It's the Northern Ontario national anthem, stomp it!

BALLINAFAD SATURDAY NIGHT: Me and Tom.
That's the name of the the town the Connors lived in
when I met them, several decades ago. I still have that sweater.

Wait'll you hear what happened to my cousin Rose's nephew David's cousin's son Mason.

Mason was on board a flight recently and found himself sitting beside the late Stompin' Tom Connors' widow Lena. She told Mason the following.

Actually, when Rose shared this news, I thought, "Right. Rose's nephew David's cousin's son Mason. It's as if I was talking to Lena myself." Ha.

Anyway Rose told me Mrs. Connors let Mason know that many years earlier, some bigshot Nashville music producer offered Conners a million bucks for the rights to his song Sudbury Saturday Night on the condition that he change "Sudbury" to "Syracuse."

Tom turned the guy down. Flat. That's a music pun.

Advantage: Peter. 

And thank you, Mason. Your reportorial skills and nose for news are peerless. It's a great story and you had no way of knowing your distant relative here in Toronto would be so charged up by it.

Seriously. 

The somewhat goofy song has been a part of my life since I first heard it in, I believe, 1969. The first verse and chorus of Sudbury Saturday Night might be the one musical soundbite I've performed more than any other. I even did an accapella version unloading ice from a tractor trailer at Burning Man, in 2016.

The girls are out to bingo

And the boys are gettin' stinko

They'll think no more of INCO

On a Sudbury Saturday night.

The glasses they will tinkle

As their eyes begin to twinkle

And we'll think no more of INCO

On a Sudbury Saturday night.

Etc.

My aging Fender acoustic guitar basically plays the Sudbury Saturday Night opening riff all by itself. 

It's hard to imagine my life without Sudbury Saturday Night. 

And if Connors had gone for the big bucks and sold out, I'm thinking Sudbury Saturday Night--Northern Ontario's national anthem, really--would have disappeared. 

Such a thing has happened before, you know. 

About 70 years ago, one Gordon Jenkins wrote a soulful piece that his wife Beverley performed on a radio show that had, among the listeners, a young member of the U.S. Airforce named Johnny Cash. After completing his service, ex-staff seargent Cash started making records, and one of the biggest hits was Folsom Prison Blues. 

In '69, Jenkins successfully sued Cash for copyright infringement. I'm betting you've never heard Jenkins composition, Crescent City Blues which sorta disappeared, until you click here. Cash later admitted to the infraction.

I know it's not the same for the Sudbury song. But a good story's a yarn.

And my sixth or seventh cousin twice removed cousin/nephew Mason, who I haven't met (yet) clearly knows a thing or two about storytelling. Maybe he'll be a journalist like his dad's cousin David's aunt Rose's cousin me.

And to think the story came directly from Lena's lips to my ear.