Decades Into Career,
Indigenous Icon's Creative Drive Burns
Bright
Born Curtis Jonnie in 1946 on Roseau River
Anishinabe First Nation just south of
Letellier, Shingoose has been an
indigenous music trailblazer for more than
four decades.
“Shingoose is one of the unsung legends of
the North American music industry,” says
musician and Strongfront Productions
president Jesse Green, who produced Brown
Town Muddy Water, the acclaimed
documentary on Manitoba’s aboriginal music
history. “His dedication to the
indigenous music scene began in the 1970s,
and launching a career at that time is a
celebration in and of itself.”
At age 4, Goose, as he is known by friends
and colleagues, was given up by his mother
to be raised by an elderly evangelical
woman in Steinbach, where he was
indoctrinated in the Mennonite Church.
“It was only supposed to be temporary,” he
says, “but months turned into years.
I’m the second generation of a first
generation that was never meant to
survive. My parents went through the
residential school experience and suffered
the residential school syndrome. Yet
here I am. I survived. But I
never had the family experience.”
By his mid-teens, Shingoose was a resident
at the Knowles School for Boys just north
of Winnipeg. He fled from there to
Fargo, N.D., where his mother was living.
“I was living in Fargo when I met Tom
Conovoy. He was a really good
musician. His mother was Sioux
Indian. Tom introduced me to all
these great blues artists. He saw
something in me that he identified
with. I was a real cocky kid at that
time and didn’t back down from anyone,”
Shingoose said. “He told me I was
too smart not to be in school. I was
destined to end up being nothing, he
said. So he got me into Boys Town.”
Founded by Father Edward Flanagan in 1917
as an orphanage run by Catholic priests on
the outskirts of Omaha, Neb., Boys Town
was a tough, no-nonsense educational
institution for troubled youth.
Here, Shingoose learned to play upright
bass and sang tenor in the school
choir. He also acquired his
wanderlust.
“That was my first experience in touring,”
he recalls. “The choir travelled
across the U.S., performing. The
year before, they had travelled to the
Vatican. I was on a 10-city tour in
1963. I was 16 years old. We
were in Sandusky, Ohio, when President
Kennedy was assassinated. We were
due to perform in Cincinnati the next day,
where we sang a special mass for
Kennedy. I found that I really
enjoyed travelling. I loved the
experience. I remember meeting Jayne
Mansfield. The choir was introduced
to her, and she came right over and gave
me a hug. That was quite a moment.”
Nonetheless, the institutional aspect of
Boys Town did not sit well with
Shingoose. “They even locked us up
at night. So I ran away,” he says.
It was 1965. Conovoy had a gig at
the Beachcomber club in Norfolk, Va., a
naval port city, and needed a bass player
for his trio.
“So I packed up that night and took off,”
Shingoose says. “That’s where I
really got my musical education. Tom
was one of my musical mentors. He
taught me how to play melodic electric
bass.”
Still in his teens, Shingoose was out on
his own. Following his stint with
Conovoy, he hooked up with the band Wild
Honey. After changing their name to
Puzzle, the group won a
battle-of-the-bands competition in
Washington, D.C. Shingoose was singing and
playing bass, the only indigenous person
in the band. The prize was a
recording session for ABC Records with
recording engineer Eddie Kramer.
Kramer’s credentials read like a who’s who
of rock music superstars, including
working with the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, David
Bowie, Carly Simon, Joe Cocker and the
Kinks, to name a few. He also
engineered every Jimi Hendrix Experience
album.
The members of Puzzle went to New York to
record with Kramer, staying at the Albert
Hotel on 10th Street East, a short
distance from Greenwich Village.
They spent a month rehearsing in
preparation for the recording
session. Kramer had designed and
built Electric Ladyland Studios, Hendrix’s
own recording facility. Shingoose
hung out with Kramer at the studio, where
he met Hendrix.
“He was all decked out in chartreuse and
wearing big, platform-like boots,”
Shingoose says. “He walked in and
looked at me and said to me, ‘You’re
beautiful, baby!’”
“Eddie Kramer was a remarkable person,”
says Shingoose. “He had been the
tape operator for George Martin on the
Beatles sessions, so he knew them.
Our manager’s wife was friends with Yoko
Ono. She used to look after Kyoko
when Yoko went out. One night, I’m
at their house and in walks John and Yoko
with her child, Kyoko. I’m sitting
there watching TV with the other guys in
Puzzle. I used to dress in native
clothing back then — moccasins, buckskin,
beads. John Lennon looks at me and
says, ‘You must be American Indian’ in a
very British accent. I was very
flippant and said back to him, ‘You must
be British, mate’ in my best attempt at a
British accent, and we both laughed.
