Born in Canada

AMG Review of Born in Canada

Joe Viglione
All Music Guide

Born in Canada was another reason for Wand to re-release the Guess Who's hit "Shakin' All Over" along with nine other tracks: three by Randy Bachman, two by Chad Allan, one by bassist Jim Kale, and three additional songs by various writers. The title on the album is "Sown & Grown in Canada," but on the label, spine, and back cover it's Born in Canada, which has stuck as the "official" name for this collection. Sifting through Pickwick Records' budget releases Wild One and The Guess Who Play Pure Guess Who; Legend's 1990s CD releases Hey Ho What You Do to Me!, It's Time, and a different package called Shakin' All Over; along with Scepter/Wand's two releases, Shakin' All Over by the Guess Who's Chad Allan and this title, fans have lots of detective work in store figuring out the band's pre-RCA/Jack Richardson catalog. Bobby Lewis' 1961 hit "Tossin' & Turnin'" shows up on the Born in Canada and Shakin' All Over LPs sounding like an outtake from labelmates the Kingsmen's various albums, chock-full of filler. The interesting thing about all of these Chad Allan & the Original Reflections sessions passed off as the Guess Who is the picture of a band evolving prior to the focus of a producer like Jack Richardson, who four years after "Shakin' All Over" helped them break the Top 25 in the summer of 1965. Also like the Kingsmen, one of the radio stations the hit launched out of was WBZ, a "clear channel" signal based in Boston which reached across many states with little competition on the "clear channel." Jim Kale noted in an interview in Goldmine Magazine with writer and critic Joe Tortelli that promotion man and future Quality Records president George Struth put "Guess Who?" on the "Shakin' All Over" disc to circumvent the hostile attitude Canadian programmers had toward product, ironically enough, "sown & grown in Canada." It worked. But so did the great version of the Johnny Kidd & the Pirates cover, which has more to it than many critics of the day would care to admit. Heck, if the British were going to lift from Motown Records, what was wrong with a Canadian band who had traveled to the U.K. for television appearance prior to their success doing a little importing and exporting of their own? Kale says they were "into Cliff Richard & the Shadows" and it shows. "Clock on the Wall" is not classic Randy Bachman, but it sure is valuable considering how his writings achieved classic hits for Bachman-Turner Overdrive as well as the Guess Who. The album does become as tedious as a Kingsmen record after you've spun the hit, but that was the '60s and for followers of the group, Born in Canada has to get filed in the collection. At least the Scepter/Wand releases have better clarity than what was put out on Pickwick.