Nova Scotia has lost one of its best-known voices and stage performers with the death of Frank MacKay following surgery on Wednesday.
One of the province's original rock ‘n’ roll and soul music performers, the New Glasgow-born singer learned to work a crowd when he joined Truro's legendary dance band The Lincolns, which toured the region through the 1960s, before attracting national attention as a member of the hard-rock group Soma in the early '70s.
At that time, Toronto Star music writer Peter Goddard noted MacKay's road-seasoned voice was “so powerful it could cut through a platinum slab.”
“He always had that voice, the first time he came in and sang with us, he just freaked everybody out,” says Lincolns and Soma saxophonist Layne Francis. “He was just a natural, that’s for sure. He was just a teenager when he first sang with us, and he never stopped.”
Besides being a natural showman, Francis remembers MacKay as a mentor to younger performers over the years, and one of the artists he influenced most was Colchester County native Charlie A’Court. One of the award-winning guitarist and songwriter’s earliest memories is watching a Lincolns reunion show at the Truro branch of Royal Canadian Legion through the side door, since he wasn’t yet old enough to go inside.
“Frank was my gateway to discovering a lot of R&B, and people like Otis Redding, through his passion for the music and love of performing,” says A’Court, whose father was a first-generation Lincolns fan who took him to that first Legion show. “What he and the Lincolns were doing at the time gave me direct access to what soul, R&B and the blues were all about, and fanned those flames pretty quickly.”
“They put me on a particular path of musical exploration.”
Eventually becoming a solo artist, writing his own songs as well as maintaining the interpretive skills he'd honed with The Lincolns, MacKay also made the leap to acting in the late 1970s,
most notably with the musical stage show Rock and Roll, written by former Lincolns member John Gray and based on the band's days of searching for pop success on the back roads of Nova Scotia.
The 1985 CBC-TV production of Gray's play, retitled The King of Friday Night, earned MacKay an ACTRA Award nomination, and MacKay would go on to appear on stages across the country, as well as being a familiar presence in the Maritimes at Neptune Theatre, Festival Antigonish and the Charlottetown Festival.
Favourite roles of MacKay’s included playing Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha, Jean Valjean in Les Miserables and Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
“I thought Frank was already quite a big star,” says former Festival Antigonish artistic director Addy Doucette, who asked MacKay to join the summer theatre festival’s second season after seeing him perform in the Elvis Presley musical Are You Lonesome Tonight? at the Charlottetown Festival in 1987.
“He did 18 Wheels and an Agatha Christie play, and a few years later we presented The Red Row, which he wrote himself about his childhood in Stellarton. . . . He played life-size as well as larger-than-life characters, he was really very versatile, and he had that amazing voice. When he played Jean Valjean at Neptune it was remarkable, there are very few people who can sing that role.”
Last September, the Lincolns held one of the band's semi-regular reunion shows on its favourite stage at the Truro Legion, a sold-out two-night stand titled the Lincolns at the Legion: One Last Time, a fitting tribute to the power of the soulful music that MacKay had cherished and honoured his whole life.
“I was at the Saturday night show, and it was a great honour when Frank called me up and asked me to be part of it,” recalls A’Court, who also had MacKay sing at his wedding a decade ago. “I simply could not say yes fast enough.”
On Thursday, Truro-Bible Hill MLA and longtime friend of MacKay, Lenore Zann tweeted a photo of herself presenting the singer with the Lincolns’ Cobequid Arts Council Lifetime Achievement Award.
“With sadness I bid farewell to dear friend Frank MacKay—he of inimitable voice and spirit—who died last night in Halifax after triple bypass surgery,” posted Zann, who also said that a Celebration of Life event for the singer and actor would be announced in days to come.
With sadness I bid farewell to dear friend Frank MacKay - he of inimitable voice & spirit - who died last night in Hfx after triple bypass surgery. A Celebration of Life will be announced. “Oh Danny boy the pipes are callin’.. The summer’s gone & all the roses fallen.” @CdnPress pic.twitter.com/4XjWuFjREe
— Lenore Zann (@ZannLenore) March 7, 2019
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