Johnny Mooring and his magic fingers could fiddle to hell and back without turning around.
Mooring's magnetic music stopped studdenly when the Springhill, Nova Scotia musical icon mysteriously stopped peforming in 1974 at the age of 47.
Strike that...Mooring's musical retirement wasn't mysterious but it was grisly and brutal.
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| Mooring |
Mooring, the ninth child of a family of 10, and the father of two daughters, worked as a lumberjack and car salesman before realizing that there was a lucrative market for the way he stroked the strings. He made a living touring nightclubs, winning three consecutive Canadian fiddle championships in the mid-sixties.
Mooring, like many great artists, pushed boundaries in his craft and appears to have done the same with his social life, with lethal consequences.
In 1970, at the age of 43, Mooring flirted with 16-year-old Susan Fisher in a bar.
Fisher lived at the housing project at Walkley and Cote St Luc. Her boyfriend was Gerald Stevens, who resided at the equally-unpretentious 2030 Patricia Ave. Fisher and Stevens eventually married.
Nothing came of the incident and Mooring crossed paths with the couple several times over the next four years and persisted in brazenly flirting with the attractive young woman.
"For almost four years now I've been bumping into him from time to time. Each time I tried to talk to him about leaving my wife alone. He'd tell me to eff off," Stevens later said.
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| Fisher, Stevens and Harrigan |
On 24 March 1974 Gerald and his wife Susan motored off from Montreal with their friend James Harrigan, 31, to run an errand to Ontario. They stopped at the St. Lawrence Hotel in Riviere Beaudette, one hour west of Montreal.
Stevens knocked back 15 to 20 rum and Cokes and then spotted Mooring flirting with his wife once again. The two argued inside the club. Stevens likely hit Mooring, as a witness noticed him adjusting his glasses and asking Stevens "What was that for?" "You know what that was for," replied Stevens.
Mooring had apparently invited Fisher, now 20, to leave her husband and accompany him to Nashville, Tennessee.
Fisher and Stevens, along with his pal James Harrigan of Lancaster Ontario, left the bar at 10 pm and noticed Mooring yelling at them in the parking lot.
The fight began and the fiddling legend went down as Stevens and Harrigan beat him and kicked him.
Stevens, according to one witness, gave Mooring one last kick "here's another one Johnny boy! "
Mooring got up and dusted himself off and washed off his wounds in the bathroom.
But the fiddle-loving man later collapsed and was brought to Ottawa Civic Hospital where he died four days later, forever depriving humanity of any future fiddle music he had in store for us unless we eventually join in heaven and hear him playing there. (Ok, this is really getting stupid - Chimples)
Police arrested Stevens and Harrigan and a prosecutor charged them with murder, reduced by a judge to manslaughter at their preliminary hearing in May. The judge set trial for 11 November 1974 in Valleyfield, Quebec.
On 12 June 1974 Stevens and Harrigan were at Smitty's bar at 6610 Sherbrooke Street West.
The bar, in the ground floor of the giant apartment building on the southwest corner of Cavendish, had a legendary status as a West End Gang hangout favorable to rock and country music.
Stevens and Harrigan got into a heated dispute with three men at around 3 a.m. Someone brought out a gun and fired shots, leaving Stevens and Harrigan injured.
One of their three rivals, Jean-Pierre Pelletier, 24, was also injured. The two other men, one aged around 25 and the other about 50, fled.
One of the three suffered involved in the dispute suffered a bullet wound in the leg, another a scratch on the head from a bullet that narrowly missed. The third - presumably Pelletier - was badly beaten.
It remains unknown who the attackers were. We'd be curious to find out if Johnny Mooring had friends attempting to avenge his demise. The subsequent fate of Stevens and Harrigan remains unknown.