Produced at CKCO-TV commencing 1954
The Silver Bar Ranch show was one of the first shows produced at CKCO in 1954 and hit the air every Saturday evening from 7-7.30. The Band Manger was Mr George Matheson from Princeton. He drove a big Caddy at the time and did all of the bands bookings. Our sponsor was Kitchener Beverages who distributed Wishing Well Orange and Pepsi. On the side of our set they had a big wishing well filled with bottles of Wishing Well Orange.
Johnny Siska was the band leader, Earl Fries guitar and later with the Chaparrals and now retired. Mike Slauenwhite who played fiddle and also sang. He also played for the Kitchener symphony. Wally Becker played stand up bass (since passed) and last, but not least, the Fries sisters who sang in harmony on the show and the dances. They were very popular.
Oh I forgot to mention 13-year-old Bob Tremblay. I played triple neck steel for the group and for the first year I had to be transported to Kitchener from Guelph and picked up in the middle of the night. I had only been with the group for a couple of dances before having to do a TV show. I remember I was scared and a month later in Oct. I turned 14.
The following year I was allowed to drive my parents car because at the time if you had your parents consent in writing you could go down to the police station and show proof and get your licence.
The Silver Bar Ranch show was one of the first shows produced at CKCO in 1954 and hit the air every Saturday evening from 7-7.30. The Band Manger was Mr George Matheson from Princeton. He drove a big Caddy at the time and did all of the bands bookings. Our sponsor was Kitchener Beverages who distributed Wishing Well Orange and Pepsi. On the side of our set they had a big wishing well filled with bottles of Wishing Well Orange.
Johnny Siska was the band leader, Earl Fries guitar and later with the Chaparrals and now retired. Mike Slauenwhite who played fiddle and also sang. He also played for the Kitchener symphony. Wally Becker played stand up bass (since passed) and last, but not least, the Fries sisters who sang in harmony on the show and the dances. They were very popular.
Oh I forgot to mention 13-year-old Bob Tremblay. I played triple neck steel for the group and for the first year I had to be transported to Kitchener from Guelph and picked up in the middle of the night. I had only been with the group for a couple of dances before having to do a TV show. I remember I was scared and a month later in Oct. I turned 14.
The following year I was allowed to drive my parents car because at the time if you had your parents consent in writing you could go down to the police station and show proof and get your licence.
Special thanks to Bob Tremblay for his photos and his recollections.
Updated April 22, 2009
Flash from the Past: Silver Bar Ranch got toes tapping on CKCO
Aug 17, 2013 Waterloo Region Record
Johnny Siska and the Silver Bar Ranch performed for CKCO views live on Saturday nights from the station’s studio on King Street West in Kitchener. From left to right: Walter Boettger, Earl Fries, Gord Affeldt, Mike Slauenwhite, John Siska, Betty Fries, Elaine Fries. – Murray’s Studio, Waterloo,Courtesy of David Moore
If you tuned into CKCO TV on Saturday nights in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there’s a good chance you saw Johnnie Siska and the Silver Bar Ranch band performing, along with a troupe of square dancers.
Last week’s “mystery” photo is a postcard view of the band, with Siska on the accordion. The image is credited to Murray’s Studio of Waterloo and was likely snapped in about 1958. The show was broadcast live from CKCO (now CTV Kitchener) on King Street West and sponsored by Kitchener Beverages, which promoted its Wishing Well orange drink on the set.
Our copy of the postcard came from collector David Moore of Waterloo, who as a boy took accordion lessons with Siska in a room below the Ritz Music shop on Benton Street.
Siska, who died in 2009, was also a longtime City Cab driver in Kitchener. His obituary described him as a childhood prodigy on the accordion who started playing when he was four.
Paul Baltaz, a cousin, phoned to say he remembers Siska as “a real go-getter” who had invested in several apartments while still a young man.
Readers were quick to identify the band members in the photo. From left to right, it’s Walter Boettger on bass, Earl Fries on guitar, Gord Affeldt on steel guitar, Mike Slauenwhite on fiddle, Siska on accordion and the singing sisters, Betty and Elaine Fries.
Also a singer, Earl Fries was later with The Chaparrals, a popular band that several times performed for soldiers at U.S. military bases in the Far East. Slauenwhite, who died in 2010, was also a K-W Symphony violinist.
The Fries sisters were teenagers when the post card appeared, living with their parents on a farm south of Ayr. They joined the band almost by accident, Elaine Fries of Kitchener recalled this week.
It happened when Earl Fries, a distant cousin, spotted them during a dance at the Bridgeport Casino (now the site of Golf’s Steak House) and invited them on stage to sing. One thing led to another.
“I don’t really remember how it started, but they must have talked to our parents,” Elaine Fries said.
She and Betty — their sister Marlene danced with the band — were driven to events by the band’s manager, George Matheson, a real estate broker in Princeton, Ont., southwest of Cambridge in Oxford County.
It was Matheson, also a fiddler, who helped get the CKCO show started. In the early 1950s he owned a dance hall in Princeton — the building now holds Flying Wrenches Automotive at 63 Main St. S. — and often booked a Kitchener band called Johnny Siska and the Westernaires to play there.
According to Lynn Russwurm of Elmira, Matheson convinced Siska to rename the band the Silver Bar Ranch Boys, a change that happened sometime about 1957.
Russwurm played guitar with the Westernaires in the early 1950s — and his wife, Laura, sang with the group. Then in 1954 the Russwurms left to form their own band, the Pine River Troubadours.
Years later, Russwurm wrote a short history of the Westernaires that was published in the newsletter of the Wingham-based Barn Dance Historical Society. It described how the Westernaires got started in 1946 when a few musicians began playing on the picket line during a strike by transit drivers working for the old Kitchener Public Utilities Commission.
“One of the strikers was a popular accordion player by the name of Johnny Siska, who had done time in the Armed Forces during the recent war and was now back home to carve out a place for himself.”
Regarding the Silver Bar Ranch, Russwurm’s article noted that Siska and Matheson eventually had a falling out.
“However, George had registered the Silver Bar name and the band chose to stay with George and this effectively forced Johnny out of his own band. The band continued working under George for a few more years, they did two more TV series on CKCO-TV . . . and sometime in the Sixties they folded.”
Siska later headed Johnny Siska and the Coronets, which performed regularly at the Coronet Motor Hotel in Kitchener.
Matheson’s daughter, Shirley, was a square dancer with the Silver Bar Ranch group and met her future husband, Garry Walters, when he auditioned to dance with the band.
Years later, with their children, the Walters launched the Walters Dinner Theatre in Bright, Ont. Its 2013 theatre season is dedicated to the memory of Garry Walters, who passed away in June.
The Silver Bar Ranch had other band members over the years. One was guitar player Bob Tremblay, who was 13 and living with his parents in Guelph when he got a chance to audition with Siska in 1959 at the band leader’s Mill Street home in Kitchener. He took along a three-neck Gibson Console Grande steel guitar his parents had just purchased for him.
He was lucky because Affeldt had just left the band, Tremblay recalled this week. Siska listened to him play, then said: “Would you like to play with us? You’re hired.”
“He (Siska) was quite the character. He always had a big smile,” Tremblay said.
The Silver Bar Ranch was a winner on CBC Television’s Pick the Stars talent show, receiving enough prize money that members could buy matching pants with a stripe along the seams.
For the CBC competition, the band played Texas Plains by the U.S. singer Stuart Hamblen. That was also the Silver Bar Ranch theme song, Tremblay said.
He still performs regularly, often with Lynn Russwurm.
jfear@therecord.com