Sivad - an EWI & Ron Samworth - Jazz @ The Pat
Saturday, December 29, 2018
 |
| Ron Samworth |
3 pm Saturday December 29 - Electric Miles winds up our
seventh year of Jazz @ The Pat playing tunes from...
Big Fun, Live Evil, On the Corner, Bitches Brew, In a
Silent Way, We Want Miles, Tutu…
Bill Clark - trumpet
Bill Runge - saxophone
Nick Peck - piano
Kerry Galloway - bass
Bernie Arai - drums
Ron Samworth - guitar
In the many years I worked as a photographer for
Vancouver Magazine my mentor in the subject of music was writer Les Wiseman. He
wrote a monthly column called In One Ear. Because he was a critic this meant
(as in most cases) that he was a snob. He wrote about rock’n roll and punk
bands. He was partial to Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground and told me that the only heavy metal band worth listening to was Motorhead.
He had one piece of advice for me if I ever had the inclination to write:
“Write about that which you know and if you don’t, do your research with someone who knows.”
To the above I can only add that when I am writing about that which I do not know I must readily make that known.
And so on Saturday, December 20 at Jazz @ The Pat I did
not know much about what was happening on stage. From not having ever seen an
EWI (pronounced YouWee) to know
knowing if an electric guitar had or did not have a whammy bar I claim full
credit.
It was in 1958 that I bought my first jazz album The Magic Flute of Herbie Mann. My second album was The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time
Out in 1960.
In early 1961 when I was living in Mexico City, my idea
of the jazz trumpet was either Harry James or Louis Armstrong. At a Mexican
supermarket where they sold records (all records had at their back “Este disco es cultura”) I was curious
about an album called Miles Davis Live at Carnegie Hall. I bought it and when I
played it at home I discovered the wonders of the muted trumpet by a
microphone. I became a fan. In 1966 when I was dumped by my Argentine girlfriend
in Buenos Aires in the middle of a cold winter I played Kind of Blue to make
myself feel even more melancholy!
 |
| Bill Clark playing a EWI |
But in that year, 1961 my Yorkshire-born friend Andrew Taylor played
for me (now one of my desert island jazz records) the Prestige 7109 Bags’Groove that has this as personnel:
Miles Davis –
trumpet
Sonny Rollins –
tenor saxophone
Horace Silver –
piano
Percy Heath –
bass
Kenny Clarke –
drums
On "Bags' Groove":
Miles Davis –
trumpet
Milt Jackson –
vibraphone
Thelonious Monk
– piano
Percy Heath –
bass
Kenny Clarke –
drums
My record still plays well but I have a clean CD.
When Bitches Brew
came out in 1970, I hated it and stopped buying Miles Davis records.
Thus my interest in going to yesterday’s Jazz @ The Pat was
not all that enthusiastic. The draw for me was guitarist Ron Samworth whom I
had first noticed some weeks back at The Beatles White Album 50th anniversaryconcert at St. James on 10th Avenue.
 |
| Bill Runge - bass clarinet |
But my ignorance prevailed and I was surprised and
pleased by the group and learned a few
things (easy when you don’t know!). As I dyslexic I knew that Airgin, Sonny Rollins’s famous tune was
Nigeria spelled backwards. I did not know that the Miles Davis tune Sivad was also a paean to dyslexics!
Because I sit with Jazz & The Pat organizer Roderic
MacDonald I learn plenty more. He told me that there are other jazz tunes with reversed
names. When I was enjoying myself listening to Ron Samworths’s whammy sounds, MacDonald told me that
Samworth’s guitar did not have one. When I asked Samworth he told me that a whammy bar was an
uncertain device for the music played that evening. He had other guitars there
but I did not enquire any further.
The group had a drummer, Bernie Arai, who had a fine and original
way of using the cymbals. Kerry Galloway on electric bass was a steady force.
But it was the English Nick Peck (five years in Vancouver) who wowed me with
his playing. Drummer and retired Vancouver journalist Marke Andrews who told me
that Peck can play in many styles and is very much in demand.
Bill Clark on trumpet (he seemed to be the leader of the
group) surprised me when he played on an instrument that I had never seen, the
EWI. This instrument and his trumpet had a marvellous combination of sounds
with my first ever seeing anybody, in this case with Bill Runge (plays the
soprano saxophone) playing on a bass clarinet. I am familiar with the
instrument as I am friends with Vancouver bass clarinettist A.K. Coope. The joining of the trumpet with
that clarinet and with the background of the electric bass was spectacular.
All in all I had a fine evening at the Pat. Special
always is seeing all those obsolete, redundant and retired journalists I knew
or worked with in the past. On the other hand Ian Mulgrew, present almost every
Saturday is gainfully employed at the Vancouver
Sun. He is as rare and item as a bass clarinet in a jazz band.
