changed and now the tax department was knocking on their door. At first they thought it must be a computer error or something. How could they possibly owe the government that kind of money? It was about half of what they earned that year before expenses. Something was wrong.

This paralleled a Revenue Canada change in the way taxes would be reported. Although officially self-employed, professional musicians who were earning the bulk of their money through the books of record companies, management companies or anywhere else, were now considered to be working for them. In other words, the companies were required to provide T-4 slips on their earnings. With the way in which many recording companies were operating, large sums of money were constantly travelling from one leger sheet to the next in an attempt to evade capture as taxable assets. It was easy for them to issue a T-4 claiming that they were paying out moneys to their clients while stuffing it into areas they considered the artists owed moneys back to them. So while Stevedore Steve might have accrued a lot of money, according to the company he also owed them a lot of money, and instead of paying it to him, they just kept it and reported it as a pay out to the artist and a recoup of funds owed to them. They paid no tax on it but now the artist was supposed to even though he/she did not actually see any of that money. This was going on all over the place and many musicians, mostly in the country field, claimed bankruptcy as a result. Many left the music business broken, busted and bitter. Such was the fate of Stevedore Steve.

Since they were constantly on the road, their van was packed with almost everything valuable to them: PA, instruments, stage costumes, albums. Since the Foote's could not pay their back taxes, their case was passed on to a collection agency who confiscated everything they owned except for the clothes on their back.

"We just watched them take it all away," said Steve. "Everything. We said nothing and just as they were about to leave, I said to one of them that my guitar was my bread and butter. He said, "What guitar?" and I said, "Why that's pretty good of you fella." ⁶

But for all intents and purposes, this was the beginning of the end of Stevedore Steve.

Notes
1. Sandy MacIntyre on the Great North Wind radio program, Feb 11, 1998
2. A Journey In Celtic Music Cape Breton Style - Sheldon MacInnis 1997, UCCB Press
3. A Journey In Celtic Music Cape Breton Style - Sheldon MacInnis 1997, UCCB Press
4. Conversations with Marie Beattie by Steve Fruitman, circa 1994
5. Liner notes of Lester The Lobster & Other Hits of Stevedore Steve, Boot Records BTM 2004 1976
6. From a CBC Television feature, On The Road Again, profile on Stevedore Steve, April 1996