ye old Black Swan

[Brian Nation]

http://static.flickr.com/46/151333651_d3b58667e3_d.jpg


See also http://heritagevancouver.org/topten/topten2006_07.html

[John Doheny]

Considering there's only about ten buildings left in Vancouver that don't look like they were uncrated last week, I'd say that's cause for concern.

I'm looking forward to coming up there to play jazzfest. But I always have to brace myself for that first sight of Vancouver. First, there's the awe-inspiring beauty of the natural setting. Followed immediately by the horror of the butt-ugly architecture that has been inflicted on it by soul-less real estate weasels.

[John Korsrud]

It's funny...I never really knew what the word architecture meant until I started travelling.



The only thing that comes close to Vancouver (with it's endless souless boxes) is pre-2000 East Berlin. And that's not a compliment.

[Nou Dadoun]

my heart... my heart ....

[Brian Nation]

my heart... my heart ....

Nou. with the vast wealth you've accumulated over the years, why don't you buy the building, build a tower incorporating the original structure so as to preserve the aesthetic integrity of the site, and create the world's largest used vinyl store? I'll even invest my unused credit from the original store.

--

For newcomers and others not in the know, Nou Dadoun was one of the owners of Black Swan Records when it was located at the site pictured above. Black Swan started at Main and Seventh Avenue around 1976, specializing in jazz and other non-mainstream music. The store was founded by Ken Pickering (now artistic director of Coastal Jazz and Blues, producers of our annual jazz festival) and Jack Schuller (now owner of Festival Distribution).

I started the Vancouver Jazz Society around the same time so we worked very closely together in those years. Some early VJS concerts were at the Western Front, just a couple of blocks from the store so Black Swan was a place to hang. Great days!

Later the store moved to the Fourth and Bayswater location. Jack sold his share in the store and Bill Hook, a Brit who ran Driftin Records on Broadway in the same neighbourhood shut down his store and merged with Black Swan. After that several owners came and went. Maybe Nou can fill in those blanks.

I've got a bunch of pictures of the store in those days and if I ever find them I'll post them here.

Going even farther back, the store was the Golden Lotus restaurant. You can read some personal history of that incarnation in my memoirs (http://boppin.com/blog/2005/10/eat-devil.html).

[Gregg Simpson]

That is really too bad about the old Black Swan building and the great mural which remained there after it closed. It's also right across the street from the 1965 Sound Gallery, home of the Al Neil Trio:
www.greggsimpson.com/soundgallerymotionstudio.htm

Speaking of architectural heritage, when my father's best building, the old Main Library on Robson, which he received a Govenor General's design award for, was torn down and rebuilt as a tacky, retro mockery in 1995, I felt
something had finished for me on the civic cultural level here.

The buildings made since the 1950's Modernist era of my father and his buddies, Berwick & Pratt, C.B.K. Van Norman and others, are mostly a travesty. We were once known for great architecture and now we're known for cheap, knock off post-Modernism. Someone called it the greatest collection of mediocre architecture anywhere.

Thanks for the rant. Since giving up letters to the editor, it's my only place to
address this issue. You can see the work of D.C. Simpson at www.greggsimpson.com/DCSimpson.htm

PS Al Neil used to go to my dad's office parties in the 50's. It was small scene back then.

[Nou Dadoun]

Later the store moved to the Fourth and Bayswater location. Jack sold his share in the store and Bill Hook, a Brit who ran Driftin Records on Broadway in the same neighbourhood shut down his store and merged with Black Swan. After that several owners came and went. Maybe Nou can fill in those blanks.

I've got a bunch of pictures of the store in those days and if I ever find them I'll post them here.


Pull up the photos if you can, I don't actually have very many. I'd probably need a blog to tell all the stories but I can fill in some of the details. Black Swan was only on Main Street for about a year I think (it was actually before I moved to town so I know it only by reputation and the fact that I found change of address cards in the shop at some point that were dated 1977); so it was actually in the 4th Street location for just shy of 20 years.

