The Man Who Sang Goodbyeis not a documentary about present-day news and current affairs. It is a historical detective story, and the trail it follows is nearly half a century old.

Viewers of a recent East Coast Music Awards ceremony watched musicologists announce a posthumous honour to a man named Omar Blondahl. Although many older Atlantic Canadians remember his name, most viewers under the age of 50 were left wondering “who?”

Five years after Newfoundland gave up its status as an independent nation to become a Canadian province, Omar Blondal arrived in St. John’s on his way to Iceland to find his relatives.

Walking into a local radio station with his guitar, he applied for what he expected to be a temporary announcer’s job. Soon he was a hit on local airwaves, singing traditional Newfoundland songs. Within a few years, he was a star of regional radio and television, had produced more than a dozen record albums, and was a household name throughout Atlantic Canada.

Modern folklorists credit him with establishing the modern Newfoundland folksong “canon” and preserving ballads that might otherwise have been lost as the new province’s culture was swamped by a blander Canadiana.

Then, at the peak of his career, he suddenly disappeared. Most Newfoundlanders (including his family) had no idea where he went.

The Man Who Sang Goodbye was initially broadcast on CBC Radio’s regional program Performance Hour, in Newfoundland and Labrador. This broadcast slot is a music series, which usually presents concert performances and disc spins, rarely documentaries.

The challenge was to create a music program which ― given this musician’s dated performance style ― would not bore listeners who didn’t live through the performer’s era. I believed that the drama of a man who disappeared has more universal appeal than does 50-year-old folk crooning. After all, why would a successful musician who performed all his life suddenly abandon his career, never to sing again?

So, the documentary set out to find out what happened to him, exploring the performer's music as it tried to solve the riddle of his life. In an independent radio production company with a staff of one, financial resources were slim but curiosity was great.

Four years earlier, I was in Iceland researching a series about the Viking millennium. Knowing that Blondahl was a Canadian of Icelandic decent, I used the opportunity to research Blondahl's family history.

The completed documentary begins with genealogical records in Reykjavik and ends with an old man and a box of mementos in Vancouver, where Blondahl died in 1992. In the end, the documentary presents no simple solution to the mystery of the man, but offers listeners several possible answers, each proposed by friends and family who once knew him.

A link to the program can be found at: http://www.batteryradio.com/Pages/News05.html

Battery Radio is the most easterly independent radio production company in North America. Its St. John's studio is located at the bottom of the cliff where Marconi received the world's first distance wireless signal. The company makes programs for public broadcasters around the world. The website is www.batteryradio.com

Before becoming an independent producer, Chris Brookes made documentaries at CBC Radio.