The gentle serenade reverberated off the walls of the 30-year-old structure that not-to-be-forgotten night three decades ago.

"We were standing on the blueline, lined up for the national anthem, and because the Corral was 30 years old that year, we all sang Happy Birthday to the building, too,'' Jim Peplinski is reminiscing.

"I remember Guy Chouinard thinking that was absolutely hilarious. He was beside me in line, cleared his throat and got into the spirit of the thing, singing: 'Happy birthdaaaaaaay Co-raaaaaaaaaaaal!' Really belting it out.

"In fact, he enjoyed it so much that out of the blue after that, he'd let loose with another chorus of 'Happy birthdaaaaaaay Co-raaaaaaaaaaaal!'

"For no reason at all.''

There was no singing filling the building to mark this anniversary, but the Calgary Stampede Corral has just turned 60.

The list of entertainers that played the Corral over the passing years - Duke Ellington, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, Alice Cooper - is lengthy and notable.

Yet it's a connection to sports that made the facility famous. Canada is undefeated (5-0) in Davis Cup tennis play at the Corral. Rodeo has, naturally, been a recurring tenant. The '72 World Figure Skating Championships were staged there as well as preliminaries for the '88 Winter Olympics. The American Basketball Association Calgary Drillers played five home games before folding in 2002.

Mostly, though, it's known for hockey.

As host to a handful of Winter Olympics games in '88, temporary home for the Western Hockey League Hitmen, to the Calgary Cowboys of the World Hockey Association and for three years while the Olympic Saddledome was being built across the street, the NHL's Calgary Flames.

Bearcat Murray's ties go back right to the beginning of the building. The Corral was officially opened Dec. 15, 1950 and the first hockey game was held Boxing Day, as the Calgary Stampeders defeated the Edmonton Flyers 5-0 in a Western Canada Senior Hockey League game before a sellout crowd of 8,729.

But the longtime trainer of the Cowboys and Flames, an encyclopedia of hockey in this city, begs to differ.

"To my recollection, I played in the first game at the Corral,'' the Bearcat insists. "In the Big Six Hockey League. The afternoon before (the Stampeders) played theirs. I must've been 17, playing for Okotoks. Can't remember who we played against, but I vividly remember there used to be a big pot as people came in the door and you'd toss in a dime, a quarter, maybe 50 cents and watch a Sunday afternoon doubleheader. Darn good hockey, too.

"At the time it opened, (the Corral) was an unbelievable building. Beautiful. Something we'd never had, or seen, before. All the big acts started coming into town. And it was the first covered ice surface in the city, taking the place of the old Victoria Arena, where the Saddledome sits now. And they put it up so fast.

"It really made the city seem big-league.''

Though undeniably frayed, showing its age in an era obsessed with high-tech glitz, wander the hallways of the Corral today and the photos on the walls still possess the power to draw you in. Wonderfully vivid, black-and-white or sepia-toned, some of the faces staring out from the frames as famous today as they were long ago, and many unfamiliar, their celebrity having faded with the passing of time.

"The picture of that game we sang Happy Birthday is hanging there, beside our old dressing room,'' says Peplinski.

"It was the place I got my first chance to score an NHL goal. In that first game, against Quebec (a 5-5 tie). Dead in front of the net. Perfect spot. And ... I pounded the puck right into Mario Gosselin's pillows.

"Lemme tell you, I LOVE that building.''

That first season coming north from Atlanta, the Flames enjoyed spectacular, unexpected success. In their new claustrophobic digs, they lost only five games (25-5-10) during the regular season. Kent Nilsson's 131 points and 82 assists that year are franchise records that'll never be touched.

"When we left for the Saddledome, it was time,'' recalls Jamie Hislop. "But I did enjoy the years at the Corral, for sure. It was such a huge advantage for us. Darker than any NHL building. Small, the fans - and they were loud - right on top of you. High boards so the ice surface seemed small.

"I'm sure teams coming in there took a first look and said to themselves, 'What is THIS?!"

The Flames were then, as now, the hottest ticket in town, selling 10,000 full- and half-season ticket packages in a 7,000-seat facility, against all logic advancing to the Stanley Cup semifinals, beating prohibitively favoured Philly along the way.

The love affair had begun in earnest.

"We had such a connection with the fans in that building,'' recalls Peplinski. "We'd stop and sign autographs on the way out to the ice from the room between periods. Honest. There was one kid I remember, Danny, I'd signed for him so often he gave me a bottle of Old English Leather cologne as a thank-you gift.

"The place was so small, so intimate. Bearcat's training room had a training table and a chair. The coaches' room was the size of a broom closet.

"Our dressing room was SO cosy. Barely enough room for Bobby MacMillan to have a smoke. And the showers ... maybe four shower heads. Two urinals and a cubicle in there.

"But we were happy. We were in a real hockey environment, in a rink we considered our home.''

Thirty years after the Flames played in their Calgary debut, Oct. 9, 1980, the Stampede Corral celebrates another milestone anniversary.

"She's still solid,'' marvels Murray. "That used to be a problem, in fact. The boards were so high and the cement seating was right up against the boards so that a lot of guys suffered shoulder injuries playing there. And more than one player fell trying to get over the boards at the bench.''

Six decades later after its unveiling, the one-time showpiece that cost $1.2 million in 1950 is still there, dwarfed now by its more modern successor across the way, true. But still functioning. Still viable. Still very much a part of the present, while echoing a welcome reverence for the past.

"I've got more stories about that place than you've got time,'' says the Bearcat nostalgically.

"So she's 60, huh?

"That's a pretty significant birthday.''

Somewhere, Guy Chouinard is clearing his throat.

gjohnson@calgaryherald.com