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at the Cookery: The Music and Times of Alberta Hunter, for which she
won a Dora Award, The Gospel According to the Blues, for which she
won a Gemini, and Ain’t Misbehavin’, her first collaboration with Joe
Sealy, who was the production’s music director.
“I think that was in 1980,” Richardson recalls. “We closed the Ports
Dinner Theatre, which was really unfortunate, ‘cause it was a real favourite
place of mine. We did nine months at the Ports and three months at
the Premier Dance Theatre.”
“Was it that long?” asks Sealy. “It seemed like a month!”
The Toronto jazz scene sure was different in those days, wasn’t it?
“Ah yes, I moved to Toronto in 1976,” says Sealy. “At that time we had
George’s Spaghetti House, Basin Street, Bourbon Street, the Colonial
Tavern. One of the jazz clubs that opened in the late 1970s was called
Yellow Fingers at Bay and Yorkville. And Meyer’s Deli in Yorkville had
jazz on the weekends. Oh, and the Chick ‘n’ Deli of course!”
“An institution, that place was,” says Richardson. She pauses, and
slowly adds, “But the norm being six days a week, I mean, I can’t believe
that that’s gone.”
Sealy agrees, with sadness. “It was a real great training ground, I mean
that’s how musicians learned to play, is doing it six nights a week. All
my gigs up to that time were like that, I was totally used to playing six
nights a week. Then it started to go down to weekends and then to nothing
at all. Now you have private gigs and that’s it really. Back then when
you got a gig it was a week or a month, but it was always six nights.”
“One of the really great gigs that we had back then was at the Bellair
Cafe,” Richardson says, adding with genuine enthusiasm, “It was two
years, six days a week. It was AWESOME! You’d have players coming
in from across the street — there was a club across the street that had
big bands, big orchestras sometimes, once in a while Gladys Knight or
people like that — but when they had the dance bands, it would be 20
minutes on, ten minutes off. So the guys would walk in the door, and
if we were playing, they’d start playing, walk up to the stage, do their
little thing and walk out. We were a trio and we never knew how many
people would be on the stage on any given night!”
“That’s why I applaud Colin and Joan,” says Sealy, referring to the
Hunters, who are set to open the Jazz Bistro, formerly the Top o’ The
Senator. “They are trying to bring that back and they have a great shot
of doing it because they are committed to the idea. I know I’ll get some
work there, I’m not expecting six nights a week of course. I’m just glad
that it will be there, so I’ll have some place to go. I mean, when the
Montreal Bistro was open, and I had nothing to do, that’s where I would
go. It was my second home. There’s no place like that now.”
Which bring us to JPEC — the Jazz Performance and Education
Centre — set to present Africville Stories as part of their fourth annual
gala. Inspired by New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, JPEC is a nonprofit
charitable organization, the brainchild of Ray Koskie, a retired
lawyer and Rochelle Koskie, a retired teacher, jazz enthusiasts and partners
in crime together for over half a century.
“Some of the musicians who we’ve known for years came to us and
asked us if we could help them by trying to create some kind of a facility,
which we decided to do on a strictly volunteer basis,” says Ray Koskie.
“We put together a group — business people, musicians — and formulated
a committee which began to consider various options, one of which
included a trip to Jazz at Lincoln Center where we were given a tour,
an explanation. Because that was based on a not-for-profit charitable
organization, we thought that would be a better idea than opening a
for-profit private club. That was the beginning.”
“Our mandate includes reaching out to persons of all ages, especially
children, who are our future audiences,” says Rochelle Koskie.
“Our outreach program sends musicians to schools that have little or
no music programming. Response has been excellent, and from the
monies raised from the 2013 gala, we hope to broaden the number of
schools in the program.” Find out more about JPEC and how you can
get involved by visiting jazzcentre.ca.
Back to Africville: Shifting the focus back to Sealy’s Africville
Stories, in preparing for this story, I was able to locate a copy
of the Africville Suite album (thank you, L’Atelier Grigorian!).
Thelonious Monk said it best when he pointed out that “writing
about music is like dancing about architecture,” so all I can say is that
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