Cape Breton Song Contest and Dishpan Parade
Bill Loeb (smoking), Lloyd MacInnis (washing dishes), and a cat (looking at you) around a CJCB microphone,
In November 1948, CJCB Radio in Sydney began broadcasting a program that came to be known as Dishpan Parade. Hosts Bill Loeb and Lloyd MacInnis would perform in character as the avuncular Bill and the rural “Teo,” respectively. The show was built almost entirely upon listener correspondence. One of the more lasting features of the show was its Cape Breton Songs Contest. Listeners were encouraged to submit lyrics with local themes based on the tunes of popular songs. Lloyd MacInnis or another CJCB performer would record them direct to disc accompanied by Bernie MacIntosh’s piano. They had regular airing on Dishpan Parade and began to be played elsewhere on the CJCB programming schedule. In the years since, many of them entered into vernacular song traditions and were performed at variety shows, sung in kitchens, and referenced in local editorials.
I’ve been working in thus collection for over ten years now: while I am thinking of how to turn it into a manuscript that will be more accessible to the local community, I’ve published several articles about them.
2019. Crime and Punishment in the Cape Breton Songs Contest. Criminal Folklore, ed. John Bodner. Special issue of Ethnologies 41.1: 173–195. DOI: 10.7202/1069851ar
2024. Singing the New Scot: Parody, Contrafacta, and Dainty Protest Songs in Cape Breton. Popular Music and Society 47.3: 354–373. DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2024.2377907
2025. Dumpin’ the Slag: The Sydney Steel Plant in a Mid-Twentieth Century Song. American Review of Canadian Studies 55.1: 69–86. DOI:10.1080/02722011.2025.2508677