KAMLOOPS – An icon of the Canadian music scene since the 1950s willreceive an honorary doctor of letters degree from Thompson Rivers University next month.
Ian Tyson, whose accomplishments over the past half century include aplatinum record, a long-running television show, numerous industryawards and the Order of Canada, will accept his degree at theuniversity’s Convocation ceremony to be held at its Kamloops campus at2 pm June 7th.
“Ian Tyson is an icon in Canadian music and Thompson Rivers University will be very proud to have him as an alumnus,” said TRU President andVice-Chancellor Roger Barnsley.
Ian Tyson was born in Victoria, BC September 25, 1933, and was actively involved in rodeo as a teen and young adult. He learned to play theguitar while he was recovering from rodeo-related injuries, and in thelate 1950s, began performing as a folk singer.
He made his debut at the Heidelberg Café in Vancouver in 1956 andplayed with a rock ‘n’ roll band, the Sensational Stripes. After graduating from the Vancouver School of Art in 1958, Tyson moved toToronto, where he worked as a commercial artist and met his futurewife, singer/songwriter Sylvia Fricker.
The two musicians began performing together with their band Great Speckled Bird in 1959, releasing their self-titled debut album in 1962,and following it up with Four Strong Winds in 1963. The title track of that album, written by Tyson, became a folk standard and was chosen in2005 as the greatest Canadian song of all time by the audience of the CBC Radio One series 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version.
After marrying in 1964, Ian and Sylvia successfully recorded together through the mid-’70s, one of the first Canadian groups to break into the American popular music market. The duo also hosted the television show, Nashville North, which became the Ian Tyson Show after the coupleseparated.
After moving back to Alberta to breed cutting horses, Ian Tyson continued to record music. He released his second solo album in 1979,served as host in the mid-1980s for CTV Edmonton’s ‘Sun Country,’ andreleased a third album in 1983. Other albums followed in 1984, 1986,1990, 1994, 1999 and 2001. He released collections in 1996 and 2002.
He has played at concerts all over North America, and has received six Big Country awards, and won a Juno award in 1987. He was twice named Male Vocalist of the Year by the Canadian Country Music Association,which also awarded him single and album of the year, and in 1992 his song, Someday Soon, earned the Country Music Award from the AmericanSociety of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and in 2000 he won the Alberta Recording Industries Association’s best male recording artist and best-selling album awards.
He was inducted into the CCMA Hall of Honour and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989, to the Juno Hall of Fame in 1992, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame in 2000, and the Prairie Music Hall of Fame the following year. He was named to the Order of Canada in 1994.
This will be the third honorary degree he has received.
For more information, please contact Dr. Roger Barnsley at 250-828-5001 or by email.
