Vancouver Vintage: Kenny Colman
One of the most under-rated jazz singers has got to be Kenny Colman. Sure, he’s slick but the man can flat-out swing. In conjunction with Melody Diachun’s interview with Colman, Vancouver Vintage offers up a fine example of early KC (looking like a young Dave Barrett!). Here he is singing Bye Bye Blackbird along with [...]
Vancouver Vintage: Barney Kessel Trio with Chris Gage
Here’s a clip you’re all going to love. American guitarist Barney Kessel played with everyone from Lester Young to Charlie Parker to Billie Holiday to Art Tatum to Oscar Peterson to Chico Marx. Here he is with then-Vancouver musicians Don Thompson on bass, Terry Clarke on drums and special guest Chris Gage on piano. It’s [...]
Vancouver Vintage: Gillespiana
This second installment of Vancouver Vintage comes from the early 1960′s and it’s fantastic. I can’t give any more information than the CBC announcer, Doug Campbell, did, so I’ll just transcribe his introduction to the suite. The track I chose is the third movement, called Pan Americana. I should also note that the technical operations [...]
Vancouver Vintage: Chris Gage Trio
Chris Gage is almost the Buddy Bolden of Canadian jazz – a jazz musician who lived on in memory, with fewer and fewer of his contemporaries around to verify his greatness. Until the release in May of Our Blues by the Fraser MacPherson Quintet from 1962-63 on the Just A Memory label, Gage hadn’t ever [...]
Back to the Future (blindfold test . . . sort of)
Here we’ve got six talented Vancouver youngsters who show a lot of promise. Can you identify them? Post your answers and comments in the Jazz Forum. UPDATE [June 20 2007]: The musicians have all been correctly identified as Dave Say (tenor), Vince Mai (trumpet), Saul Berson (alto), Miles Black (piano), Brent Gubbels (bass), and Stan [...]
Bobby Hales Big Band, 1976
From 1976, here are two clips from a CBC Vancouver broadcast featuring the Bobby Hales Big Band. Hales explains, The story behind the TV show is rather interesting. In days of yore, meaning the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, CBC TV and Radio all had huge budgets, compared to today, for Canadian entertainment. At the [...]
Fraser MacPherson: Diary of a Musician (Video)
When Fraser MacPherson passed away a little over thirteen years ago, he left behind a fantastic archive of material from his years as one of Canada’s premier jazz players – both as bandleader and sideman. Photos, documents, and a large number of audio and a few video recordings from Vancouver’s golden age of jazz, many [...]
