Murray Yung has long been a supporter of country music.
The years of effort in support of the sector were marked Sunday as the Yorkton President was presented the Country Music Person of the Year award at the Saskatchewan Country Music Association Awards held in the city.
“It (the award) caught me totally by surprise because we have so many worthy people. The field of names is huge. All those people should have won an award,” he said.
Making the award even more social is that it is one driven by SCMA membership, which he says is gratifying, and suggests members have liked what he has tried to accomplish as the organization’s president the past four years.
While Yung might be best known today as a bass player for his daughter Samara Yung, his musical interest predates even the earliest thoughts of have a daughter by a few decades.
“I was four years old and wanted a guitar,” he said with a smile. “I’d seen the Beatles on TV, and I wanted to be a Beatle.”
An uncle gave him a broken guitar.
“My dad fixed it and I wouldn’t put it down,” said Yung.
For the next few years Yung said he fooled around with the instrument, until his father, a banker was transferred to a town (Indian Head) with a guitar teacher. He was about eight at the time and finally started taking lessons.
“I was a keener. We’d get lessons and I’d be five pages ahead.”
Yung’s father played in a dance band, and by the time his son was 10, he’d get to go on gigs where his drummer father would let him sit on the drum kit and keep time with brushes.
“He got me going,” said Yung of his father.
By the time high school came along Yung was in a rock band, a fan of Spirit in the Sky, April Wine and the Doobie Brothers who he noted “were my idols.”
In time Yung would learn the bass, finding there was a call for bass players.
Yung would head to university with the idea of becoming a music teacher, but recognized rather quickly “I didn’t have the patience to teach kids.”
There would be some more time with a rock band, including a memorable two-week gig playing poolside in Hawaii, but time would see Yung follow in his father’s banking footsteps meeting his eventual wife Ronda when working in Ituna.
Then along came Samara.
“She was always keen on music,” said her father recalling his daughter playing dress up in her pre-school years “with a plastic guitar and microphone.” While there was a Raffi tunes, he was playing The Northern Pikes, Queen and Journey for his young daughter.
The family would end up in Yorkton. Murray would end up strumming bass for Cowboy X, and Samara would go on to win GX94 Talent Search. The transition to country was done.
While admitting “I would have been doing something somewhere (with music), Samara became his focus. “I get to relive my youth through her.”
With his daughter singing country, joining the SCMA was a natural as a way to glimpse how the industry worked in the province, and as a way to network, said Yung.
Then asked to join the Board he accepted, and within two years was president.
While SCMA bylaws limit the presidency to four years, Yung said he will stay involved in country music, at least as long as his daughter is interested, and likely forever, since music has been his blood most of his life.
