John Doheny
Nov 6, 2002, 09:26 AM
I don't know how relevant the jam session at Murphy's Pub is to the big picture of "Jazz History in Vancouver". I do know it was absolutely central to my own development as a player, and I think it provides an interesting view of jazz in Vancouver at a time when the were very few outlets for the music. I feel I need to get this stuff down before approaching senility robs me of these memories, too. If I get anything wrong or leave out anyone, my apologies and feel free to jump in and correct me.
In 1991 I returned to VCC as a student in the jazz and commercial music program I had dropped out of in 1977. I met a bass player named Jasper Clarke who recruited me into a quartet he was putting together to play student recitals. The piano chair was always the hardest to fill. I remember asking Alan Matheson to play on a couple of recitals. We had been students together there in '76-77 and he was now on the faculty (I was in a class that he taught this time around and you'd best believe THAT was some kinda weird).
Anyway, summer of 1992 Jasper and I were looking for opportunities to play. He'd gone to high school with a guy named Dale who was now the bartender at Murphy's Pub, a downmarket bar on Seymour street, just down the block and across the street from Sam the Record Man's. Dale said he could get us in there on a trial basis, maybe bring in a few customers who liked jazz. Incredible as it seems now, we agreed to do this for NO MONEY. Well, we did get free beer, although since I was now clean and sober this was meaningless to me.
We rounded up a guitar player, Marc Baril, who last I heard was writing music for video games, and a drummer, Ian Brown, who later went on to fame and considerably more fortune with the Mathew Goode Band. At this point none of us knew what the hell we were doing, I remember being pleased at the end of each night that we had managed to get through the program of rinky dink fake book tunes we were playing without any of them train wrecking. But playing 4 hours of jazz in front of an audience (even if they're mostly winos) once a week is a great way to get better. Word started getting around, and by winter of 93 the gig had turned into a jam session. At that time the only jazz venues in town were the Glass Slipper and the Alma Street Cafe, and neither one of them were running a jam session. There was literally nowhere else in town to go to blow except Murphy's, and we started attracting some pretty high quality players. I remember Al Clooten and Norm Quinn were the first to show up. Al Matheson came down several times, students from VCC like Jason Wilson and Andrew Davies(now with Spacious Couch).Jeff Mahoney was a frequent visitor. Our original Guitar and Drums left and Budge Schachte and Bruce Neilsen came in. Scoring Bruce was a real coup, but he only stayed 3 months before he left to tour with his band "Between the Lines”. The core quartet went through a lot of players from 1992 to 96,many of whom I still work with.
CLAUDE RANGER:
I think it was Coat Cooke who first brought Claude down. I remember being kind of intimidated having someone with his pedigree sitting behind the kit, and also amazed that he could play so powerfully and still keep a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth at all times. I wound up giving him a ride home and it turned out he lived right around the corner from me in the West End. Claude started talking about how when he lived in Toronto he played all the time and how few playing opportunities there were out here. Finally it dawned on me that he was asking me if he could have the gig.It had never occurred to me that someone of his stature would want to play with us so of course I said yes right away. Now I had to tell him what it paid. A few months before Jasper had approached management at the bar about money. His initial request for 50 bucks a man was turned down flat (understandably. We weren't drawing flies at this point) but they offered $50 for the WHOLE QUARTET to offset our expenses and such, plus the free beer, which the drinkers in the band took...extensive advantage of. So I had to tell Claude Ranger, a man who had played with Moe Koffman in the glory days of "Swingin' Shepherd Blues" and who had his own chapter in "Jazz in Canada”, that the gig he was angling for paid twelve dollars and fifty cents. It says volumes about the economics of jazz performance in this country that he said yes without batting an eye.(Later I used the "Jazz in Canada "thing to get us a raise to 15 dollars a man. I told the owner, Brent Anderson, that it embarrassed me to have to pay Claude a 10, a two, and two quarters still wet from the bar. At least $15 would be all paper money).
