More innocent times — Tommy Chong and the Shades, circa the early ’60s

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The Shades Reunion with MC Tommy Chong
Ranchman's
Sunday, December 6 - Sunday, December 6

More in: Rock / Pop

Saying that Tommy Chong has a knack for getting into trouble may be an understatement. Long before his Grammy-winning work with the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, his lengthy television and film career and even his nine-month stint in jail for possessing drug paraphernalia, he was straddling the line of mainstream entertainment and the dark underbelly of the counterculture with Calgary rock ’n’ roll group The Shades. The trouble started before Chong found pot, discovered his first Lenny Bruce record and dropped out of school to learn from the university of the street, man, and it started at Calgary’s own No. 1 Legion.

“The legion rented us the hall and Tommie Melton and I would put on shows, you know entertaining the kids,” recalls Chong. “We formed The Shades and thought we’d be real clever and create a teen club along with it. We were popular, and so naturally we attracted the rougher elements of Calgary. Especially back then in the ’50s, the hoodlums would come out along with everyone else to our dances. The show would end too early and then people would be looking for a party to keep going. Inevitably it would end up at a house that a girl was babysitting at and there’d be 200 people milling about outside and peeing on the lawn. I suppose there might have been a little fighting. Well, the cops decided if the band was gone, then maybe the hoodlums would be gone. They were right.”

Police Chief Lawrence Partridge had to enlist the help of then-mayor Don MacKay, who suggested The Shades (Chong, Melton, Dick Byrd, Wes Henderson, Floyd Sneed and Stan Chong) leave town. The irony certainly isn’t lost on Chong that the mayor who kicked them out of town was also the one who spearheaded the White Hat tradition, which the comedian is set to receive when he reunites with his old band this week. “A white hat is as good as an apology,” Chong laughs.

Though it’s hard to believe that it was just guilt by association, hoodlums or not, Chong does acknowledge that The Shades created the scene that caused the trouble. With only one radio station playing two kinds of music — classical and country — and one record store where you had to order in the latest records, Chong and his friends had to go to the train porters for their musical fix.

“They’d bring the music up from the states,” Chong recalls. “Back then it was called ‘race music’ — you know, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. We’d learn their tunes, play them at dances and everybody thought it was ours. The kids went crazy. Imagine a bunch of white kids never hearing blues before, or at least the way we played it.”

By the time The Shades were firmly entrenched in Calgary’s live music scene, Chong had quit school and was taking odd jobs around town; at the telephone company, the cookie factory and in the much-coveted role of ditch digger. Of course, every job he got, he’d get his bandmates jobs there too. It wasn’t long, though, before they found themselves outside the city limits and on the way to Vancouver. The story plays out like a scene from a Cheech and Chong movie: There are band name changes not fit for print, bar brawls with large female wrestlers, record label mishaps and green-card fiascos. The list seems endless.

“In Vancouver, there was this hot after-hours club that we were playing where people would drive up from Seattle to see us,” Chong says. “We attracted all sorts of people. We were tight, you know? And so there’d be people like The Temptations and The Supremes stopping by. Everybody that was anyone would come and see us. Diana Ross saw us play once and got Barry Gordie to sign us, but they had forgotten, so we went down to the states. Things didn’t really work out, though. I was trying to get a green card and got fired from the band. So I went down to L.A. and started working the clubs, making a go of it as a singer-songwriter. Around that time, I started working on Cheech and Chong. Cheech and I were going to be a band, but it turned out our comedy was stronger than our music — and here I am.”