Who were the key players in making music for Maple Leafs hockey?

See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source

Jimmy Holmstrom is the longest-serving organist for the Maple Leafs, reaching 40 years in 2027, but not the first to make music for the city’s No. 1 sports team.  

Maple Leaf Gardens had a south balcony for a small orchestra when built in 1931, though little is recalled of who might have played during games.   

Doug Morris, the innovative first superintendent of the building and father of Gardens announcer Paul Morris, introduced pre-recorded brass band music. In 1957, the elder Morris heard that the big Opus 558 Wurlitzer pipe organ from Shea’s Hippodrome on Queen St. W. needed a new home with the concert hall about to be flattened to make room for Nathan Phillips Square at new City Hall.  

According to Holmstrom and Leafs historical blogger Jim Amodeo, manager Conn Smythe authorized $2,000 to pay the construction company razing Shea’s for Morris and a Gardens crew to transport it to Carlton Street. It took a year to install into the arena’s south wall. On Dec. 20, 1958, a 2-2 tie against Boston, Don ‘Knuckles’ Gordon became the first person to play it.          

Gordon was followed by the distinguished Horace Gladstone Lapp, a writer-conductor in the Toronto area since the 1920s and member of the Royal Conservatory of Music, who’d taught Glenn Gould among others. Lapp was also well known as a church organist and one of the last silent film accompanists in Canada, backing 37 Laurel and Hardy movies.  

Gladstone sometimes stopped by the Gardens to practice, though his volume was an annoyance to the team during workouts, while building staff worried the reverberations of his playing might crack the brickwork around the pipes.  

The organ and bandshell were removed during the mid 1960s, along with the adjacent portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, as new management, including Harold Ballard and Stafford Smythe, wanted the space for new end-blue seats.  

When was organ music revived at Leafs games?  

An organ was re-introduced in 1973 with Nova Scotia-born Ralph Fraser on the keys, a member of several jazz bands and frequent contributor to CBC programs. He had several player-friendly ditties at the ready, such as Swedish Rhapsody anytime Borje Salming stood out, or Michael, Row the Boat Ashore for a big Palmateer save.  

Fraser also became a Trivial Pursuit board game question — ‘who was the only man to play for the Leafs, Blue Jays, Argonauts and Blizzard’?  

Phil La Penna was also prominent in the early 1980s, a studio musician and teacher in the GTA. When Gord and Bob Stellick became part of Leafs management, they auditioned new organists, including Brian Larter, Rob Sutherland and Holmstrom, a friend of Sutherland’s who eventually became full-time in ‘87-88.

lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

1. 

   World
2. 

   Canada
3. 

   Toronto & GTA
4. 

   World
5. 

   Celebrity