Marrs Five
Websites:
No
Origin:
Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:
Originally posted here Jun 27, 2011:
The Marrs Five remain one of those fleeting, fascinating footnotes in Toronto’s early beat-group era — a teenage outfit who managed to press one 45 on the tiny Amato Records label before vanishing back into high-school halls and basement rehearsals. Issued in late 1964 or early 1965, their lone disc, “Ouie Di Douie” b/w “Remember Those Days,” arrives right as the British Invasion hit Toronto and local youth bands began finding access to studios and small independent labels.
Written by Roy Sluiter, “Ouie Di Douie” was paired with “Remember Those Days,” written by Andy Campagnolo. The single briefly flashed across local radio when CHUM placed it on their nightly “Battle” feature — where it won its first night before bowing out the following day. Prairie DJ Johnny Onn at CJME-Regina also gave the record airplay, leading to regional distribution through Winnipeg’s Laurel Records, with Canadian Music Sales handling the rest of the country. For a young Toronto band without management or industry support, it was a notable achievement.
Amato Records was a small independent label in Toronto, known primarily for private-press releases by Benny Spada & The Flames in 1962. Marrs Five sit as an unusual youth-beat entry in that short catalog, illustrating the ad-hoc, community-driven nature of many early Canadian independent labels — someone with access to a pressing plant helping a local group get a single out into the world.
More than fifteen years later, Roy Sluiter surfaced again in the west-end suburbs as a key figure behind Train Gang and the DIY compilation Mississauga “Live” (Ratz Records, 1980), recording and producing local musicians and collaborators in a self-directed home-studio environment. Sluiter continued making music and organizing recordings long after the Marrs Five era, bridging Toronto’s early beat-group years into the suburban independent activity of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
-Robert Williston
