Rain Maker b/w One Step Beyond

Tony Mystery and the Masquerades emerged during the formative years of Calgary rock and roll, when local radio, television and teen dances were beginning to provide Western Canadian performers with opportunities that had scarcely existed only a few years earlier. Instrumental records such as the Ventures’ ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ and the Fireballs’ ‘Torquay’ were particularly influential in Calgary, where the Gardens and Penley’s ballrooms became important gathering places for the city’s growing teenage music audience.

The group was founded by English-born brothers Tony and Chris Allbury. Before adopting its better-known identity, the band performed as the Rockin’ Royals. Its early personnel included Tony on guitar, Chris on bass, drummer Bob Bowman, New Zealand-born saxophonist Cappy Thomson and guitarist Roger Vickers, who joined the group in 1957 at the age of fifteen.

The Rockin’ Royals approached Calgary musician, record producer and promoter Mel Shaw about managing them. Shaw had recently established his Sotan Records label and was becoming one of the strongest advocates for Calgary’s emerging popular-music community. He renamed the group Tony Mystery and the Masquerades and gave its members a dramatic new image: black clothing and masks that concealed their identities. Led by Tony under the stage name Tony Mystery, the masked musicians quickly became a distinctive attraction on the local dance circuit.

Vocalist Errol LeCroix, known as ‘The Tall Twister,’ subsequently joined the group, expanding the Masquerades to a six-piece. Under Shaw’s direction, the musicians abandoned the striped blazers, slacks and straw hats they had previously worn and adopted a darker appearance that made them look, as later accounts joked, as though they were preparing for a bank robbery.

With promotional support from CFAC Radio and disc jockey Howie Levant, Tony Mystery and the Masquerades recorded their first Sotan single at the CFAC studios in 1961. ‘One Step Beyond’ was backed with the instrumental ‘Rain Maker,’ credited to Mystery and Shaw. The recording reportedly featured Ray Greff on piano in place of Cappy Thomson.

Their second single was recorded at CHCT-TV during the summer of 1962. It paired ‘Southern Tradewinds,’ written by Mystery and Thomson, with ‘River Side Twist.’ Together, the two Sotan releases helped establish the Masquerades as one of Alberta’s leading early rock-and-roll groups.

The masks became the group’s defining promotional device. Roger Vickers later recalled that the musicians wore hoods for approximately a year before removing them during a Halloween performance at Calgary’s Gardens Ballroom.

“People were lined up for a block just to get in the door. Mel’s idea was to not disclose us yet, and we entered the stage wearing masks like the ‘Lone Ranger.’”

For the following year, the Masquerades became regulars on Calgary’s local television circuit, including the teenage dance program Guys & Dolls. One of the group’s most memorable appearances came when it opened for Bill Haley and His Comets at the Gardens Ballroom in 1962.

Further personnel changes followed, with Don Camadge joining early in 1962. Under Shaw’s guidance, the group continued to develop both its sound and image. Although the Masquerades had built their reputation playing energetic rock and roll, rhythm and blues and instrumentals, Tony also began introducing skiffle material into the repertoire.

Vickers later remembered the stylistic disagreement:

“Tony was also getting us into ‘skiffles’ with songs like ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight).’ We were a rock ’n’ roll–R&B band, not Lonnie Donegan.”

The group continued until the middle of the decade, when changing musical interests and the departure of individual members gradually brought the Masquerades to an end.

Although Tony Mystery and the Masquerades left behind only two singles, they were pivotal figures in Calgary’s emerging music community and among the earliest rock groups in the city to make commercial recordings. Their combination of instrumental rock and roll, theatrical presentation and savvy promotion distinguished them from their local contemporaries.

Mel Shaw would later apply many of the same promotional instincts to the Stampeders, but Tony Mystery and the Masquerades were among his first important protégés. Their brief recording career captures an important moment when Calgary’s teenage dance, radio, television and recording scenes were beginning to develop a distinct identity of their own.

-Robert Williston