Denton Park, Those Fabulous Fifties Boys

DENTON PARK Those Fabulous Fifties

CHRISTOPHER BEST

Christopher Best THE LEGACY OF ARTHUR DELAMONT Book II christopher Best

DENTON PARK

Books by Christopher Best

BY JOVE WHAT A BAND 2007 WOODWINDS BRASS & GLORY 2008 THE RED CAPE BOYS 2008 THE KITSILANO SHOWBOAT 2010 DENTON PARK 2013 THE LOST CHORD 2013 THE LIFE & TIMES OF A LEGEND 2014 MY GREEK BARBER’S DIARY 2015 HEARTS, MINDS & SOULS 2016 THE TRAIN TO HAIDA GWAII 2017 HANDSWORTH MUSIC DYNASTY 1 2022 HANDSWORTH MUSIC DYNASTY 2 2022 THE BRITISH COLUMBIA BEEFEATER BAND 2022 87TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE KITSILANO SHOWBOAT 2022 IT AINT OVER UNTIL FAYE LEUNG THE HAT LADY SINGS 2023

Movie Treatments and TV Series THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE 2021 THE GHOSTS OF CHINATOWN 2021 ONE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER 2021 AMBASSADORS OF EMPIRE 2023 HAIGHT ASHBURY NORTH 2023

DENTON PARK

Those Fabulous Fifties THE LEGACY OF ARTHUR DELAMONT CHRISTOPHER BEST

WARFLEET PRESS

6 ~ Woodgreen Empire Theatre, London, England

August 10-15, 1953 Woodgreen Empire Theatre, London, England, The trumpet section playing the Lost Chord with Mr. D.

8 ~ Denton Park Copyright @ Warfleet Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note: Every effort has been made to properly identify and date each photo. If any mistakes have been made we apologize and would appreciate being informed.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Best, Christopher Denton Park, Those Fabulous Fifties ISBN 978-0-9868793-1-9

Printed and bound in Canada www.warfleetpress.com

Warfleet Press 1038 East 63rd Avenue Vancouver BC V5X 2L1 Canada

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. BARRIE GILLMORE.........................................................19 2. GORDON LAIRD ..............................................................29 3. NORM MULLINS...............................................................43 4. CY BATTISTONI................................................................55 5. BRIAN BOLAM..................................................................69 6. BILL STONIER ..................................................................83 7. MICHAEL HADLEY...........................................................93 8. GERRY DEAGLE..............................................................109 9. ED SILVA-WHITE.............................................................125 10. ART TUSVIK...................................................................139 11. JIMMY COOMBES.........................................................155 12. RON PAJALA...................................................................167 13. GORDY BROWN............................................................165 14. EARL HOBSON..............................................................177 15. DICK McMANUS............................................................187 16. BRIAN PARKINSON......................................................195 17. MAJOR PETER ERWIN.................................................211 18. KEN FOWLER................................................................241 19. BARRY BROWN.............................................................251 20. SANDY CAMERON.......................................................261

10 ~ Kitsie Boys

MEMOIRS OF

THOSE FABULOUS KITSIE BOYS BOOK II

12 ~ Handel Parker

DENTON PARK Denton Park is the name of the hymn tune the band played at the West of England Band Festival in Bugle, Cornwall in 1934. The boys took first place in the Hymn Division beating out five other well known English adult bands.

Also at this event, the boys placed second out of eleven well known adult bands in the concert division to win the Hawkes Challenge Shield (The other bands were Newquay Town, Foxhole Silver, Indian Queens Silver, Redruth Town, St. Pinnock, St. Blazey and District, Kingsbridge Silver, St. Issey, St. Just Silver, St. Agnes).

They were also awarded first place for deportment, being the best dressed and most disciplined band out of twenty in the contest. It was presented to them by JH Kirchenside who stated he had no hesitation presenting this award, although he was sorry to see the prize leave England, as it was emblematic of one of the greatest honours which could be bestowed upon competing bands.

The composer of Denton Park, Handel Parker was in the audience and he was asked afterwards what he thought of the boy’s performance. He said, “In my opinion any band that can play a hymn tune as this one has done, is of the highest calibre.”

PREFACE In writing my books on the Kitsilano Boys’ Band, I wanted to capture those days we all spent with Mr D (Arthur Delamont) on tour in Britain and on the continent. I wanted others (who are interested) to be able to read what it was like to have been a member of the world’s most famous boy’s band and to experience what we experienced on the many trips to Britain and Europe that Arthur took us all on. It was a journey into the world of the professional musician.

