mal thompson (canadian talent library)

this past summer i had the immense pleasure to spend a morning w/ producer mal thompson. mal started his music career in ontario radio, moved to the stratford festival, and then over to london in the early 1960s where he worked as promotions man for EMI UK (and helped to launch the beatles!@#$%!!!). after a spell in publishing (working w/ the likes of roy orbison, engelbert humperdinck, and tom jones!@#$%!!!) he returned to canada for the next phase of his career. i first noticed mal's name on the back of many an album cover from the canadian talent library (a precursor to FACTOR) where he produced over 100 long players between 1970-78, including material from hagood hardy & the montage (montage), jackie mittoo (reggae magic, let's put it all together), mario castro-neves (the latin band of), ben mcpeek (play me), and jerry toth (the 12 sides of jerry toth). this was mostly MOR (middle-of-the-road) material (and in some cases, far from it!@#$%!!!), but along w/ CTL founder j. lyman potts, thompson left a vast legacy for us to rediscover and worked tirelessly at promoting canadian talent when the music business, retail, and much of the marketplace simply wasn't having it. i hope to transcribe my interview w/ mal shortly for a future project, until then, please enjoy a couple of snaps from our enlightening session...