And all that jazz

I have a couple of friends – a father and son – who are jazz musicians. Dad, a trombonist, is/was kind of a giant of the genre. He is written up in assorted lexicons as a major Canadian musician, and also paid his dues in the London jazz clubs of the 1950s and early ‘60s, when he was with Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine, and also did sessions work with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and so forth. Big time guy.

The son, a jazz guitarist, is equally gifted and gets it from both sides. He has his dad, and his maternal grandfather, who played with Django Reinhardt, and he actually uses granddad’s guitar. A guitar that has seen a lot of smoke-filled rooms.

They (whom I shall not name, out of respect for their sensitivities) don’t have the proverbial pot to piss in. I mean, these guys are consistently broke and the odd buck they get from gigs goes towards paying the rent and buying groceries.

I once wrote liner notes for them on one of their CDs. Glad to do it. I like them and respect them. However, they had no money with which to pay me, so they paid me in CDs. Great music. They gave me 20 of them. I think I still have about 17 kicking around.

Part of their problem is, you see, they are jazz ‘purists’ and regard with disdain any attempt to popularize an often difficult genre. Dad once played with both Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and knew both men well from the early jazz scene in London.

“I’ve never forgiven Charlie for selling out,” Dad said to me one time. “He was a brilliant jazz drummer, and then he went to rock music. What a pity.”

Yes, I thought, I am sure Charlie is filled with guilt every time he fires up the Bentley, thinking of how he could be driving a rusted out ’85 Nissan like you.

I once told the son how I liked both the voice and trumpet of uber-junkie Chet Baker.

“Ah – a romantic,” he replied, almost disdainfully.

You see, that’s the problem with a lot of jazz and jazz musicians. They cringe at the thought of popularity – which translates into making money. They also cringe at the thought of making their music understandable to the run-of-the-mill lay audience, like me.

I once had the ‘privilege’ of interviewing George Shearing. The idea of chatting with the guy who composed Lullaby of Birdland was a nice little perk in my journalistic career.

First words out of his mouth: “Don’t ask me anything about Lullaby. I’ve come to loathe it. It got too popular.”

It’s true, I thought, you guys are all elitist sons-of-bitches who think: “How dare the unwashed public like our stuff. We only want other musicians and purists to like our stuff.”

Wendy, during a stint with the Alberta Culture Ministry (yes, the oil-patch province has such a thing) had a chance to hang out with Dizzy Gillespie one time. I was agog and asked what he was like. She told me.

“Mainly drunk. And when he was sober he was the most belligerent and arrogant bastard I think I’ve ever met.”

I have a friend who is a jazz snob. He puts on stuff that nobody else has ever heard of. Stuff by old guys with dark glasses and porkpie hats. Stuff that goes on and on for days.

If I didn’t have my few jazz/pop records that I love, I’d conclude that jazz doesn’t deserve to make money because it really sucks.

Geographic bigotry -- or the curse of the suburbs

The following is excerpted from the manuscript for a book I have just completed writing and am coming close to throwing caution to the winds (as soon as Wendy finishes editing, that is) and sending off to prospective publishers so that I can get some more rejection slips to stuff in an already overflowing drawer of the damn things. Anyway, ‘I’ am pleased with what I’ve done with it. The book concerns growing up in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, and what happened when I first encountered geographic bias.

When I arrived on the University of BC campus, I was a bit of a rube, as much befitted a yokel from Burnaby. Candide-like, I would innocently tell fellow students of my provenance. They would regard me at first with some confusion, offer semi-polite nods, or assume a look reminiscent of the expression the Queen might sport if she had just stepped in Corgi leavings or had been forced, due to protocol, to take tea with Camilla.

Realization about the perceived shabbiness of my geographic origins finally struck me when I mastered the courage to invite a comely coed from one of my classes to coffee one fine October morning. As we sat in Brock Hall, which was the student union in those days, sipping coffee-like tar but savoring the world famous cinnamon buns, she enquired after my origins. Thinking nothing much about the question, and instead fantasizing about what she would look like devoid of that soft red angora sweater (my imagination told me she’d look splendid), I told her.

“Burnaby,” said I, all the while attempting to look suave, sophisticated and worldly. I rather wished at that moment I smoked a pipe and wore tweeds since, in the world of that day, I believed that both would have been effective panty-removers.

“Light that pipe, Big Boy, and off they come.”

But, at my mention of Burnaby, her eyes opened even wider than in their natural state (and they were quite large and beautiful eyes) and she appeared flustered and maybe a bit sweaty. She then began to gather her books to her exquisite and ample bosom and muttered something about having a class, before quickly exiting Brock. “Thanks for coffee,” she said over her shoulder, “We’ll do it again real soon.” I never saw her socially after that.

What had my gaffe been? I was young. I was callow. I didn’t have an experiential file with which to judge her odd behavior. But then, it came to me. It was after I had mentioned Burnaby that she paled and turned away from my company. I had put her in an untenable position. I had forced her to be seen being chatted up by somebody from Burnaby. She was, of course, from Kerrisdale – or Shaughnessy – or Southwest Marine – or British Properties. I was the bloke from Shepherd’s Bush trying to score with a Mayfair Miss. To score with such a person was unlikely, despite the myth of society being classless in North American context. Periodically there are high-end girls who like a bit of 'rough' but since I didn't have tattoos, I couldn't even qualify for that.

Of course the foregoing is full of hyperbole, and her disparaging tones weren’t quite as elaborate as I indicate, but the fact remained that a Burnaby origin offered very little cachet in the eyes of those who regarded themselves as among the Brahmins of the social order of the Lower Mainland. It is a ‘to the manor born’ bearing that those who emanate from certain neighbourhoods never lose. I have a very dear friend whom I’ve known for decades, and love dearly, but she has never wavered from her ‘Full Shaughnessy’ demeanor. In her case, it’s part of her charm.

