Rogers, Stan

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Stan Rogers

Singer, songwriter

Although less well known outside of Canada than his contemporary Gordon Lightfoot, singer-songwriter Stan Rogers commanded strong affection in the folk music community with his vivid, realistic songs of Canadian life. According to Northern Journey: A Guide to Canadian Folk Music, "Many fans consider Stan Rogers the greatest Canadian folksinger ever." Rogers died a tragic and early death at age 33 in an airliner fire, but his legacy includes a strong influence on a creatively fertile group of younger Canadian songwriters that has included his brother Garnet.

Stanley Allison Rogers was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on November 29, 1949. His father, Nathan, was a bricklayer. Both his parents had joined a migration of Canadians from the country's Maritime provinces on the Atlantic seaboard to the country's industrial heartland in Ontario, but they retained strong ties to Canso, Nova Scotia, the ancestral home of Rogers's mother. Rogers grew up spending every summer in Nova Scotia. Music ran in the family; Nathan Rogers had a strong voice, and an uncle gave Stan his first guitar when he was five—a homemade contraption constructed from birch wood, welding rods, and a toothbrush.

Rogers began to focus seriously on music in high school. For a while he joined the rock revolution as a bassist, but the influence of Canadian folk stars Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot steered him toward folk music in the late 1960s. His Aunt Jane, who lived in Canso, urged him to write songs about Nova Scotia, and he responded with a group of detailed story songs.

These set him apart from the introspective productions of other folk-pop songwriters of the day, and he was able to launch a professional career in 1969 while attending classes intermittently at McMaster University in Hamilton and at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. Ontario audiences responded to Rogers as an authentic voice of the culture of the Maritimes. But in the Maritime Provinces themselves he was initially less popular. "We were coming from ‘away’ [a name for outsiders]," recalled Garnet Rogers, who joined his brother's band in 1973, in an interview in the Boston-area Patriot Ledger newspaper that was reproduced on Stan Rogers's website. "They wanted to hear Hank Williams. Then we'd come back to Ontario and play the club circuit, the coffeehouses, and they would see us as being a real Maritime act."

Rogers found a new outlet for his songs when he began to receive commissions from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for music suitable for documentary programs, and for a folk-music "opera," So Hard to Be So Hard. A major career breakthrough came with his appearance at Canada's prestigious Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1975. After that show, Rogers was brought into the studio by festival director Mitch Podolak to record an album for his Barnswallow label. With a fund of songs about the Maritimes drawn from his earlier tours and from his CBC soundtrack material, Rogers was in a position to release a strong debut with Fogarty's Cove in 1977. The album showcased the six-foot four-inch Rogers's rich baritone voice in front of a small instrumental group that included a flute. "Barrett's Privateers" was a depiction of an eighteenth-century pirate ship, historically authentic and unsentimental in the lament of its young narrator, who loses both his legs. Though most of the songs were narrative portraits, perhaps the album's best-known track was "Forty-Five Years," a warm chronicle of a long love affair.

After the success of Fogarty's Cove, Rogers formed his own record label, taking the album's name as that of the new company. He released Turnaround in 1978, another album that reached into his earlier songbag, and followed it with Between the Breaks … Live in 1979. That album included covers of songs by other writers, as well as original Rogers compositions. Sales figures for Rogers's music are difficult to establish, for many of them were sold at concerts and in small, independent shops not tied into the machinery of music industry distribution. One distributor, however, pointed in 1997 to strong ongoing sales of Rogers's albums and estimated that Fogarty's Cove had sold more than 100,000 copies—a figure good for platinum status in Canada.

Rogers released Northwest Passage in 1981, and it has generally been accounted among his finest releases. In the songs for the album, Rogers turned from the Maritimes to the farms of the Canadian prairies. "Field Behind the Plow" influenced, among others, North Dakota farmer songwriter Chuck Suchy, who said on his website that when a friend gave him a tape of the song, "It was at that moment that I realized that the life I was immersed in was worthy of song." CBC listeners later nominated the album's title track as Canada's unofficial second national anthem. Rogers's Canadian portraits also had a strong influence on younger singers such as James Keelaghan and the group Blue Rodeo. His nearly 100 songs have been recorded by artists ranging from Scotland's Battlefield Band and Tannahill Weavers to the American folksters Peter, Paul & Mary, and even by children's star Raffi.

Some of Rogers's recordings had orchestral string backing, and by the standards of folk music in the United States they qualified as heavily produced. But the sparse For the Family (1983), a selection of traditional songs, placed Rogers and his guitar front and center; he produced the album himself. With several albums under his belt, Rogers began to gain attention beyond Canada. He represented Nova Scotia at the Gathering of the Clans in Scotland in 1981, and he frequently toured the folk circuit in the northeastern United States. In 1983 he headed for the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas.

As he returned home on Air Canada Flight 797 on June 2, 1983, a fire broke out in the plane's rear restroom. Pilots made an emergency landing at Greater Cincinnati Airport in Kentucky, but 23 passengers died of smoke inhalation as the plane was evacuated. Among them was Rogers, who was said to have helped other passengers to safety. The loss of Rogers was still felt keenly in the folk music community two decades later—even more so in view of the depth of talent revealed in the substantial body of unreleased recordings left behind at his death. The Fogarty's Cove label, under the leadership of Rogers's widow, Ariel, released them periodically over the 1980s and 1990s; From Fresh Water was a completed cycle of songs about Canada's Great Lakes region that included a protest song, "Tiny Fish for Japan." Home in Halifax was a recording of a Nova Scotia house concert, while Poetic Justice (1996) showcased music written by Rogers for two plays broadcast on CBC radio.

Selected discography

Fogarty's Cove, Barnswallow, 1977.

Turnaround, Fogarty's Cove, 1978.

Between the Breaks … Live!, Fogarty's Cove, 1979.

Northwest Passage, Fogarty's Cove, 1981.

For the Family, Folk Tradition, 1983.

From Fresh Water, Fogarty's Cove, 1984.

Home in Halifax, Fogarty's Cove, 1992.

Poetic Justice: Two Radio Plays, Fogarty's Cove, 1996.

For the Record …

Born Stanley Allison Rogers on November 29, 1949, in Hamilton, ON, Canada; died in an airliner fire, June 2, 1983, in Cincinnati, OH. Education: Attended McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

Played in rock bands as bassist, 1960s; began performing as folksinger in clubs in Ontario and in Maritime provinces, 1969; wrote songs for CBC documentaries, 1970s; appeared at Winnipeg Folk Festival, 1975; released debut album, Fogarty's Cove, 1977; formed Fogarty's Cove label, made U.S. debut, released Turnaround, 1978; released Between the Breaks … Live!, 1979; performed in Scotland and at Kerrville (TX) Folk Festival, released Northwest Passage, 1981; released For the Family, 1983; several posthumous releases.

Awards: Diplôme d'Honneur (Canada).