Sam Gesser

Samuel (Sam) Gesser, CM (7 January 1930 – 1 April 2008) was a Canadian impresario, record producer and writer.

Born the son of Polish immigrants, he grew up in the Plateau-Mont-Royal district of Montreal, where he attended Baron Byng High School. One night, he got caught in his regular habit of sneaking into a local cinema, and correctly predicted to the manager that "One day I'll be presenting shows here, so you better let me in." Gesser negotiated being allowed to remain if he helped to clean up after the shows, and reported having learnt much about all aspects of the entertainment business as a result.

Between 1949 and 1959 Gesser worked as a commercial artist, while writing hundreds of scripts for CBC radio and TV. During the late 1940s and early 1950s Gesser also travelled throughout Quebec making recordings of French Canadian fiddle tunes and folk songs, which he released on the Allied Records record label. In addition, he presented programs about folk music on CFCF and on the CBC.

While browsing in a Chicago record store in 1948, he bought a disc by blues guitarist and singer Lead Belly released by Folkways Records, an American label not distributed in Canada. Gesser travelled to New York and after an unscheduled meeting with Folkways founder Moses Asch, became the Canadian representative for the label. Noticing that the Folkways catalog contained little Canadian folk music, Asch approved Gesser making recordings to fill the gap, provided he purchased a hundred copies of each. Inspired by ethnomusicologists Marius Barbeau, and Carmen Roy, and less concerned by sales than by a desire to preserve the music, Gesser went on to record and produce about 100 discs. Among the artists and folklorists he worked with were Hélène Baillargeon, Edith Fowke, Helen Creighton, Hyman Bress, Jean Carignan, Jacques Labrecque, Monique Leyrac, Alan Mills, Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton.

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