A Man Called Mutt

Without record producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange Shania might never have become such a major star.

Mutt with his first band Hocus in South Africa in 1971 (Photograph courtesy of Geoff Williams)
Clockwise from top left: Alan Goldswain, keyboard and vocals, Geoff Williams, drums, Mutt Lange, bass guitar and vocals, Stevie van Kerken, vocals, Steve McNamara, guitar and vocals.

Although they grew up decades, hemispheres and continents apart there are many uncanny similarities between Mutt Lange and Shania Twain's musical backgrounds. Both grew up in places that were far beyond the known periphery of the music business, both were marked out from their peers by an obsessive determination to learn their craft... and the type of music they heard as children was straight ahead commercial pop.

Robert John Lange was born in Mufilira, Northern Rhodesia in 1948, the second of three boys. Mufilira is a mining town , on the Congo border, right in the centre of the Copperbelt the richest seam of copper ore in the world. His South African born father was a mining engineer - not a suit and tie office manager, more a pick axe and shovel guy, a foreman in charge of teams of native workers. In contrast his mother was a very cultured, sophisticated woman who came from a landed family in Germany. While he was always called John at school and by his mother the Lange boys picked up nicknames young and got stuck with them. The youngest, Bill , was always known as "Slug" because as a kid he was pudgy, slow and laid back ,while John started off as "Puppy" which soon changed to the less endearing "Mutt". It was a comfortable colonial upbringing , but far from the verandahed luxury of Happy Valley. There was domestic help but not hot and cold running servants as the Langes were at the lower end of the expat social scale.

The only pop music Mutt heard in his youth was international, hits with strong hooks and melodies that stuck in the head. There wasn't much else out there. In the mining towns of Northern Rhodesia there were no radio stations so music came from what records the expat community brought with them - and their tastes were often suspect. Long before he heard Elvis for the first time little Mutt listened to Slim Whitman, and has loved him ever since. In the mid fifties the Florida born country singer, with extra added yodel, was hugely successful with hits including Rose Marie, Indian Love Call and Serenade. Somehow Slim touched a chord right across Africa. Nigerian superstar King Sunny Ade has described Whitman as one of his earliest influences and his band line ups invariably include a pedal steel guitar.