GavinWalker, Paul Grant & Margaret Gallagher

When I found out that CBC Radio’s Hot Air was history this last Saturday I knew I would have to write a blog about it. Here it is.

At age 80 I can say that I have been listening to jazz since 1957 when in Austin, Texas I bought Herbie Mann’s Oodles of Noodles.

In 1960 at a Mexican supermarket in Mexico City I bought Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. The record had a stamp in the back in Spanish – Este disco es cultura.

My introduction to jazz in Vancouver in 1976 was listening to Gavin Walker at the Classical Joint. It took me a while to figure out that in an unlicensed joint folks were getting drunk on a mysterious concoction called “darks”.

Four One More Time at the Classical Joint

Paradoxically as much as I love jazz I never listen to it except when I have visitors at my Kits home. I can assert that most of the jazz is now firmly ensconced in my brain.

I was lucky to photograph both of the latter hosts of Hot Air, Margaret Gallagher and Paul Grant together.

I found that Paul Grant as the former CBC Arts Reporter was most unusual. He indeed believed that photography had a place in radio. He once came to my studio to interview me about a forthcoming show and he managed to also interview my subject who was not wearing a stitch of clothing.

In another occasion I called him and asked him if he were interested in talking to a grown man who was a baritone and sang in falsetto. He interviewed famous countertenor Matthew White on a Wednesday, ran the interview the next day and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra concert featuring White on the Friday sold out.

The reason is that a radio station that features The Debaters, Ideas, Tom Allen’s About Time and Reclaimed has a demanding and sophisticated audience. I once emailed Lister Sinclair a month before he died suggesting he might add humours as in The Debabters. He answered back that he was going to give it a shot.

CBC's  jazz audience is sophisticated, too.

In the last few years I stopped listening to Hot Air as I found it boring. Jazz was an American invention and it became international. You cannot just feature Vancouver jazz musicians.

CBC Radio’s Vinyl Tap with Randy Bachman, which ran for 16 years, was a wonderful example of back stage content and of all the musicians Bachman met in his life. There was nothing that compared to the excellence of this program.

I tried to connect a few times with Gallagher on ideas for her Hot Air but I never received an answer to my emails.

I had suggested that the program might:

1. Feature jazz musicians not playing their instruments like Mulligan playing a piano or a flute and Dizzy Gillespie a mouth organ. And of course our very own Linton Garner.

Linton Garner & His Peck Horn

Linton Garner & his peck horn

2. I thought that if the CBC’s collection of jazzed up Bach was as good as mine that could be a theme.

3. I discovered at a past Queer Festival Alexander Weimann (of Early Music Vancouver fame and harpsichord player) and Reginald Mobley, a Black countertenor from Boston a program of them playing jazz. Weimann was on the piano and Mobley sang jazz standards. I asked Weimann who had arranged what he played and I was told he had.

4. Furthermore on Weimann, I never really appreciated the harpsichord. I have a tape of Oscar Peterson playing on one and I would never know it is Peterson playing it. Weimann explained to me that when he plays continuo with a harpshichord that it is not written down and he has to improvise. Suddenly I was interested in his instrument. He has promised me that he will play Cage's 4'33' soon in a baroque version.

5. Did Bramwell Tovey ever appear on Hot Air? He was a  fab jazz pianist. 

Maestro Bramwel Tovey on Jazz, Elgar & Café Fiorello

Bramwell Tovey

And finally I must assert that nobody in all of Vancouver knows more about jazz (and jazz trivia) than my friend Gavin Walker. We are constantly comparing notes on our idol pianist Richard Twardzic. And if you do not know Walker, besides having that photographic memory, has a radio voice.

My suggestion is to ax the double Paolo and bring in Walker.

As I have written before, if Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre manages to become Prime Minister he will not have to defund the CBC as the CBC is doing a very good vanishing act right now.

Before I drive to North Van it is important I find out about the bridge traffic.