Peter McBurnie's Tribute To Johnny Cash

It was Yorkville Avenue around 1968 when I first heard Peter McBurnie (ala Orbit Starr) sing his new song “Hey Johnny”, a tribute song to Johnny Cash. I always looked forward to hearing new songs from Pete because it energized the whole street, you could feel the excitement whenever he made the scene.

We were all fans of Johnny Cash and this was a great way to pay tribute to one of our hero’s. I started singing the song myself and have included it in my own repertoire on many accessions through the years, my audiences have always been very enthusiastic but the Country fans were especially drawn to this Johnny tribute.

Now that there has been a renewed focus on Johnny Cash through the recently released film portraying his life’s work, I thought it appropriate to make available these never released song for all his friends to listen to. It was always a dream of Pete’s to play this song for Johnny Cash personally but it never came to pass, Nashville can sometimes feel like a world away when you’re just an unknown from Small-town, it’s too bad because I think Johnny would have liked it. Peter painted this oil of me for an old album cover...

Other Songs: There is another tribute song that Peter wrote "I always Wanted It That way", a song written shortly after Elvis' death. I know that Peter was influenced by Elvis' early recordings and this song reflects that. I've added two more songs to the list, these four songs written by Peter were recorded at Sound Path Studios in Oakville Ontario in and around 1980. We used some of the members of my band along with some killer harp sounds from Bret Titcolm...

Have a listen to “Hey Johnny” "I always Wanted It That Way" "Trucker" & "Play It Again Sam".

Peter McBurnie Tribute (Orbit Starr) March 6^th 2009 (Posted by John Ellis)

I arrived in Buckfastliegh in Somerset, UK as it was getting dark, the village streets narrowed quickly as I made my way to the town center. Tonight I would stay at “The Kings Arms Hotel” and my plan was to call Hilary and let her know that I was there; she was expecting me because I had been in touch prior to leaving Canada the week before, and I had talked to Peter on the phone just before calling her. I told him I would probably stop in and see Hilary on my way down to Cornwall to see my family, he was very happy about it and asked me to give her a big hug from him. As soon as I was settled in my room I gave Hilary a call but there was no answer, so I left a message to call me at the hotel as soon as she returned.

I was half asleep when the call came through and Hilary was having great difficulty in speaking, I began to understand that her words were not good news and it was when she said that the timing of my visit was unbelievably uncanny that I knew. I thought it before her words were set free; her trembling voice said it all as I listened into the telephone. “Peter is dead, he passed away this morning” and the line was quiet. We didn’t spend much time on the phone because I didn’t want to impose at such a time, but Hilary insisted that I come to visit the next morning, I was thankful because I needed to talk to her more about Peter.

Hilary was a little less shaken the next morning, the shock of the news had been difficult to bare and it was visible in her eyes when I arrived at her door. We shared old memories with each other as we reminisced, we laughed a little too. It was always impossible to talk about Peter without the occasional laugh or smile, tears also. I told her that I had been talking to Peter the week before and that he asked me to give her a big hug, which I gave to her on leaving. She also gave me half a packet of flower seeds she was planning to plant in her garden, so I could plant some in my garden when I returned home, to remember Pete by, it was a lovely sentiment. I can still see her standing alone on her front step as I drove away, and somehow everything seemed to make perfect sense in the end, like the last scene in a play. Peter’s life is a life to be celebrated and enjoyed, he affected a lot of people in a very nice way.

On my way out of Buckfast I stopped at Buckfast Abbey (pictured on right) to say a few words for Peter, I hadn't been in this church since I was a boy...

Peter’s friendship meant everything to me, I valued the role he played as my true friend. We go back a long way, I can’t remember just when we met but it was in the early to mid sixties as far as I can recall. Yorkville Avenue was a new world for me, I guess for all of us, and Peter was a part of that exclusive new world. It was a time of rebirth, a renaissance if you like, mixing up new ideas, new friends, new music and life as our young minds had never seen it before. I worked in ‘The Hamburger Joint’ flipping burgers and it was always high energy when Pete showed up, he would sit right on the counter where we did the cooking, and strumming his jumbo Guild he’d sing his songs with a passion that kept us begging for more. Peter wrote many songs covering all the topics of the day, love, hate, people, politics and they were all great, he was great. Peter had a lot of influence on me as he did with many people I’m sure, and I guess it’s fair to say that I was a follower of his talent, an Apostle perhaps. His reputation soon became bigger than Peter himself, if that were possible, his songs were always requested no matter who was singing them, I have recorded a few of them myself over the years. We watched each others children grow and shared many many family times together. The one thing that I appreciate more than anything else is all the laughs we had, sometimes laughing until it hurt, I’m very sorry to lose my old friend, but I will keep his name on the tip of my tongue and speak it as often as I can...

So long Peter! I’ll see you down the road a piece… John Ellis

PS: I know that Peter had many friends, if you are reading this page and want to share some of your own thoughts and photographs, please send them to me and I will post them here for everyone to read...

For Silva-Kate (Posted by Calvin Greenwood)

Hi Silva;  It was a wondrous thing connecting with you and Melli yesterday!

I really appreciate you calling and am very happy to have you with me now in this difficult time.

I was trying to remember the last time I saw you, do you remember when that could have been? While talking to you I could see the person I remembered probably you at the age of 9-12 years old. Very strange! I may not have seen Melli in even a longer time.

