Sid Dolgay plays his eight-string mandocello in this photo from 1960.
Sid Dolgay was a founding member of the Travellers, a folk quartet whose rendition of This Land Is Your Land provided Canada with an unofficial national anthem.
The song was performed on television many times before it was recorded in 1957, after which it seemed the touring Travellers played the tune at every hamlet "from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters."
Mr. Dolgay, who has died in Toronto at the age of 91, played eight-string mandocello in a group that in its earliest configuration included it as the only instrumental accompaniment to voices.
He was forced from the band in a conflict over the group's musical and political direction in 1965, an acrimonious split that lasted a half-century. The bitter divisions were an eyebrow-lifting feature of a 2001 documentary, The Travellers: This Land Is Your Land.
The troupe traced its origins to childhood summers spent at a camp offering a bucolic respite for the children of the urban working class. During the Depression, Camp Naivelt, meaning "camp New World" in Yiddish, was established on a 100-acre site along the banks of the Credit River outside Brampton, Ont. (According to a camp history, a sign at the gate to the property before it was purchased read, "No Jews or dogs allowed.") The camp eventually fell under the operation of the United Jewish People's Order, a secular and pro-labour group often in alignment with the Communist Party.
A frequent visitor to the camp in the early 1950s was the American folk singer Pete Seeger, whose group, The Weavers, enjoyed a surge of popularity until blacklisted during the Red Scare. The Travellers were founded as a Canadian version of the Weavers (and were nearly called the Beavers) in 1953. They took their name from Lonesome Traveller, a song written by Lee Hays of the Weavers.
Within two years, the Travellers' roster settled on four members: Mr. Dolgay (bass voice and mandocello), Jerry Gray (tenor and banjo), Jerry Goodis (tenor) and Simone Johnston (soprano). The Travellers sang songs of ordinary working people, including regional ballads and folk songs such as I'se the B'y.
A favourite was This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie, the lyrics of which they reworked so as to include Canadian place names. The adaptation immediately became their trademark song and a popular singalong in schools and other public meetings.
The Travellers appeared on several national television broadcasts on the CBC, including Haunted Studio, Holiday Ranch, and Cross-Canada Hit Parade, as well as Pick the Stars, a talent show with a cash prize.
The television exposure made them popular on campuses, though the quartet, all married, maintained day jobs that cut into their opportunities for touring. Mr. Dolgay was an electrician, Mr. Gray a dentist, Mrs. Johnston a homemaker and Mr. Goodis the head of a fledgling advertising agency.
In 1958, the group released their first long-playing album, Across Canada with the Travellers, which was recorded on a single microphone in the living room of the owner of the Hallmark record label. A second Hallmark album also had limited success, after which the Travellers became the first Canadian folk group to sign with a major record label when Columbia Records issued Quilting Bee in 1960 and Making Hay with the Travellers the following year.
Their stature as the premier folk troupe in the country was settled before they were chosen to be the closing act of the inaugural Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961 at Orillia, Ont. Mr. Goodis left the group after the festival to dedicate himself full-time to his advertising agency. He was replaced by Ray Woodley, a linotype operator whose guitar playing added to the group's sound.
Meanwhile, Mr. Dolgay befriended Quebec folk singer Jacques Labrecque at Mariposa, and the singer accompanied the Travellers on a short Canadian tour, during which he sang in French.
In 1962 , the Travellers were selected to play a 28-day, 13-city tour of the Soviet Union, a rare cultural exchange in the hottest days of the Cold War. They played outdoors at agricultural fairs and indoors at ornate concert halls, singing in English, Russian and Yiddish. Some of the shows were broadcast on Soviet television. (The group later rerecorded the songs they performed and added the sounds of Muscovite crowds in the background on an album titled The Travellers On Tour.)
In June, 1963, the Travellers and Harry Belafonte sang We Shall Overcome at a fundraising luncheon at the O'Keefe Centre in Toronto sponsored by Holy Blossom Temple on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This performance came two months before Joan Baez led 300,000 singers in the song from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the King-led March on Washington.
A year later, the Travellers performed for the Queen and Prince Philip in Charlottetown, PEI. After the concert, they went backstage to present the royal couple with copies of their albums. The prince had a suggestion: "Why don't you come to England now that the Beatles are away?" (The tabloid press in Britain misreported the prince saying the Beatles were "on the wane," forcing Buckingham Palace to deny he had said any such thing.) The Travellers toured Britain and continental Europe late in the year and early in 1965.
"Even the Queen suggested we come to England," Mr. Dolgay said at the time. "She was very interested in the Canadian material we sang and said she thought it very important for us to preserve the Canadian heritage in song."
Even as the quartet's music was reaching an ever larger audience, tensions within the band led to a showdown in which Mr. Dolgay was forced out, quickly replaced by Joe Lawrence Hampson. Mr. Gray and the others were interested in following a more commercial road toward success and would soon be singing paeans to a sponsoring brewery.
Mr. Dolgay became a talent agent, handling Marti Shannon and the folk group 3's a Crowd. He also continued to operate an eponymous electrical contracting company. Though bitter about his treatment, Mr. Dolgay rejoined the Travellers on invitations to play at occasional concerts over the years.
Sidney Dolgay (originally Dolgoy) was born in Winnipeg on May 17, 1923, to Annie and Max Dolgoy, who were Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia.
Mr. Dolgay died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on Dec. 25, which was his 72nd wedding anniversary. He leaves his wife, the former Ida Goldberg, whom he had met in a youth orchestra. He also leaves a son, a daughter and two grandchildren.
Mr. Dolgay was a resident of the Performing Arts Lodge in Toronto. He played mandocello at lodge shows until he took sick just days before his death.
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