By Evan Hill
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Friday, January 26, 2007

Some Bears fans are celebrating this season’s run to the Super Bowl by buying jerseys and T-shirts. Others are decorating their homes or cars with the blue and orange. A few are even spending big for tickets to the game.

Joe Cantafio and his friends decided to go one step further.

They recorded an album of 12 songs cheering on the Bears, sold it to various area businesses, then sat back and watched as a public overcome with playoff fever snapped up almost every copy.

The inspiration for the project came on Oct. 16, as John Steele sat watching the Bears play the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football.

After the Bears’ come-from-behind victory, Cardinals head coach Dennis Green launched into an angry rant.

“The Bears are who we thought they were,” he yelled.

Steele jumped out of his chair and yelled the line back triumphantly. Then he sang it. Then he picked up his guitar and played it.

“I knew this was something we had to make a CD from,” Steele said.

He spent the night recording the music with his laptop, but knew he needed help with the lyrics.

He called longtime friend Cantafio, a touring musician for over 30 years.

“I said, ‘Come on, not another Super Bowl Shuffle,’” Cantafio said.

A week later, the Bears beat the San Francisco 49ers 41-10 at home, and Cantafio was ready to come on board.

“So now I’m all pumped up, in about a half-hour I wrote all the lyrics,” he said.

Originally intending to release the song as a single, Steele and Cantafio, of Barrington, realized they could strike gold if they made an album and the Bears made the Super Bowl.

Cantafio recruited Bill Archer, the man who remade the 1941 song “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” into the version played today.

Archer was a friend of Cantafio’s father from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, while Steele’s father played in Archer’s band at Bears games.

Cantafio said Archer had never released his version of the song before this album.

“It’s an honor for us to have that song on our CD,” he said.

Cantafio brought his band into Steele’s family studio in Chicago, and they recorded the album within three weeks.

They released the CD, titled “Bears Fight Songs,” to stores on Dec. 26, but sales began to accelerate this month with the Bears’ playoff success.

At Echo Labs in Chicago, which has distributed the album, producer Sean Johnson said they sold 50,000 copies to stores such as Jewel and Best Buy.

The CD is currently selling for $9.99.

Cantafio said he’s happy with the financial success the album has had, but he’s more excited to have a place in Bears history.

Both he and Steele said they’ve received happy e-mails from fans across the country who purchased the CD.

“The whole object is to get people to sing along to the song and get excited,” Steele said.

“It’s great that people want the songs and want to be part of this Bears thing.”

Please note, ... John Steele's father, the great Ron Steele, is the guitarist with the Chicago Symphony. My late-great father was a dentist.