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.

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!

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 10^th Avenue.

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.