HIILLBILLY NIGHT RADIO MONTREAL

Hillbilly Night celebrates its 50th anniversary Monday night at the Wheel Club.

Many of the longtime regulars will be on hand: Bill Bland, Ron Petronko, Eric Sandmark, Craig Morrison, Pat Loiselle, Guy Carpenter, Leona (Little Miss Dynamite) Dionne and Jeannie Arsenault.

They will be paying tribute to other regulars like steel guitarist Bobby Hill, who died in October. And they will also be paying tribute to the man whose mission it was, and is, to make Montreal somewhat of a hotbed for country music. That gent would be Bob Fuller, who got Hillbilly Night going in 1966 at the long-defunct Blue Angel bar.

It was in 1966 that Fuller began his one-man campaign to promote his favourite music by forming the Old Time Country Music Club of Canada. Through the club, his goal was to find a forum whereby musicians would be invited to perform traditional country music, but with a few stipulations: No instruments — save for the steel guitar — that require an electric boost from an amplifier. No drums. And no crooning of any country or bluegrass tune that was written or popularized after the mid-1960s, when it was thought by some purists that Nashville took a turn for the worse as it took a turn for the electric.

These rules still apply, and the young bucks and old-timers who show up for Hillbilly Night every Monday at the Wheel Club have no trouble abiding by them.