![]() ![]() “She never really came up and said, ‘Let’s keep Guy Lombardo’s spirit going!’ And I never pushed her to say, ‘What do you know?’ I look back now and think, ‘Damn, why didn’t I ask that question?’” “Life gets away with you,” he says wistfully. Why didn’t he just ask his mom about Lombardo when he had the chance? “As you get older, you want to appreciate what the older generation did and keep the history alive.” “At one point, she had a personalized licence plate that said ‘Guy’ - that was her most treasured thing.” “Her and Guy had a bond, a friendship that was strong, that nobody knew about,” says Ashman, whose early-in-life health struggles ensured a close bond with his mom. My parents at the time were happy.”Īs we stand on his frozen porch in the fading hours of daylight, it’s clear the question haunts him, an extraordinary strand in the otherwise ordinary life of a stay-at-home mom who married twice, had three kids, moved to Waterloo and passed away in 2017, three years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. “Because he was there (in New York City) and my mom was here (in Canada), that just doesn’t really float, because there was no hanky-panky. “What kept the friendship going?” Ashman muses, noting the annual poinsettia delivery continued for years after Lombardo’s death, courtesy of Guy’s brother, Lebert. Somewhere in the latter part of this illustrious timeline, walked Ashman’s mother. ![]() It’s important to note that Lombardo, while barely remembered today, once fronted America’s top dance band, an orchestral crowd-pleaser that played “the sweetest music this side of heaven,” rang in sales of 100 million records and - during their pre-rock heyday - went head to head against chart-topping titans such as Bing Crosby and Benny Goodman.īut it was their New Year’s Eve broadcasts - and elegant take on the Scottish folksong “Auld Lang Syne” - that gave them true immortality, starting in 1929 at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, moving to the Waldorf Astoria in 1960, and continuing after Lombardo’s death in 1977. ![]() ![]() He took us out around the Statue of Liberty.” We drove around in his boat in the harbour. After that, my mom and dad became friends with Guy and ended up going down to New York City to see him. “Talking, drinking, smoking - whatever you do at a house party. “I go out and look and there’s a Greyhound bus and all of a sudden they came off in their red uniforms with the Royal Canadian band, walked into the house, partied for a bit and then jumped back in the bus - 20 people, at least.” “What’s that?” he recalls thinking as he lay in bed. We’re just five minutes from here!’ So she told my dad, ‘The band’s coming over after the show’ and my dad said, ‘There’s no way they’re coming over here - never in a million years!’ ”Īnd then, a few hours later, Ashman heard the squeal of air brakes outside his bedroom window. “And Guy Lombardo came out, or was already there, and my mom said, ‘Hey, when you guys are done your show, come over to the house. “As far as I know, his band (Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians) played in Woodstock back in the early ’70s and my mom went outside for a smoke during one of their concerts,” recalls Ashman, who would have been about five. Why did he send a bouquet of poinsettias to her every Christmas for the remainder of his life? They’re smiling, comfortable - you can see there’s affection.īut what was the connection between one of the greatest bandleaders of the ’30s and ’40s and this married mother of three, more than 40 years his junior, who grew up on a Woodstock dairy farm? The faded Polaroids, taken in the mid ’70s, show his mom - a vivacious 20-something with a shock of blond in her hair - with the avuncular bandleader, arm draped casually around his shoulder in one shot, standing cheek to cheek in another - a dancing pose, arms around each other’s waists. “When I found this picture, I was like, ‘I gotta figure out what made her like Guy Lombardo so much that she would go crazy over him.’ ” “It’s a big mystery on how, what and when,” says the low-key 55-year-old as Lombardo’s musical trademark, “Auld Lang Syne,” plays on a faux antique turntable teetering precariously on a stool. We’re hovering over a makeshift table of memorabilia - yellowing newspaper clips, tour itineraries, concert programs, snapshots - that links his late mother, Dorothy Ashman, to Guy Lombardo, the London, Ont.-born bandleader who was to New Year’s Eve what Walter Ostanek is to Oktoberfest.Īnd we’re trying to figure out, from the distance of half a century, how they became friends. Standing on the back porch of his modest semi-detached in a nondescript Kitchener suburb, Scott Ashman looks as bewildered as I do. ![]()
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