The late Willie P. Bennett will be remembered by the large body of work he leaves behind, said long-time friend Washboard Hank Fisher.
"He's got some great, great songs," said Fisher, in an interview yesterday afternoon."Willie had poetic sentiments and feelings which ran very deep, deeper than the Moon and June sort of stuff," said Fisher.
"I always loved Caney Fork River," said Fisher of Mr. Bennett's songs.
"The Caney Fork River
the Caney Fork River
like water everywhere
it's a taker and a giver
she touched it to her body
she touched it to her lips
oh I wish I was the Caney Fork River," he quoted the song.
Music in You is another heartfelt love song that is a favourite of Fishers. Fisher said he meet Mr. Bennett in the early years, 1977, and they've been friends since. That included a four-year stint together as part of Fred Eaglesmith's band, sharing a room on the road.
Local songwriter Dennis O'Toole said in an email he stood with Clayton Yates and sang for Willie P. Bennett at the Rusty Snail Saturday night....Billy Joe Shaver's 'I'm Gonna Live Forever'; Willies' 'For the Sake of a Dollar' and 'Willies' Diamond Joe'...it felt good and right (and wrong) and I woke with these lines in my head this morning...
"if you're going to pray for me
pray in good old gospel harmony
send off my spirit with a song..."
"I'm sure we all assumed that Willie had dodged the bullet on his health issues and was going to be with us a long time yet...he sure seemed to be giving it a troupers' try...and he has left us a remarkable body of work to listen to and to share with others," stated o'Toole.
Local folk music promoter Mike Barker, Folk Under the Clock, said he's been a fan of Mr. Bennett's since the beginning when he still lived in Alberta and followed Mr. Bennett's career. But wasn't able to get Mr. Bennett to perform at a concert until April 2007 when he came with the Eaglesmith Band.
"Willie opened the show and then played the rest of the concert with the band," said Barker. "The crowd loved it."
Barker said he emailed Stephen Fearing of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, a band with Colin Linden and Tom Wilson that was formed originally to perform Mr. Bennett's music.
"He said he was devastated," said Barker.
Eaglesmith is touring and somewhere in the desert in Califormia out of reach, said his record company. Eaglesmith is aware of Mr. Bennett's passing, said a spokesperson.
Mr. Bennett was honoured with a fundraising concert in July following his heart attack last spring.
The concert featured Eaglesmith, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings and many of his Peterborough fellow musicians and friends. Mr. Bennett was unable to ply his trade for a few months after the springtime heart attack. Like most musicians, Mr. Bennett was self-employed and didn't have extended health coverage.
"Willie has been an icon in Canada for a long, long time," said Eaglesmith, in an Examiner interview in July. "He helped change the face of music in Canada. He was the songwriter that set songwriting in Canada on its ear for a long time, even when I was a kid."
"I was just a little younger than Willie but the difference between 16 and 20 is a lot. I heard him and I just wanted to write songs. He's been with me for 25 years. He's been on my right every night for 25 so it's like getting a leg cut off," Eaglesmith said of life on the road without Mr. Bennett this summer.
In 1996, a tribute album of 14 of Mr. Bennett's songs called "High or Hurtin" was released by Blackie and The Rodeo Kings.
"Willie is my main man, in other words he helps me with the touring endlessly.
"He helps set up every night, he helps tear down. We toured together when we had to split the money, in otherwords when there wasn't enough money; we had to sleep in the bus because there was no hotel rooms - we couldn't afford them."
The memory when he first met Bennett is still vivid for Eaglesmith.
"We were at a festival one time and he said 'hey can I play harmonica with you today?' And I said 'really, you want to play harmonica with me?' and he said 'yeah,' and he never left.
"He just never left he just sort of slowly...," Eaglesmith lets the sentence end. "Eventually he said, 'you know what, you're getting pretty darn successful and I'm just going to stick around'."
Looking back over all those years on the road and on stage, Mr. Bennett, said in an Examiner interview in 2005 he hopes it (the music) never stops. "I like it out there."
Songwriting, for him, is more about expression and observation than it is writing big-money songs for others, in any case. He describes songwriting as an attempt to get through a lot of things that were mucking up his life.
"Somewhere in the middle I got caught up in thinking I could have a 'hit' song and live happily ever after. Truth be told, as soon as I forgot about writing the hit song, that's when I started living happily ever after.
"That's when I quit chasing the carrot. I quit chasing the brass ring and I'm living life on my own terms. And that's when I started to get happy."
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