Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 30/98) - Flip through Carolyn McCabe's music collection and you'll find an eclectic mix of folk, pop, big band, country, and much more.

Part of what makes this collection interesting is the fact that it comes in album form. It's fascinating to check out the styles and artists' pictures on the album covers.

"I think it's interesting because you're able to see how they looked," McCabe said.

"Tom Jones is still around performing, and it's interesting to look at him as a young person," McCabe said, adding back in the 70s (or was it the 60s?) Tom sported the obligatory full sideburns.

McCabe said her interest in music developed much like anybody else.

She remembers hanging out at the coffee shops where every table had a little jukebox.

During summers, McCabe, with her family, would travel to a summer spot near Shediak, New Brunswick, where they would spend the season at a beach house.

"That was a hopping place. There was music all day and night on the (big) jukebox," she recalls.

"That was when friends bought me that record," she said, pointing to a Lenny Dee album featuring Sail Along the Silv'ry Moon.

Albums by Patsy Cline, the Irish Rovers, Anne Murray, Billie Holiday, Liberace, the Mills Brothers, Connie Francis, Don Ho and Stompin' Tom Connors among the collection.

On the local side, there's even an album by Norm Glowach.

"I have no idea where I got it," she said of Glowach's 1986 "I'm a Rambler" sensation.

Also under the Northern banner, comes her copy of the Hay River Centennial Choir album produced in 1970.

McCabe said her collection grew as years went by. Many were given to her by friends who moved away from Yellowknife. Now, she's wondering if anybody might be interested in buying the ol' LPs.

And how has living in Yellowknife -- McCabe came North in 1969 to work for the GNWT -- influenced her musical tastes?

"I wasn't a country and western fan until I came to Yellowknife."

Today, McCabe's favourite style of music is jazz. She enjoys listening to jazz station KLON out of Long Beach, California.

But, she says, country and western is still a favourite as well.