I had to tell you... I was telling my son Quinn about Peter yesterday, a little history. This morning I was in the kitchen doing breakfast chores etc when I remembered such an important aspect of my relationship with Peter. I said to Quinn "what I forgot to mention to you yesterday was that I never in my life laughed so hard with anyone before or since."

That's so very true. That is what I miss more than anything. I think without Peter I have forgotten how to really laugh, how to deeply laugh. Laughing so hard that the back of my head felt like it was cracking. Laughing so hard I couldn't stop... no how.

Tears rolling down my face laughing. I remember a thing Peter loved to do while driving with me in the passenger seat. Peter had a tremendous sense of timing sharpened through his adept Foley work with the inimitable Pandy Talcum. When the car would come to a stop at a pedestrian cross walk Peter would wait until just the exact moment that the unsuspecting pedestrian had cleared the car. He would wait till the back foot of the pedestrian was still in the air before touching the ground and he's honk the horn. This never failed to bring a look of consternation and disbelief on the face of the pedestrian.  It was funny as hell, we would just howl!  Thinking back a lot of the stuff we would do was undoubtedly infantile and prankish.... but it sure was fun and playful.

In our imaginings Peter, at times, was the Great Chief Diassuta and I was Twenty Clouds. We would dialogue in these personas using Native American inflections. I would call Pete and say "Good day Diassuta!" and he would say in a deep prophetic timbre "yes, Twenty Clouds, it is a fine day to die" and we'd carry on our pseudo conversation in first nation's talk.  

There is a painting Peter did of an old wizened Indian Chief standing on a hill with his left arm outstretched majestically overlooking a gathering of his people sitting at his feet on the gentle sloping hill. Perhaps that is where Diassuta came from?  Diassuta was "a river to his people" A forlorn Indian chief looking out at a world taken over by the grubby inept callous white man, bent on destruction and Twenty Clouds was his warrior companion. Together they rode bareback on painted ponies in fanciful chivalrous times.

I have been thinking of Peter constantly since hearing of his passing. Our history together. From the day we first met. It was in front of a restaurant on Avenue Rd near Yorkville. I was walking by the restaurant and Peter stopped me on the street and asked me if I wanted to be in his band, the It group.  Just like that. Really!  He said I had the look. It mattered not that I didn't play a bass guitar, the instrument he wanted me to play. That was in 1964-65. So I would go over to Pete's room, after buying a Hofner Beatle bass and sit with Peter while he went over his songs. He would show me the primary notes to play of the particular chords. Easy enough I suppose. That's how I started to play the bass. After that group split up Peter and I formed the legendary City Muffin Boys.

Peter devoured life. If you were with him you really needed to be ready for the weirdest shit to come down from every which way. Of course there was no real way to be ready but that's the way it was, dodging comets, always sailing upstream head wind and all in a sever hail storm. He was an anti gravity machine. Crossing the road, any old road any old place was an arduous adventure when you were with Peter.

Peter was incredibly intense and passionate. His candle burnt at both ends. There just couldn't be an easy way for Peter. There was only his way. He was an atom buster. A perfect example would take place when ever Peter got beneath the hood of a vehicle. Any one of his many vehicles would be an excellent example of how Peter operated. You just knew there was a disaster in the making when you saw him under the hood or under the chassis. There was no manual for Peter. There was only his way. Piecing that vehicle back together, motor and all, had to done his way even if that meant inventing the wheel all over again. I can hear Pete cursing under the hood of any and all vehicles I ever saw him under. And actually there was nobody that could curse like Peter. He possessed an incredible litany of colorful cuss words and they poured forth at a dizzyingly ferocious unabated rate.

Peter was definitely X-Rated big time! His personality was massive. He was a Black Hole <<a black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, including electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light), can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon. The term derives from the fact that absorption of visible light renders the hole's interior invisible, and indistinguishable from the black space around it. >>

I have been combing my mind for specific happenings... there were so many and now they are sadly fading through time. Talking with you, Silva, ignited that fuse in me, the emotional connection I had with Peter. Life was so much more then, with Peter. So much bigger, meatier, fuller and richer. It is sad that I can't be there with you to share the precious moments we all had with Peter.  It would mean a whole lot to me I realized after and during our conversation. My roots are very much in Toronto and Peter was so much of my life there and I do miss him so!!!!  I hope the world he is in now is a bigger and better fit for who he was and is. May he live forever in our hearts and minds. I know he will in mine. I carry a huge piece of him around with me. I always have and always will!

There's a big hole where Peter once was.

Please tell Pete Jr. for me that I had so much more to say to him but couldn't because I wasn't able to access my deepest emotions at the time we talked. I feel I didn't fully communicate to him what was in my heart. I hadn't really been deeply there yet. Sort of dancing around the periphery.

This is such an important crucial time for Pete Jr., Rosey, Melli and Silva.  You are all about to see and hear everything that was your father from those closest to him that truly loved him and walked life's path with him.

Peter truly was a "river to his people". The world needed to be bigger for him.

Sorry I can't be there to celebrate Peter. Peter's life, so rich so filled with love, must be celebrated.

He tried so hard. Gave so damned much!

Love to you all....   Calvin 

Submitted by: Rainer Soegtrop