Eventually I learned and I adjusted. The time came that whenever I was asked where I came from, I would point vaguely eastward, hoping they would think I originated somewhere in the vicinity of 41st and Dunbar – not the top end, but still a pretty decent address.

Not to the manor born? That speaks well of her

Poor Kate Middleton’s mum. She pays a visit to the Queen and when introduced and after Her Majesty had said: “How do you do?” She replied (rather than with another “Howja do?” as is done in polite circles, she instead said: “Pleased t’meetcha.” Not done, you see.

And then, later after tea and bikkies, and realizing a pressing need for the potty – and who wouldn’t in such a situation – asked for the whereabouts of the “toilet” rather than the lavatory. Again, utterly déclassé.

Finally, at the ceremony marking Prince William’s completion of his Sandhurst training, Mrs. Middleton was seen to be, wait for it, chewing gum! Not just déclassé, but pure trailer park Britney Spears that little gaffe was.

Evidently William’s toffee-nosed little overprivileged and incurably snotty friends spared no expense to indict the Middleton materfamilias (above left with Kate) for her commonness. After all, she was an airline stewardess, for heaven’s sake. She actually had to work for a living. And, young Kate, sweet ‘thang’ that she was, ended up being considered in the same light as her intolerably bourgeois mum, just by default. Surely not the sort suitable for the future King of the Realm.

Fair’s fair, and William himself was never heard to utter any such, opinions on Kate, nor on the woman who might have become his mother-in-law. Neither did the Royals themselves express any displeasure with the somewhat plebian origins of Miss Middleton, but it goes to show that the UK is a society in which class truly still matters. And, maybe it’s still a society in which William might be better linked up with some brain-dead spoiled brat with a pedigree as long as Wilt Chamberlain’s arm rather than somebody not to the manor born.

In any case, in my esteem Miss Middleton’s better off out of it. Even though she is probably brighter, I believe she stood in some jeopardy of being another Princess Diana who, albeit with a slightly more patrician lineage, was still far from genuine royal circles. Part of being with the royals is having an abiding understanding of “how things are done.” Diana never ‘got’ that. Probably neither would Kate. Anyway, despite the largesse at your disposal, I don’t think it would be an enviable life.

I do, however, know a little bit about that sort of snobbery. The sort of snobbery that would demean all of those who might be in “trade,” as the saying goes. My believed grandmother was of that ilk. Raised in relative comfort by status-seeking middle-class parents, Grannie had delusions of societal worth, and those delusions could only be nurtured by disdaining those who were not “our sort.”

As she had a youth and childhood with servants, and was essentially home-schooled, as was the case with young ladies of status in her day, she at 18 married my 30-year-old grandfather and headed out to the colonies. My Granddad was of the right class, and all was still good in frontier British Columbia at the time.

Then it all went to hell. World War One intervened, money was lost, wealth that was once there, vanished. By the Depression of the 1930s it was all gone, and my grandparents did not possess that proverbial pot in which to micturate. She wouldn’t have said “piss” if her life depended on it.

She spoke with disdain of her English cousins who were in “trade”, and felt she somehow offered her children a kind of moral doggedness based solely on ‘who’ they were, rather than their means. I visited those English cousins, and grew very fond of them over the years. They lived in lovely homes and drove nice cars. My grandparents lived just this side of Dogpatch. But -- and to Grannie this was important -- none of her children ever grew up referring to that thing you wipe your face with after eating as a ‘serviette’, it was always a ‘napkin.’

That to her was important. I guess to some of William’s friends that is important, too. I guess Kate’s mum didn’t know that.

Err on a G-String

“We don’t want your dirty money!”

Did you know that some charities deem it to sniffily be their right to refuse donations because they are offended by fundraisers who aren’t “our sort”?

That seems to be the message, as reported in a Vancouver newspaper, that was offered by the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, which recently refused to accept a $3,045 donation by the Exotic Dancers for Cancer group, because it deemed the funds to have come from “controversial” sources. In other words it was "ooh-ick, dirty money from dirty girls."

This group of charitable ecdysiasts had raised about $6,000 in their annual cancer campaign, of which they had earmarked the aforementioned $3,045 for the Breast Cancer Society. The rebuff from that body of "very important and elite folk" obviously stung, and also offended.

“We were very disappointed,” said peeler spokeswoman Trina Ricketts. “For a disease that doesn’t discriminate, it seems bizarre that an organization would. It almost seems snobby.”

Not “seems”, Trina, it “is” snobby, insufferable, and self-important, and smacks of leaving within me the thought that I might be more careful in future where I send my charity bucks.

Needless to say, breast cancer is a vitally important cause, so what thought would enter the challenged and ‘precious’ brains that make decisions for that society that the strippers have no ‘right’ to proffer their hard-earned bucks? Very hard-earned bucks. Would you like to doff bra and panties day-in and day-out before a group of slathering creeps in order to feed your kids?

As Trina points out later in the article, what they do for a living (though not everybody’s D-cup of tea) is perfectly legal. They are not prostitutes, they are not drug dealers, they are not anything other than a group of women who take off their clothes for a living and do a bit of sensual dancing for some lonely guys.

The exotic dancers also -- like all women -- can fall victim to potentially fatal breast cancer, and it was with that thought in mind they assumed they had the right to contribute to a charity -- just like regular citizens. But, the Breast Cancer Society decided they are not regular citizens.

For shame!