Distant roads are calling...

Don Hunter had time left for lots of career stops after managing the Guess Who

By: Eva Wasney

Managing a world famous rock band would be a dream job for most, but for Don Hunter it was just one line on an eclectic resumé.

Hunter was the Winnipeg-born manager of the Guess Who during the band’s heyday. After the group split in 1975 he went on to live out other passions — becoming a farmer, a show dog breeder and a pet supply salesman.

"It was such a significant event, and then many, many, many things happened since then," his daughter Kim says.

Hunter died in Winnipeg on Oct. 16, 2019, at the age of 78 after a short battle with cancer. His larger-than-life personality was present until the end.

"He was happiest when he had an audience," Kim says. "My dad had a great singing voice and (when) he was in Riverview in palliative care he was serenading all the ladies on the floor."

That singing voice is how Hunter met the woman who would become his wife of 50 years — although his crooning at a house party didn’t go over as expected.

"A lot of girls would have been very impressed and I thought, ‘How schmaltzy can you be?’" Yvonne Hunter says. "I didn’t even give him my phone number, he spent the following day phoning everybody he knew that might possibly know what my phone number was."

He managed to track down her number and they started dating, but Yvonne gave him an ultimatum before things got too serious. She was heading back to college to finish her education degree and he was a high school dropout who sang at nightclubs and worked odd jobs as a bowling instructor and vending machine repairman.

Yvonne told him: "Look, I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved with somebody who doesn’t have at least a university degree."

Hunter relented and joined Yvonne at St. Paul’s College, but his efforts to graduate in the name of love were sidelined by a burgeoning career as a booking agent. Hunter got to know the Guess Who through gigs at local clubs and the band turned to him when they were looking for new management.

"Don wasn’t a creative manager per se, but he did amazing things with the little background that he had," Guess Who drummer Garry Peterson says.

Hunter started conducting business through a Winnipeg management company he called Quasimodo — so named for his resemblance to Charles Laughton, star of the 1939 film Hunchback of Notre Dame, according to Peterson. The operation was little more than a secretary and a phone line.

"Let’s face it, this is a telephone business. It doesn’t matter where you’re geographically located," Hunter told Billboard magazine in a 1973 interview. "Of course, we have a ridiculous phone bill."

What he lacked in management experience he made up for in business acumen.

"I think a lot of times when he walked into meetings with these high-powered record executives they looked at this guy and thought, ‘You gotta be kidding me,’ but in the meantime he walked out and had their shirt," Peterson says, laughing. "He was constantly underestimated, I’m sure, and at times that can give you an advantage.

"He was such a great part of us and what we did."

The industry took notice eventually and Hunter received many accolades for his work with the band, including a Manager of the Year award from RCA Records in 1974.

While he was a force behind the scenes, Hunter also got his moment in the spotlight when he posed shirtless in full glam makeup and pantyhose for an ad campaign promoting the song, Glamour Boy.

Despite being a "telephone business," the job required a lot of travelling. In one year Hunter was on the road for nearly 250 days, leaving Yvonne at home with their two young children, Kim and Chris. (The couple married — sans diploma — in ’68. Burton Cummings sang Ave Maria at the wedding.)

"I was used to being pretty independent, so it didn’t bother me," Yvonne says of her husband’s travelling schedule.

Kim adds, "My dad was the high flyer and my mom was the rock."

When he was home, the family spent a lot of time at their cottage in Albert Beach — often hosting prominent musicians or industry personalities. Kim doesn’t remember much about the era (she was under five at the time), but recalls the effect the star-studded weekends had on neighbours.

"The teen girls would always try and take my brother and I for ice cream because there was rock stars around," she says, laughing.

Hunter was a talented cook and enjoyed holding court over the barbecue while regaling guests with jokes and stories.

"His defining thing, the thing that everyone remembers about my dad is that he always wanted to create this environment of hospitality around him," Kim says.

However, that gregarious personality was usually reserved for friends and acquaintances.

"I don’t think his family always saw that side of him," says Chris, who described his dad as a private man and a voracious reader.

He was also a dreamer.

"My dad was always the guy who would come home with something impractical or ridiculous, and I think that can be challenging," Kim says. "After the band broke up we bought a farm because that’s what my dad wanted to do."

The family moved to a small farm on a quarter section of land near Grand Marais, where they raised chickens and cattle. Hunter loved animals and started breeding and showing Basenji dogs, which led to an interest in animal nutrition and then a career in sales and marketing for the pet supply industry.

"Sales, whether he was selling rock bands or dog cookies, that was his thing," Kim says.

Hunter was ill-suited to the slower pace of retirement but found joy in taking photos, going on cruises with Yvonne and keeping up with friends around the world on Facebook.

Almost daily, he shared poetry, song lyrics and music advice with Darcie Norton, a friend he originally met through the music scene in Winnipeg and with whom he reconnected later in life. Norton and her husband Danny live in Grand Forks, B.C., and recently started performing together as a two-piece band.

"His advice was to take everything that comes along and you do it well with a certain work ethic," she says. "He was still so terribly passionate about (music)... we miss him dearly."

In January, Yvonne, Kim and Chris took a trip to New Zealand in Hunter’s memory and spread some of his ashes in Auckland — a city he yearned to revisit after touring through with The Guess Who in the ’70s.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney