| The Rankin Family | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Mabou, Nova Scotia |
| Genres | folk |
| Years active | 1989–present |
| Labels | Capitol, EMI, MapleMusic |
| Website | therankinfamily.com |
| Members | |
| Jimmy Rankin Cookie Rankin Raylene Rankin Heather Rankin |
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| Past members | |
| John Morris Rankin David Rankin Genevieve Rankin Geraldine Rankin |
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The Rankin Family is a Canadian musical family group from Mabou, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The group has won many Canadian music awards, including 15 East Coast Music Awards, six Juno Awards, four SOCAN Awards, three Canadian Country Music Awards and two Big Country Music Awards.
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The Rankins come from a family of 12, all of whom would entertain the neighbours musically every third weekend as part of a ceilidh.
The first Rankin Family band formed in the 1970s when siblings Geraldine, Genevieve, David, John Morris, and Raylene Rankin began performing at local weddings and dances in Cape Breton. As the older siblings went away to college and university, the younger siblings Jimmy, Cookie and Heather took their places.[1]
These five siblings - Jimmy, John Morris, Cookie, Raylene and Heather - released their own independent cassettes The Rankin Family (1989) and Fare Thee Well Love (1990), featuring original songs and a combination of traditional jigs, reels and Celtic folk songs. Their television debut was on the CBC variety show On the Road Again in 1989.
EMI's re-release of Fare Thee Well Love in 1992, went quadruple platinum, selling over 500,000 copies; the title track was a Top 40 singles in Canada.
On September 17, 1999, after recording the song "Jimmy Mo Mhile Stor" with The Chieftains for their album Tears of Stone, the group issued a press release stating that they would no longer perform as a group in order to pursue independent interests and careers.
Less than a year later, John Morris Rankin was killed in a car accident in Cape Breton on January 16, 2000.[2]
Jimmy Rankin has continued to write songs and has released four solo albums: Song Dog (2001), Handmade (2003), Edge of Day (2007), and Forget About the World (2011). Raylene Rankin has also released a solo album, Lambs in Spring (2004). When not performing on their own, the three sisters run The Red Shoe pub in Mabou.[3]
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