Ms. Claman also composed the Ontario song or more correctly "A Place to Stand" for the Ontario Government and it was used at the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 67, and subsequent promotions...

 

The 506sports.com site did a tv sports theme bracket challenge where you could vote for your favourite theme. The HNIC theme made it to the Sweet 16 before losing out to the 1980's NBA on CBS tune by a margin of 51.75% to 48.25%. However, only 257 votes were cast. For the record, Roundball Rock by John Tesh [NBA on NBC] defeated the CBS  March Madness theme 60.14% to 39.86% 281 people decided the winner.

paterson1 wrote:

Delores was working for the McCann ad agency in Toronto when she wrote the Hockey Night in Canada theme.  Apparently she wrote hundreds of jingles in her long career.  She and her husband founded their own agency and would hire some of Toronto's best musicians to work on various advertising packages.  In her era Toronto agencies produced some of the best jingles anywhere since many of the musicians were actually professional performers and would use studio session work on jingles to augment their income.  Members from Lighthouse, Dr. Music. Lisa DelBello, Patsy Gallant, Tommy Ambrose and others either wrote or performed on jingles produced in Toronto.

She technically didn't make any money off of the Hockey Night in Canada theme since it was an assignment from McCann to come up with a theme.  As RA noted from the CBC article, CBC didn't give her credit for the song on the closing credits.  The  theme started to appear elsewhere beyond Hockey Night in Canada, Saturday Night Live used the theme for Weekend Update from time to time.

Delores did make a nice bit of money from the theme when CTV/TSN paid over 1 million for the rights to the song and CBC decided to have a contest for a new theme song for Hockey Night in Canada.

It would be great to hear some of the jingles she wrote back in the 60's-80's during her long and very successful career.  A life well lived. 

 

Nifty and interesting info paterson1, a bit I knew, a lot, like her making some money I didn't.

It would be fantastic if Terry O'Reilly did a feature on her for an episode of the upcoming season of Under The Influence, perhaps with "women in advertising" or "selling hockey" as the theme with the work of Delores as the opening trivia story.

I had her famous HNIC theme as a ringtone on my phone for years and as a little kid, the music would give me a real thrill every Saturday night. Still does to be honest.

Last edited by betaylored (July 20, 2021 12:49 pm)

I have a friend in Whitby who has that HNIC LP. Actually quite well done and certainly brings back many memories.