durhamregion.com | This Week | Thursday, December 22, 2022 | 24 Serve as a simple & delicious appetizer on New Year's Eve! Our flatbreads have a thin, crispy crust topped with the finest ingredients. All you have to do is bake to enjoy a gourmet taste experience! Choose from a variety of unique flavours! FLAT-OUT DELICIOUS! 699ea 390-430 g SAVE $2.00ea Sale price in effect Dec. 29, 2022 - Jan. 4, 2023. An Oshawa folksinger and songwriter best known globally for the Bonnie Raitt hit 'Something to Talk About' has died. Oshawa music legend and member of the Canadian Songwriting Hall of Fame Shirley Eikhard died of cancer at age 67 on Dec. 15. A New Brunswicker by birth, she was born in Sackville in 1955 and moved to Oshawa in 1963. A precocious musical talent, she was the daughter of the trail-blazing fiddler June Eikhard -- known as Canada's 'first lady of the fiddle' -- and bassist Cecil (Arnold) Eikhard, who were both in the Tantramar Ramblers. As a tween, Shirley played guitar and wrote songs, supporting her mother at contests in the region, and by the time she was 14, appeared at a songwriting workshop at the Mariposa Folk Festival (then held in Toronto) in 1969, and later on CBC TV's 'Singalong Jubilee', one of the most popular shows on the network and an incubator for East Coast folk musicians. By the time she was 14, she had a contract with Capitol Records Canada -- the second big act from Oshawa that signed with this company after Jack London and Sparrows' breakthrough in 1965-66. During the 1960s, Oshawa was a hotbed of country music, and local radio jockey Murray 'Slim' Gordon Lewis ran the jamboree nights at the historic Red Barn dance hall. Robert J. Stone's independent label released many country songs under license, and by the 70s, George Petralia had founded his Cloud Burst Records label and established the Country Jamboree at various locations around Oshawa, with the support of industry magazine RPM's Walter Grealis and the fledgling Canadian Association for Country Music Advancement. The Eikhard family were right at home in this remarkable musical milieu, where many downtown hotels had a lounge devoted to staging live 'western' music. Eikhard's career took off in the early 1970s as covers of her original materials were issued by mainstream artists such as Chet Atkins and Anne Murray. Eikhard recorded a self-titled album in 1971 for Capitol and she had a country hit in 1972 with the song 'Smiling Wine', and garnered Juno awards in 1973 and 1974 as best country female artist. Eikhard performed during the 1970s in Toronto coffee houses. Between 1975 and 1977, she issued albums 'Child of the Present', 'Let Me Down Easy' and 'Horizons' on Attic Records and documented a diverse sonic palette with pop, R&B and rock songs. In the early 80s, she established her own record label, and found her way to Nashville, eventually issuing 'Taking Charge' in 1987. Her musical curiosity would blossom in the 1990s as she explored composing for theatre and jazz with albums 'The Jazz Sessions', 'Going Home' and 'The Last Hurrah'. She was a talented multi-instrumentalist. Eikhard is perhaps best known today for her song 'Something to Talk About' -- covered by Grammy award-winning US guitarist and singer Bonnie Raitt in 1991 -- and later used as a theme song for a US sitcom. Eikhard's own versions of this signature song display her powerful voice and songcraft, with an edge of stridency and urgency. She is predeceased by her partner, Lola Osborne. Dr. Gary Genosko is a professor of communication and digital media studies at Ontario Tech University. REMEMBERING OSHAWA'S QUEEN OF FOLK AND COUNTRY: SHIRLEY EIKHARD The Oshawa songwriter behind Bonnie Raitt's Grammy-winning 1991 hit 'Something To Talk About', Shirley Eikhard, passed away at 67 on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. David Bebee/The Record file photo GARY GENOSKO newsroom@ durhamregion.com OPINION