Marg Osburne & Charlie Chamberlain
Legendary Canadian fiddle master and bandleader Don Messer was travelling through Moncton, New Brunswick in 1947 when he first heard 19 year old Marg Osburne singing on her radio programme “The Girl From the Singing Hills” on CKCW radio, a show she had been doing since she was 17.
Messer hired her on the spot to fill in for his then lead vocalist Charlie Chamberlain who was recovering from an automobile accident. Soon after Osburne became the group’s lead singer, often dueting with the newly demoted Chamberlain.
Don Messer and His Islanders began broadcasting out of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada on radio station CFCY three times a week beginning in 1939. The show was also broadcast nationally across Canada by the CBC.
Osburne and Chamberlain became regulars on the show and made a number of recordings. The group toured each summer, mounting a national tour in 1967 as part of Canada’s Centennial, playing 66 shows across the country.
1956 brought about the first appearance on television of Don Messer And His Islanders, including both Osburne and Chamberlain, when the Rogers owned CFCY radio in Charlottetown, PEI launched CFCY-TV (the CFCY television station would eventually be sold to the CBC in 1968 for the national broadcaster’s first ever television presence on Prince Edward Island).
When Messer made the move to Halifax in 1958 after close to 20 years in Prince Edward Island, most of the band followed, including singers Osburne and Chamberlain.
From being occasional TV guests, the band began a summer series called The Don Messer Show on August 7, 1959 as a replacement for The Country Hoedown broadcast on CBC television. The show continued in the fall as Don Messer’s Jubilee. Osburne remained with the show throughout the 1960s, winning a wide audience across the country as one of the show stars, enlarging her fan base dramatically along the way.
After Messer died in 1973, Osburne began a second career as a nightclub singer. She performed frequently in the Western provinces and territories of Canada. During this period she recorded for Jack Boswell’s Marathon Records label.
Osburne continued to perform until July 16, 1977, when she collapsed on stage during a concert in Rocklyn, Ontario. She died of a heart attack before reaching the hospital, exactly five years after Charlie Chamberlain’s death on the same day, July 16, 1972. She was 49 years old.
“All my friends are on the pogey and I’m on the pills, hooked on the white line over the hills” – Marg Osburne ~ Some Kind Of Fool