TRURO, N.S. — “God has a new lead singer today.”
So, said Rod Norrie on Thursday following the death of his longtime pal and band member, Frank MacKay.
MacKay, 74, died Wednesday night while recovering from heart surgery at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax.
“It’s like losing a family member because we go back an awful long way,” said Norrie, of North River. “It was a big shock. I wasn’t prepared for that at all.”
Best known in the Truro area for his vocal supremacy with the former Lincolns band, MacKay went on to become one of Nova Scotia’s most famous vocalists and stage performers both in Canada and beyond.
“He was just great,” Norrie said.
“I just remember a really nice guy,” Norrie’s wife Eleanor said. “And he fit in so well (with the Lincolns). He was just so talented and he was so much fun.”
As one of the founding Lincoln members, it was Rod Norrie who made the call to MacKay inviting him to join the Lincolns in the early 1960s after an impromptu performance one evening at the old Pleasant Street Hall in Truro where the band first developed their life-long fan base.
Born in New Glasgow, MacKay came to Truro at age 11. In 1961, at age 15, shortly after enrolling in Grade 10 at Truro Senior High (TSH), he connected with fellow student Brian Chisholm, one of the original Lincoln members.
“In September of 1961 I was an introverted young "Mackerel Snapper" trying desperately to keep up with a new and fast-changing world,” he wrote in a memoir published last `August in the Truro News, prior to a reunion performance last September at the Royal Canadian Legion in Truro.
“During my inaugural week at TSH, I was approached in the hallway one afternoon by the antsiest person I'd ever met. He introduced himself as Brian, said he played
bass guitar and that he and a few of his musician friends were putting together a new dance band. Since they still hadn't found their singer, he wondered if I'd be interested in giving it a shot? The question was no sooner out of his mouth when my knees buckled and I nearly passed out.”
When he did take the stage for that informal tryout, Norrie said there was no doubt the band had found its lead singer.
“We sort of shrugged our shoulders and said what are we in for now?’” he said, before MacKay began to sing.
“Well, he sang about two notes and I’m looking over my shoulder at everybody else in the band: ‘oh my Jesus’ where did this guy come from?’ He was just great from the very first moment.”
MacKay was subsequently invited to join the band and they never looked back.
MacKay soon became a full-fledged member of the Lincolns throughout most of the 1960s as the band toured far and wide throughout the region. They became a regular hit with long-standing Friday night performances at the legion before MacKay went on to further national fame as both a singer, songwriter and stage performer.
But, every so often over years, the Lincolns would come back together for reunion performances at the Truro legion.
The Lincolns took their final ride together last September when they came together for two performances at their old, favourite haunt.
“We were lucky to do that,” Norrie said. “It was a good reunion and we all had a good time and dug up the old memories and everything.”
One of those who joined MacKay on stage with his guitar during that reunion was North River native and esteemed bluesman, Charlie A’Court.
His father Rod was an original Lincolns’ fan and A’Court grew up listening to him singing the band’s praises. At age 15, A’Court accompanied his father to a Lincolns’ reunion at the Truro legion where he heard MacKay sing live for the first time.
“His passion and the power of his voice just resounded with so many fans,” A’Court said, on Thursday. “He was eclectic.”
The pair ultimately became close friends to the point where MacKay sung the dance song for A’Court and his wife at their wedding in 2008.
“I always looked at Frank as a friend and a mentor,” he said, adding that MacKay’s death served as “a sad day for a lot of us, that’s for sure.”
A’Court said he couldn’t have been “more honoured” then when MacKay called last year to invite him to participate in the Lincoln’s reunion. Looking back on that now is a “bittersweet” memory, he said, because it proved to be the last time they would perform together.
“I feel eternally grateful to Frank MacKay and by association, the Lincolns,” A’Court said.
“The career that I have and the career that I forged and developed is because of people like Frank.”