Not sure of the exact chronology but in the 80s sometime, Jack had left to go work with the Vancouver Folk Festival (before it got spun off into Festival Distribution), Ken was the sole owner and the store was going downhill. Phil Gough who worked (works?) in the film industry was a regular customer and made a deal with Ken for half the shop in exchange for investing some capital to put it back on its feet. Then the jazz festival started, the short pre-expo festival in 85 and then the Expo extravaganza in 86 and Ken got more involved with the jazz festival and less involved with the store.

To back up a little bit for my part of the story, I moved to Vancouver in 1979 to do graduate work at UBC and I was already a pretty serious record nut; I brought several thousand records in a van from Ontario. Just about every weekday, I would cycle to ubc and cycle back by way of 4th avenue dropping in to see Bob at Scorpio and the guys at the Swan; I usually went to Quintessence, Ernie's Hot Wax, and several other places on weekends. When I heard that the jazz fest was being organized in the back of the Swan I mentioned to Don Betts that I wouldn't mind volunteering for the festival as a transportation volunteer (something I'd done for the folk festival for 6 or 7 years). I got a call back that evening to come for a meeting the next day; this was a week before the festival started and I figured I'd get some shifts and get to hear some music. When I showed up, I thought I had the time wrong, there were two guys there I'd never met before (Ron Simmonds and Ken Daskewitch) and they were talking about festival logistics and every time they mentioned transportation they nodded at me and continued. I eventually asked what was going on and what they wanted me to do; they said - oh you're going to organize the transportation along with this other guy who couldn't make it today. Well, the other guy was Don Chessa - they figured that since he was a bus driver, he would be an ideal guy to organize transportation. To make a long story short (I'll have to blog this some time), we hit the ground running, didn't sleep for 10 days and we all got to be pretty good buddies.

Anyway, around 1990 Ken was ready to give up the store and Phil wanted some new partners, Chessa and I bought out Ken's half so we had a quarter apiece. We had a few really good years in the 90s but the building was already a pretty serious concern. The landlord was a fairly wealthy alchoholic who wasn't interested in putting any money in the building at all; the building was getting more and more run down but he figured he'd sit on it until somebody offered him a million dollars for it. While the rent was cheap we didn't mind but his son convinced him to start cranking the rent up and the building got worse. Somebody almost went through the floor at the front and the roof starting leaking pretty badly. In about 95, when a bad rainstorm drenched a good section of the stock (it took out the reggae section and a good chunk of the folk), it was time to move. We'd paid to have the building painted about a year before, I picked the red colour; a friend wanted to use it as a showcase for his painting company and did a great job with 3 coats, it still looks great. Unfortunately, one of the painters painted over the trombone player that was on the front of the store by mistake but the rest of the mural got saved. Chessa's father bought some paints and touched up the mural which had been done by a friend of Ken's named Carmen in the early 80s (King Oliver's band if you don't know).

So we found the Broadway location and started putting things together to move. Unfortunately, during the move, Phil and Don (the neverly brothers) had a falling out and didn't speak to each other for the next five years which put me in a bit of a tough position but that's another story.

After we moved out, the store was empty for a while until the Hemp Shop moved in there and they sank an incredible amount of money into fixing up the store. But nothing really lasted there long after the Swan left.

Some folks tried contacting me last summer about the building but I was out of town and my wife gave them Phil's number. I never heard anything after that but saw the store just last Thursday on our way out to a concert near UBC. Pretty sad to see the building go but I stopped subsidizing the store a few years ago (we had one more location in the Dominion Building downtown before I put it out of its misery); I was the sole owner for about the last five years we were in business.

[Allan Johnston]

You can see the work of D.C. Simpson at www.greggsimpson.com/DCSimpson.htm

Beautiful work, Gregg. I swear I've been in most of those landmark buildings, even the family home! Was that in "The Properties"?

Allan

[Gregg Simpson]

That's great that you checked out the site, Al. Glad you appreciate my dad's work. It's a bit of a segue from the Swan but any mention of 'heritage' send me into a frenzy.

Yes, the family home was in the Properties. I say 'was' because it was torn down by the idiots who bought it.
They're probably the same people who are 'developing' the 4th Ave block where the Swan was!

There is a small group who think Modernist architecture can also be heritage, but they usually lose out to the weasels who like money more than preserving our history.