Then they left. It wasn’t a star
trip, just a couple of regular guys
talking.”
These star-crossed encounters were of no
special significance to Shingoose until
many years later.
“Here I was, a young Indian kid from
Roseau River, having a blast. At the
time, I didn’t even appreciate all that
was happening around me,” he says.
“It was years later when I came to realize
what an incredible trip that all was,
meeting Hendrix and Lennon. I’ve
been very fortunate in my life.”
He saw the Beatles perform at District of
Columbia Stadium (later Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial Stadium) in 1966.
“The screaming was so loud that you
couldn’t hear them singing and playing;
thunderous screaming,” Shingoose
said. “I couldn’t take it, so I
left.”
Puzzle fizzled out after opening for Jay
& the Americans and a few other
acts. Shingoose stayed on in the
Washington scene as an itinerant bass
player.
“I lived the hippie lifestyle, with all
the drugs,” he says, “living communally in
an abandoned mansion in Bethesda, Md.,
near Washington, D.C.”
He worked for a time with Bill and Taffy
Danoff, playing the renowned Cellar Door
club. (The duo co-wrote John
Denver’s hit Take Me Home,
Country Roads and later became the
Starland Vocal Band of Afternoon
Delight fame.)
“There was a lot of great music going on
then,” says Shingoose. “Emmylou
Harris was playing clubs around there
then. I remember seeing her playing
at the Childe Herald, a club in Dupont
Circle.”
He took a gig backing blues guitar legend
Roy Buchanan, who lived in the D.C.
area. Buchanan’s distinctive guitar
playing has been celebrated by the likes
of Jeff Beck and Robbie Robertson.
“I played with him for the better part of
a year,” Shingoose says of Buchanan.
“He was a born-again Christian, and I knew
all about that, so we got along
fine. He called me Preacher.
He was an amazing player. So
good. He would play this Patsy Cline
country song, and you couldn’t tell if it
was a steel guitar or regular guitar
because he could bend the strings in such
a way that it sounded just like a
steel. I had some tapes of us
playing together, but I don’t know
whatever happened to them.”
By
the early ’70s, Shingoose was working in
Toronto.
“One of the reasons I came back to Canada
was because of all the brutality and
horrible treatment the American government
was doing to the South Dakota Indian
people,” he says. “I felt the rage
and wanted to grab a gun and stand up with
those people. But I also saw that
people like Floyd Westerman were saying it
all in great words, great art, and staying
true to the message and integrity of the
songs.”
He began performing on his own in
coffeehouses and festivals across the
country under his grandfather’s family
name, Shingoose. “I consciously took
that name as a way to promote myself and
to establish an identity as a native
artist,” he says.
At the 1973 Mariposa Folk Festival, he met
aboriginal poet Duke Redbird, and the two
began writing together. This led to
the recording of his EP Native Country in
1976. “That was recorded in Ottawa,”
he notes. Singer/songwriter Bruce
Cockburn played on the recording.
“I had met Bruce at Mariposa and bumped
into him again a few years later,”
Shingoose says. “I asked him if he’d
like to help me, and he said he’d love
to. He has always been supportive of
my career. One time, my car broke
down in Penticton on my way to the
Vancouver Folk Festival, so I called him
up, and he paid for the repairs. He
said, ‘Gotta make sure you make it to the
gig.’”
One song on the EP, The Ballad of
Norval, written by Shingoose and
Redbird about aboriginal painter Norval
Morrisseau, caught the attention of
American country singer Glen Campbell, who
expressed interest in recording
it. “We hung out with him for
about six months,” says Shingoose.
“He flew Duke and I to his shows in Ohio
and California, and we hung out with him
in Malibu.”
Shingoose remembers Campbell driving golf
balls off his balcony into neighbours’
yards. In the end, Campbell did not
record the song. In Malibu,
Shingoose also befriended actor Max Gail,
who played Det. Stan Wojciehowicz on the
sitcom Barney Miller and had an
affinity for indigenous issues.
Living across the street was Bob
Dylan. Dylan’s Canadian-born
groundskeepers would often invite
Shingoose over for coffee. One
morning while they were all in the
kitchen, Dylan came in.
“I was introduced to him as ‘This is our
friend, Goose. He lives across the
street.’” Dylan barely acknowledged him.