STAN TAYLOR:
Stan and I had been nodding at each other in clubs for years but had never been formally introduced. This was a real issue since Stan, surprisingly, is very shy around people he doesn't know. I don't remember when he first came down but after Claude's personal problems began to overtake him, Stan took over the drum chair, sometimes sharing it with Chris Haas. Stan ensured he cost the club money by drinking 4 or 5 pints of Guinness every night, with the $15 stipend he figured that brought him up to a barely acceptable 50 bucks a night.
JOHN TOULSON:
When Jasper's wife was pregnant with their first child, he took a few weeks off to attend Lamaze classes, and John Toulson subbed for him. John’s bass lines are extremely unorthodox, although they work like greased lightning if you've got the right drummer( I had one or two tell me they had considered throwing a stick at him to get him to just play straight fours).Around Christmas John brought in some truly amazing re-harms of Christmas carols for us to play.
JON ROPER:
After Budge Schachte left, Jon Roper took on the guitar chair, sometimes sharing it with Jeff Ham, or later, Ken Aldcroft.Jon plays with Spacious Couch and a whole whack of other bands now, and has a prominent place on my 'first call' list.
DANNY PARKER:
When Jasper's daughter Akiko was born, he took a six week cruise ship gig to generate some fast cash. The same night he told us he was going, Danny Parker walked in. We said, "Hey man! You wanna play here for the next 6 Tuesdays for $15 and free beer?" and he said, "Sure!."
With that kind of heavy bread floating around, there was a lot of subbing out. On bass I remember Ed Maxwell (now in Los Angeles), Colin Meikle, Darren Radke, Chris Tarry and Bernie Addington. On drums Greg Nickel, Fred Hill, Paul Townsend, and Ash Sood (now with Sarah Mclaughlin). On guitar, Clint Sargeant and David Stallings.
When I was at UBC one of my fellow students was taking lessons from Mike Allen, who had just moved to town. She said she had mentioned our little jam session and sure enough, about 2 weeks later in comes a guy with a tenor case I figure has gotta be him, because it was THE perfect moment for him to arrive. I was on the stand with a drummer who was really a pretty good piano player and a bass player who...well he looked good holding the thing. We’re up there with them butchering some poor defenseless samba that never did them any harm and here comes Mike with his horn.
I got the regular bass and drums up as soon as was possible without actually being rude(it was Claude Ranger and Ed Maxwell)and invited Mike up to sit in. I ask him what he wants to play and he says "Woody'n You". I, being Mr. Gracious Jam Session Host, invite him to count it off. He proceeds to stomp the thing off at about 180 equals half-note. He must have played about 10 choruses and managed to lose everybody in the band but Claude (who stuck with him like glue) to this absolutely vicious solo. After a drubbing like that, there was only one thing I could say. "How much do you charge for lessons?"
There were tons of nights like that. Brad Turner came down. Sharon Minemoto, whom Jasper and I knew from VCC (I tried calling her "Mini-Motor" for awhile but she was NOT amused). Eric Vaughn and Jerry Tehan played a wretched out of tune upright that the owner inherited from his mother and moved into the bar for a while. Marius Kwiatkowski would come by. Roscoe Blur. Ian Coleman. My old buddy from R&B days Bill Clarke. Joe Bjornson. Rob Armus came in when he was in town (the bastard got us to play "Epistrophy".) Colleen Savage. Coco Alcorn. Ronnie Thomson.
The owner worked it so we could put jazz CDs on the jukebox. I remember we put in a bunch of classic Bluenote re-issues, plus as much local music as we could scare up. PJ Perry's "My Ideal" was on there. Also Coat Cooke and Ron Samworth's "Lunar Adventures". I'd come to the gig at night and plug a few loonies into the jukebox and watch the response on the rummies at the pool table as George Thoroughgood's "Bad to the Bone" would give way to Ron burning through "Pacific Leen Time".
