In addition to being melodically gifted, he graduated from the Ontario College of Art (now known as the Ontario College of Art & Design University) and worked as a graphic designer for the publishing company Holt, Rinehart and Winston.įamily photo of Mr. “He used to say he bought the car for a song.” “I believe he used the money to buy a Triumph Spitfire,” his wife said. American songwriters Eddie Rambeau and Bud Rehak were credited for writing the song. Balsam wrote and sold the rights to a song that became a pop hit in Canada: Shirley Matthews’s recording of Big Town Boy was a stomping Phil Spector sound-alike that lifted spirits and filled dance floors. “He told me he didn’t mind it, and that he played the guitar there,” she recalled. Balsam, who spent more than a year in tuberculous sanatorium. Presley had “found a new place to dwell,” so did young Mr. “He almost bought a banjo, because he didn’t know the difference,” his wife said. Balsam had first picked up a guitar as a Toronto teenager. Smitten by Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel, Mr. In his review of a later production, The Globe and Mail’s Ray Conlogue praised a “musically sizzling show.” Rather they were character songs of the musical theatre kind, written to move the plot forward or to help a Fraggle express feelings that could not be as communicated as charismatically with the spoken word. Lee (and others, including author Tim Wynne-Jones) were not meant to teach children. Lee, a renowned poet celebrated for his 1974 book of children’s rhymes, Alligator Pie. “We would leave a story meeting, and Phil would have a completed song in his head by the time he got home,” said Mr. The show’s catchy, exuberant theme song, Down in Fraggle Rock, managed to crack the Top 40 chart in the United Kingdom. Balsam, who wrote a staggering 194 original songs for the series, mostly in collaboration with his friend and lyricist Dennis Lee. The anthropomorphic Fraggles were musical creatures, as was Mr. A fantasy meant for the whole family, the show featured five happy songsters whimsically named Gobo, Boober, Mokey, Wembley and Red. It aired on HBO in the United States and appeared in numerous other countries and languages. Fraggle Rock was an Emmy Award-winning series created by The Muppets mastermind Jim Henson and co-produced in Toronto with CBC Television from 1982 to ‘87.
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