“My earliest memories of Shingoose drift
back to the days of my youth in 1974,”
says indigenous music journalist Brian
Wright-McLeod, author of The
Encyclopedia of Native Music and
contributor to numerous publications,
including News From Indian Country,
Native Peoples Magazine and the
Smithsonian’s American Indian.
“I recall seeing a short music video, The
Ballad of Norval, on CBC television.
During that time, there was very little
positive imagery or any real modern
depictions of native music or
artists. It was a powerful moment
simply for that reason.”
Shingoose returned to Winnipeg in 1981
after meeting local independent film
producer and writer Don Marks.
Although not indigenous by birth, Marks
was raised in the indigenous community.
“Our stories were very much alike,” says
Shingoose, who was saddened by Marks’s
recent passing. “He empathized with
aboriginal life. He was raised among
us, and some of it rubbed off on
him. I was just a performer, but he
put together InDEO, which was an
Indian musical (Shingoose contributed
music and performed the lead role).
He produced, directed and edited it.
He was such a hard worker. But I got
to watch and listen. I also went to
Ryerson Polytechnic and got some training,
too. I learned how to produce and
direct and got field experience. Don
introduced me to a whole new world of
high-tech production. He taught me
how to be a producer.” It was the start of
a whole new career for Shingoose.
“InDEO morphed into the show Indian
Time,” says Shingoose. “We kept
utilizing strong Indian cultural icons to
share this culture with the general
public.”
The two created Native Multimedia
Productions, which produced the Gemini
award-winning Indian Time specials
for Bravo TV with Buffy Sainte-Marie and
Oneida comedian Charlie Hill, and
developed the long-running First
Nations Magazine for CKND TV.
Shingoose served as aboriginal consultant
to TVOntario and as director of education
for the Canada Arts Foundation. He
hosted a three-part documentary series for
CBC Radio on First Nations music.
“Shingoose’s career has been about
possibilities becoming a reality,” says
David McLeod, CEO of NCI Communications,
“The Indian Time television
specials, for example, placed a spotlight
on indigenous talent during the 1980s,
when many Canadians weren’t aware of the
amazing calibre of talent that existed
within our community.”
Shingoose also helped establish the Juno
category for aboriginal music. “I
was co-chair and later chair of the
Aboriginal Music Committee,” he says with
considerable pride. “That award has
launched a whole era of appreciation for
native songwriters and performers.”
In 2007, his song Treaty Rights
became the anthem for the 2007 Aboriginal
Day of Action.
“Goose has always been there for the
people as an entertainer, an activist and
a role model,” says Wright-McLeod.
In 2012, Shingoose was inducted into the
Manitoba Aboriginal Music Hall of Fame.
“I thought that was a great nod from the
aboriginal community,” he says. “I
realize my experience has been a blessed
one, and I share it as much as I
can. And at this time in my life,
it’s rewarding to know that you’ve had a
positive influence on Indian people and
the younger generation as well. I’m
going to be 70 this year. That’s
over 50 years in showbiz in one way or
another. That’s pretty amazing.”
That same year, he suffered a stroke that
left him paralyzed on one side and
required him to use a wheelchair.
Nonetheless, his spirit remains
unabated. He has plans for Indian
Time 4 and packaging all the shows
on DVD. He is also working on a new
album for fall release.
“As long as I can keep using my brain,
I’ll be doing something creative,” he
smiles.
“Shingoose is not stuck in time,” says
NCI’s McLeod. “He’s utilizing his
laptop and a cellphone to produce new
projects. He still has work to be
done. That’s very inspiring for
myself and many others within the
indigenous community.”
“Shingoose has been a constant light in
aboriginal music, year after year for
decades,” says singer/songwriter/activist
Buffy Sainte-Marie.
“When there were very few of us
spotlighting First Nations music and
issues, he was there. He’s been an
entertainer and a producer, he writes
songs, and most importantly, he has
brought together people from faraway
places to work together in music and
comedy based on aboriginal life. I’m
proud and humbled to know him as a friend
and as career-long mutual fans.”
John Einarson Excerpt from PIONEER PERFORMER as published in the
Winnipeg Free Press March 6, 2016
Shingoose (Curtis Jonnie) passed away on
January 12, 2021 in Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada.
Indian
Time, produced by Shingoose, was a
ground-breaking 1989 TV special of
Indigenous artists including
Tom Jackson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Laura
Vinson, and others. The following
video is a clip from that show
and features Shingoose performing Mother
Earth, from his album Natural
Tan.
By
the early ’70s, Shingoose was working in
Toronto.
Committee,” he says with
considerable pride. “That award has
launched a whole era of appreciation for
native songwriters and performers.”