ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Johnny Cash, Gene Autry and Roy Acuff. In the 1950s, Larry Harvey — a country singer from Newfoundland — was a contemporary of them all.
He had a record deal, travelled in the same circles, and was working hard towards getting a crack at the big time.
A few years later, his peers were superstars.
Harvey? Well, he was working in an Ontario bread factory after abandoning his shot at stardom, putting family before fame and fortune.
“He spun his wheels up here (in Toronto) and tried to do some things, but he never, ever regained the status of that springboard he was about to step off into major stardom down there in Nashville,” says his son Shane Harvey.
But 50 years after giving it up, Larry Harvey is experiencing a career revival. And it’s all because of a documentary his son, who writes film scores, made about his father.
Paper Promises, named for one of his dad’s unreleased songs, premiered on Super Channel on Nov. 29 and is in heavy rotation all this month.
“I’m tickled over this thing my son has made,” says Larry Harvey, now 82.
“I consider myself a very lucky man, and I did have some nice (experiences) coming up, and some bad ones.”
The documentary paints a poignant picture of family, love, music, memories and a mission.
Shane Harvey says he decided to make the documentary as a thank you to his father and because “he was the real deal.”
Raised in Carmanville, N.L., Larry Harvey moved to Toronto by the early 1950s and began singing in nightclubs, on radio and on the new medium called television.
He caught the attention of King Records, a Cincinnati-based label that also signed a singer named James Brown. The young Canadian agreed to an eight-song deal and was soon down in Nashville, recording, performing and hanging out with Cash and Elvis Presley.
“(It was) the same as hanging out with anybody,” remembers Harvey.
Adds Shane: “Those guys were just contemporaries of his. There was no awe. They were just all there doing it together. They were working on their craft to get things done.
“My father, he always believed that he was a part of it. It could have been his life (but) it wasn’t his life.”
Harvey’s first four singles did well, reaching the Top 10 in Canada and enjoying moderate U.S. success. A look at the inaugural list of members of the Country Music Association shows his name with the likes of Cash, Tex Ritter, Marty Robbins, Roy Rogers, the Everly Brothers and Porter Wagoner.
But as his career seemed to be taking off, he voided the deal with King Records after a dispute over distribution of his records in — where else? — Newfoundland.
Back home, Shane says, his dad had a large fan club of “mostly young girls in their teens” but they were having trouble hearing his songs on the radio. The record company’s focus was on getting him heard in the major markets, and that didn’t sit well with the singer.
“He was so upset that they didn’t seem to be doing their job in Newfoundland that he asked to get out of his record contract,” Shane says.
With a wife and three children at home, Harvey decided to call his music career a day. He accepted a job in a bread plant, then moved on from factory to factory before settling down at a one-man glass business he would run for 25 years.
While he continued to play around Ontario a little, the place where Harvey’s music had the most impact was in his kitchen.
His family grew up listening to his repertoire, which included a number of original, unrecorded songs. Shane considers those songs the soundtrack to his childhood.
Harvey’s only regret about his decision to give up music was that he never got a chance to play Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.
Shane Harvey set out to make that dream come true. And without spoiling the climax to the film, he met numerous obstacles in trying to get his dad on the stage.
Canadian songwriter Jim Vallance, who collaborated on most of Bryan Adams’s hits, including “Summer of 69,” helped Shane in his efforts after hearing his story, “which just about tears your heart out.”
Then he heard the songs.
“When I first heard the music, I thought, this is outstanding,” says Vallance. “This is as good as anything that was around at that time. That blew me away.
“The quality of the songwriting is world-class.”
The release of “Paper Promises” has, in Shane’s words, touched off “an explosion of interest” in his father and he gets emails every day from people touched by the story.
Because of the buzz, Larry Harvey returned to the studio last week to record some of the unreleased songs he kept in a box.
“They are absolutely fabulous,” his son says. “They are gems. ... Oh man, when you hear them. It’s unbelievable, man.”
Ten songs were cut over five days in Toronto and the Harveys aren’t sure yet how they’ll be distributed. The DVD and soundtrack of “Paper Promises” are available at www.paper-promises.com.
Vallance doesn’t know how anyone who hears or sees Larry’s story can fail to be moved.
“I think it will have legs all by itself, just based on the magic of the story,” he says.
Whether it does or not, Larry Harvey is walking on sunshine because of his son’s efforts.
“It’s like going to the racetrack and you get a winner,” he says.
(St. John’s Telegram)