Al, did we ever play together, or did our paths not cross during the past 40 years? I sure have heard about you and your music for years. Maybe in the '70's ?

[Allan Johnston]

Al, did we ever play together, or did our paths not cross during the past 40 years? I sure have heard about you and your music for years. Maybe in the '70's ?

I met you two or three times in the '90's at the Slipper (I was playing and your art was on the wall) but we've never played together. But seriously, I recognize the house - do you have any younger brothers or sisters I might have known (I went to West Van)? And, speaking of architecture - remember that crazy mushroom-shaped house that used to be just beside the highway near Sentinel Hill in the 60's/70's?

It'll be sad to see the Black Swan Building go. I miss a lot of the old places...how about the old Soft Rock?

Al

[Gregg Simpson]

Al, I have an older brother who went to West Van High, but no younger ones. I went to Hillside and Sentinel.
The house on the highway was designed by Wolfgang Gerson. His son Martin went to school with some of my friends at West Van High. He hung out with some friends who I later played music with.

Somehow everyone seemed to know everyone else back then. Like our French teacher at Sentinel, Tom Taylor, played jazz records for us at lunch hour. He had worked at the Post Office with Al Neil and knew his music from the Cellar. I joined Al at the end of my graduating year 1965.

I am sure we all have these interwoven stories in what was then a little village by the sea. It's a small world after all!

[Nou Dadoun]

...
The house on the highway was designed by Wolfgang Gerson. His son Martin went to school with some of my freinds at West Van High. He hung out with some friends whop I later played music with. ... It's a small world after all!

It's really a small world, I used to work with Martin Gerson at Langara College - he's the Dean of Instruction there; we used to call him Dean Martin!

... N

[penguin]

Hey Nou ,

The neverly brothers? Please explain.

dc

[Nou Dadoun]

Hey Nou ,

The neverly brothers? Please explain.

dc

Well, Don and Phil were the Everly Brothers but they talked to each other; my Don and Phil didn't (I'm guessing the dc doesn't stand for District of Columbia), I'm sure people had lots of nicknames for me too ... N

[Brian Nation]

Pull up the photos if you can

Here's one of them. There are others including a few going back to the Pickering-Hook era, which may turn up.

http://vancouverjazz.com/tmp/blackswan1.jpg

Nou Dadoun, Don Chessa, Phil Gough.

Not sure which location this is. Can you tell, Nou?

[Nou Dadoun]

Here's one of them. There are others including a few going back to the Pickering-Hook era, which may turn up.
...
Not sure which location this is. Can you tell, Nou?

This is the back room at the west 4th location (has it come down yet?), that water radiator at the back used to leak pretty regularly even though it never actually provided any heat! That's the room that the jazz society started in .. N

[Brian Nation]

That's the room that the jazz society started in .. N
To clarify . . . that's the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society.

[Brian Nation]

http://vancouverjazz.com/tmp/blackswanps.jpg

Another photo, expertly photoshopped to remove lamposts, trolley wires, cars, garbage, urchins, hockey riots, me showing up with armloads of trade-ins, etc etc

[Nou Dadoun]

...
Another photo, expertly photoshopped to remove lamposts, trolley wires, cars, garbage, urchins, hockey riots, me showing up with armloads of trade-ins, etc etc

I remember Phil photoshopped this out not long after the paint job, I have a bad printout of this but never got an electronic version, where did you dig this one up? ... N

[Bill Metcalfe]

Nou, your story about Chessa being the natural person to organize transportation for the festival because he was a bus driver is hilarious. I remember him well. How's it going by the way? Long time.
BM

[Brian Nation]

Spotted last night on way home from Rashied Ali gig, billboard overlooking the hole in the ground where our beloved Black Swan, in a sweeter time, once stood:

http://vancouverjazz.com/tmp/DSC_3899.jpg

[Nou Dadoun]

Spotted last night on way home from Rashied Ali gig, billboard overlooking the hole in the ground where our beloved Black Swan, in a sweeter time, once stood:



A friend of mine warned me about it a couple of weeks ago, in the great tradition of developers naming their projects after what they've destroyed.

N.