But we never really made any money for the bar. We had a few good nights but they did much better with the blues bands they featured on weekends. Then the joint got sold and that was the end of it.It always puzzled me why we didn't do better. I mean we featured some very good players some nights for the price of a draft. But that's Vancouver for you. Things do seem to be improving these days, and my experiences at Murphy's were of enormous value to me as a player. I sure wish there was a place like it around now though.
In 1991 I returned to VCC as a student in the jazz and commercial music program I had dropped out of in 1977. I met a bass player named Jasper Clarke who recruited me into a quartet he was putting together to play student recitals. The piano chair was always the hardest to fill. I remember asking Alan Matheson to play on a couple of recitals. We had been students together there in '76-77 and he was now on the faculty (I was in a class that he taught this time around and you'd best believe THAT was some kinda weird).
Anyway, summer of 1992 Jasper and I were looking for opportunities to play. He'd gone to high school with a guy named Dale who was now the bartender at Murphy's Pub, a downmarket bar on Seymour street, just down the block and across the street from Sam the Record Man's. Dale said he could get us in there on a trial basis, maybe bring in a few customers who liked jazz. Incredible as it seems now, we agreed to do this for NO MONEY. Well, we did get free beer, although since I was now clean and sober this was meaningless to me.
We rounded up a guitar player, Marc Baril, who last I heard was writing music for video games, and a drummer, Ian Brown, who later went on to fame and considerably more fortune with the Mathew Goode Band. At this point none of us knew what the hell we were doing, I remember being pleased at the end of each night that we had managed to get through the program of rinky dink fake book tunes we were playing without any of them train wrecking. But playing 4 hours of jazz in front of an audience (even if they're mostly winos) once a week is a great way to get better. Word started getting around, and by winter of 93 the gig had turned into a jam session. At that time the only jazz venues in town were the Glass Slipper and the Alma Street Cafe, and neither one of them were running a jam session. There was literally nowhere else in town to go to blow except Murphy's, and we started attracting some pretty high quality players. I remember Al Clooten and Norm Quinn were the first to show up. Al Matheson came down several times, students from VCC like Jason Wilson and Andrew Davies(now with Spacious Couch).Jeff Mahoney was a frequent visitor. Our original Guitar and Drums left and Budge Schachte and Bruce Neilsen came in. Scoring Bruce was a real coup, but he only stayed 3 months before he left to tour with his band "Between the Lines”. The core quartet went through a lot of players from 1992 to 96,many of whom I still work with.
CLAUDE RANGER:
I think it was Coat Cooke who first brought Claude down. I remember being kind of intimidated having someone with his pedigree sitting behind the kit, and also amazed that he could play so powerfully and still keep a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth at all times. I wound up giving him a ride home and it turned out he lived right around the corner from me in the West End. Claude started talking about how when he lived in Toronto he played all the time and how few playing opportunities there were out here. Finally it dawned on me that he was asking me if he could have the gig.It had never occurred to me that someone of his stature would want to play with us so of course I said yes right away. Now I had to tell him what it paid. A few months before Jasper had approached management at the bar about money. His initial request for 50 bucks a man was turned down flat (understandably. We weren't drawing flies at this point) but they offered $50 for the WHOLE QUARTET to offset our expenses and such, plus the free beer, which the drinkers in the band took...extensive advantage of. So I had to tell Claude Ranger, a man who had played with Moe Koffman in the glory days of "Swingin' Shepherd Blues" and who had his own chapter in "Jazz in Canada”, that the gig he was angling for paid twelve dollars and fifty cents. It says volumes about the economics of jazz performance in this country that he said yes without batting an eye.(Later I used the "Jazz in Canada "thing to get us a raise to 15 dollars a man. I told the owner, Brent Anderson, that it embarrassed me to have to pay Claude a 10, a two, and two quarters still wet from the bar. At least $15 would be all paper money).
STAN TAYLOR:
Stan and I had been nodding at each other in clubs for years but had never been formally introduced. This was a real issue since Stan, surprisingly, is very shy around people he doesn't know. I don't remember when he first came down but after Claude's personal problems began to overtake him, Stan took over the drum chair, sometimes sharing it with Chris Haas. Stan ensured he cost the club money by drinking 4 or 5 pints of Guinness every night, with the $15 stipend he figured that brought him up to a barely acceptable 50 bucks a night.
