"Jazz Summer"

There is an episode of TV’s Who’s The Boss?, where Tony convinces Angela’s hip mother Mona to invite her straight-laced daughter to a jazz club in an effort to loosen her up. That plan works too well, as Angela can’t get enough of her new lifestyle of all-night bohemian parties with people who are unaware that the day has two twelve o’clocks. There is that moment where she wears this "morning after" glow, mind still floating in the reverie of having found her true being. That moment came to mind when I felt EXACTLY the same way after stumbling into work on the Monday morning after the first weekend spent at the jazz festival. The seeds had been sewn, the new world was born, and there was no recourse.

It was the summer of 1995. There I was, 9 AM in the basement warehouse, with such a happy head space that I didn’t know I was still wearing sunglasses! This was the first taste of the new life that was evolving for me, all because of an ad in Sam The Record Man.

Although I’ve loved jazz since I was a kid  (with adolescent Saturday nights spent twiddling the radio knobs for the CFCA big band program while my peers were out somewhere drinking and fornicating), it wasn't until the early 1990s when I had seriously started to explore the music. My friends and I had tired of the “classic rock” format, and sought other forms of music to define ourselves. Whereas they found new plateaus in the burgeoning alternative rock scene, I instead went back to the roots: first to blues, then to its close cousin, jazz.  At first, it was tough being a jazz fan in a small town. You had to take whatever slim pickings were available in delete bins, garage sales, thrift shops or fleetingly on the radio. (More on that in a future post.) That changed, upon moving to the big city for school.

In the first two-thirds of my three-year course in broadcasting, I hadn’t fully taken advantage of all that the city offered, and largely confined my spare time to record stores or rep cinemas. Sure, I had cherished friends in college, but in those hours outside of school and work, I was still searching for something else. In the summer months at the end of the second school year, the time seemed right for change. Those hot nights and weekends were devoted to the jazz world I’d been enamoured of. It was more than just the music: it was also the way of life and state of mind that it represented. I think too, that my brother’s sudden death the previous December instilled the realization that life is too precious a gift to waste, and one had to get out and take full advantage of it.

The mid-1990s was a perfect time to be a jazz fan. CDs were more affordable, and countless back catalogue recordings were being issued to disc for the first time. There was a renewed mainstream interest in the music thanks to the so-called Young Lions (players like Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, et al) who brought a new vitality, and a new young audience, to the form. Even those who enjoyed the most extreme forms of “alternative music” would support the new avant garde jazz scene (David S. Ware, Fred Frith, etc.). And in the years before CJRT rebranded to JAZZ-FM, one’s favourite music was still generously showcased on college radio shows throughout the day. Speciality TV channels like Bravo had an impressive catalogue of programming. Plus, with a recovering economy, a lot of Canada Council grant money supported independent music venues and recordings. 

In other words, there was a bottomless pit of jazz new and old for discovery. I wanted to bask in it as much as possible, and find some like-minded comrades in the process.  This task began inconspicuously enough, with a visit to the jazz department of Sam The Record Man, and viewing an ad for volunteers at the DuMaurier Jazz Festival. It seemed like a perfect way to get inaugurated into the jazz scene. Since I worked weekdays during the summer, I had volunteered for shifts on the two weekends that bookended the festival.

The final weekend, spent hanging around the volunteer headquarters, came with the revelation that there were other people with the same ambitions, to start the same kind of "jazz crowd" I was. A handful of us had formed a little community, resulting in subsequent nights on the town, house parties, and the forging of lifelong friendships.  Because of the festival, our lives had changed significantly: especially for me, as through “a friend of a friend”, I would soon meet Susan, the love of my life.

My life has undergone several major changes, just due to the right alchemy of things in the air at the time. The summer of 1995 was one of these. This is the first of many blog posts to be published in the next few weeks, commemorating the 25th anniversary of that “jazz summer”, with reminisces of the scene, and reviews of music that I had discovered at the time- which charted a path to a new consciousness, and (to coin a phrase from the “Who’s The Boss” theme song)... a brand new life.

This post originally appeared in 2015, in honour of its 20th anniversary. Alas, a busy work schedule hampered my time to follow up with all those articles. Now, for year 25, with the world upside down, it appears that time is all we have, so those pieces will finally be written. The prospective 25th anniversary reunion of "The Jazz Club" will have to be re-scheduled on, I dunno, the 26th? For now, while the world heals, we'll pour a glass of wine and silently relive those memories of the music, the laughter and the lives that all changed in one summer.

Saturday Nights and "C Jam Blues"

The last two years spent in Birdtown was also when I really started getting into jazz. In a small town, you took whatever you found, even if it wasn't necessarily the best representation of the genre. Well, one Saturday afternoon in the fall, I hit pay dirt. I bought a handful of jazz LPs at a yard sale from some hip people in Port Dover. A couple of Keith Jarrett's, and Miles Davis At the Blackhawk were among the titles from that haul, but the prize of the lot was Charles Mingus at Carnegie Hall. This 1970s live album has only two songs, one on each side: which I likewise recorded to a C-60 cassette. (In those days, I would usually play an LP just once- when I made a tape of it, so I could listen to the music wherever I went.)

The last two years spent in Birdtown were also in the height of a recession. The economic downturn brought out the worst in everybody- even in a small town "where nothing ever happens" there were rashes of car thefts and store robberies. As a result, I was always nervous when I worked the Saturday night shift at the convenience store. One already had enough to worry about, with the drunken weirdos from the neighbouring apartment buildings raising hell, never mind all this other shit! Well, once 11 PM rolled around, and I could lock the doors to Fort Apache, elated that I survived another Saturday night unharmed, my 11:01 ritual began. On the ubiquitous Realistic tape recorder-player would go Side A of Mingus at Carnegie Hall: a rousing 24-minute rendition of Ellington's "C Jam Blues". This would be playing full blast while I performed my closing duties (counting the float, putting money in the safe, filling the coolers, etc.). The wall of sound by saxophonists Charles McPherson, John Handy, George Adams, Roland Kirk and Hamiet Bluiett remains one of the most joyfully raucous things I've ever heard: long lines of honks and squeals like an 18-wheeler and a freight train having a love child. Mingus' sound was often eccentric, and this track especially seemed the perfect soundtrack to clean out one's headspace after several hours of the usual assortment of bizarre Damon Runyon characters from the neighbourhood; and in light of the potential occupational hazards, it also made one glad to be alive.

But you don't have to take my word for it.  Here's a sample to hear for yourself!