The way indie producer David Brady tells it, Yonge Street – ­ Toronto Rock & Roll Stories should never have been made.

“We did this so fast. This show should never have happened. It got turned down everywhere,” the Bravo! music documentary producer told Playback Daily.

You can’t get more Canadian content than a portrait of the 1950s-1970s Yonge Street strip as a pop music mecca that spawned industry legends including Robbie Robertson, David Clayton-Thomas, Gordon Lightfoot and Ronnie Hawkins.

Button-downed Toronto may have been dry, but Yonge Street bars and clubs like Hawk’s Nest and Le Coq D’or offered young musicians such as Neil Young, Johnny Rhythm (pictured), Jackie Shane and Mouse Johnson inspiration, distance, and the freedom to hatch a world-beating Canadian music industry.

So there’s irony in CTV production execs Charlotte Engel and Susanne Boyce at the last minute saving this scrapbook history of Toronto’s musical roots by agreeing to finance a three-part Bravo! doc to be shot in the hop.

“This is the last show that CTV under the old regime commissioned. It took a lot of courage,” Brady insists.

The Bruce McDonald-directed doc, premiering on March 21, in time for the 40th anniversary of the Junos on March 27, had a tight shooting schedule.

David Brady Productions signed the contract with Bravo! for the Yonge Street project in October 2010.

“This [was] the Francis Ford Coppola school of filmmaking ­ chaos breeds creativity,” Brady recounts.

Two days before leaving for Los Angeles, no interviews were lined up.

By the time their airplane touched down at LAX, time with Mouse Johnson, Daniel Lanois, Robbie Robertson and a host of other former starving Yonge Street musicians that concert promoters were later to drool over suddenly appeared.

What also sets Yonge Street apart from most music docs is its format: more personal than talking heads, allowing veteran musicians to riff about their early careers, and series creator Jan Haust serving as an on-air host/guide.

There’s another key element: early American and British rockers got many of their early musical cues from blues and R&B artists that settled in Toronto for its racial tolerance.

“Toronto was color blind, both the airwaves and the city, literally,” Brady recalls.

Toronto audiences also craved the rebellious music that filled Yonge Street haunts like Zanzibar, Brown Derby, the Edison Hotel and the Friar’s Tavern, well before a new generation of Canadian acts like Barenaked Ladies, Drake and Broken Social Scene made it south of the border.

The three-partner Yonge Street series also has an interactive media component, courtesy of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund.

Using 3D models and animation, the content at yongestreet.tv takes viewers back to Toronto circa 1960 to visit a host of clubs, bars and cultural landmarks.

Yonge Street ­ – Toronto Rock & Roll Stories runs from March 21 to 23 on Bravo!.