JOHN TOULSON:
When Jasper's wife was pregnant with their first child, he took a few weeks off to attend Lamaze classes, and John Toulson subbed for him. John’s bass lines are extremely unorthodox, although they work like greased lightning if you've got the right drummer( I had one or two tell me they had considered throwing a stick at him to get him to just play straight fours).Around Christmas John brought in some truly amazing re-harms of Christmas carols for us to play.
JON ROPER:
After Budge Schachte left, Jon Roper took on the guitar chair, sometimes sharing it with Jeff Ham, or later, Ken Aldcroft.Jon plays with Spacious Couch and a whole whack of other bands now, and has a prominent place on my 'first call' list.
DANNY PARKER:
When Jasper's daughter Akiko was born, he took a six week cruise ship gig to generate some fast cash. The same night he told us he was going, Danny Parker walked in. We said, "Hey man! You wanna play here for the next 6 Tuesdays for $15 and free beer?" and he said, "Sure!."
With that kind of heavy bread floating around, there was a lot of subbing out. On bass I remember Ed Maxwell (now in Los Angeles), Colin Meikle, Darren Radke, Chris Tarry and Bernie Addington. On drums Greg Nickel, Fred Hill, Paul Townsend, and Ash Sood (now with Sarah Mclaughlin). On guitar, Clint Sargeant and David Stallings.
When I was at UBC one of my fellow students was taking lessons from Mike Allen, who had just moved to town. She said she had mentioned our little jam session and sure enough, about 2 weeks later in comes a guy with a tenor case I figure has gotta be him, because it was THE perfect moment for him to arrive. I was on the stand with a drummer who was really a pretty good piano player and a bass player who...well he looked good holding the thing. We’re up there with them butchering some poor defenseless samba that never did them any harm and here comes Mike with his horn.
I got the regular bass and drums up as soon as was possible without actually being rude(it was Claude Ranger and Ed Maxwell)and invited Mike up to sit in. I ask him what he wants to play and he says "Woody'n You". I, being Mr. Gracious Jam Session Host, invite him to count it off. He proceeds to stomp the thing off at about 180 equals half-note. He must have played about 10 choruses and managed to lose everybody in the band but Claude (who stuck with him like glue) to this absolutely vicious solo. After a drubbing like that, there was only one thing I could say. "How much do you charge for lessons?"
There were tons of nights like that. Brad Turner came down. Sharon Minemoto, whom Jasper and I knew from VCC (I tried calling her "Mini-Motor" for awhile but she was NOT amused). Eric Vaughn and Jerry Tehan played a wretched out of tune upright that the owner inherited from his mother and moved into the bar for a while. Marius Kwiatkowski would come by. Roscoe Blur. Ian Coleman. My old buddy from R&B days Bill Clarke. Joe Bjornson. Rob Armus came in when he was in town (the bastard got us to play "Epistrophy".) Colleen Savage. Coco Alcorn. Ronnie Thomson.
The owner worked it so we could put jazz CDs on the jukebox. I remember we put in a bunch of classic Bluenote re-issues, plus as much local music as we could scare up. PJ Perry's "My Ideal" was on there. Also Coat Cooke and Ron Samworth's "Lunar Adventures". I'd come to the gig at night and plug a few loonies into the jukebox and watch the response on the rummies at the pool table as George Thoroughgood's "Bad to the Bone" would give way to Ron burning through "Pacific Leen Time".
But we never really made any money for the bar. We had a few good nights but they did much better with the blues bands they featured on weekends. Then the joint got sold and that was the end of it.It always puzzled me why we didn't do better. I mean we featured some very good players some nights for the price of a draft. But that's Vancouver for you. Things do seem to be improving these days, and my experiences at Murphy's were of enormous value to me as a player. I sure wish there was a place like it around now though.