Myself, and all the boys who played in Arthur Delamont’s Kitsilano Boys’ band were privileged to have been given a most unique education. We were all raised as professional musicians

by Mr. D. Even during the days of the Kitsilano Boys’ band it was seen as unique and every boy wanted to join the band and travel to Britain. Today, it is regarded as an anachronism (something from a different time) but it is as real to us boys that lived those days with Mr. D, as computers and yahoo are to the youth of today.

Arthur Delamont was foremost a professional musician (vaudvillian, salvationist, conductor and showman). He was also the best there was at what he did (teaching youth bands). His band spanned 50 years (1928 through 1978). He and his boys were witness to most of the major events in the twentieth century (the depression, the airplane, World War II, television, rock & roll).

I realized early on in my writing that hearing the boys relate their stories, of their days in the band, on tour, at home, of their friends in the band, all in their own words would be invaluable. I managed to interview over 100 boys from five decades (1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s) over a twenty-five year period. As I listened

14 ~ Champion Junior Band of the World

to their stories there was a common thread which ran through each story, yet the details were different. The one constant through them all was Arthur and his music. Both had a timeless quality which remained the same while boys came and went over the fifty years. I remember coming back for reunion concerts and Arthur and his music (some music he played in every decade) seemed unchanged. Us boys got older and put on weight or lost weight and changed with the times, but Arthur always seemed much the same (maybe because his hair turned white in the 1930s and remained that way). He never let his standards fall and expected the best of his boys right up until the end.

In writing the boys words on paper, I was tempted to rewrite phrases and change words to suit the changing times and tastes, but in the end I realized that the strength of the stories was in the way they told to me. I corrected the grammer but left what I was told the same. Throughout this book and my other two books of interviews (The Red Cape Boys and The Lost Chord) you will read differing points of view often on the same topic.

The Arthur Delamont Story weaves a rich tapestry of events and people that he touched and came in contact with during his lifetime. Somtimes I follow the thread to see where it leads, but never do I get too far away from the source, always returning at the end of the journey to where it started. As you read the different stories, see if you can catch the similarities down through the years.

The Red Cape Boys interviewed thirty of the more famous old boys. Denton Park is my second book of interviews all on boys from his 1950s bands. The Lost Chord is on boys from the 1960s and 1970s.

DENTON PARK ~ 15

INTRODUCTION “Like many others, I regard the 1930’s, ‘40s and ‘50s as the halcyon days of the Kitsilano Boys’ Band experience.” Michael Hadley, Naval Officer, External Affairs officer, German Professor, Writer

If the 1930s was the decade when Arthur did everything for the first time: marched his boys through the provincial, national and world band championships, became the champion junior band of the world, took his boys across Canada by train and on to England by ship three times, competed against the best adult bands that England had to offer (there were no youth bands then) culminating in their 1936 win at the Crystal Palace, then the 1950s was the time when Arthur continued to do everything he had done in the 1930s only bigger and better than before. If anyone had any doubt that his success in the 1930s was a mere fluke or a stroke of good luck, then the 1950s proved that he definetly had the midas touch and that he certainly knew what he was doing, because everything he did seemed to turn to gold.

In the 1950s, Arthur took his Kitsilano Boys’ band on four extended tours of Great Britain. They were to be some of the longest tours that the band would make: 1950 (five months), 1953 (three and a half months), 1955 (five months) and 1958 (four months). No overseas tours were made during the war years for obvious reasons. Because of this the band was able to raise enough money through its fundraising to send the boys in 1950, on a whopping five month tour which saw them not only crisscross England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, but travel over to the continent to the Oosterbeek music festival and a tour of Holland.

16 ~ Ron Collier

The group of boys that Arthur took on this trip, bonded tighter than any other group he had and still hold reunions at each other’s houses to this day (2011). In this book you will read several of the boys’ stories who went on the 1950 trip: Barrie Gillmore, whose idea it was to restart the alumni concerts in the 1990s, Gordon Laird, who became a minister and was on the alumni committee responsible for the concerts, Norm Mullins, who became a Barrister and was also on the alumni committee, Michael Hadley, who helped Arthur out in Brussels and Cologne on the 1958 and 1962 tours when Arthur came calling (I will let Michael tell you more about that), Cy Battistoni who told me wonderful stories about his best friend Ron Colograsso who was also in the band and moved to Toronto, changed his name to Ron Collier becoming a big band arranger, associate of Gordon Delamont and arranger for Duke Ellington in Ellington’s later years. Ron also started the award winning Humber College Jazz Band. Brian Bolam, trumpet player extrordinaire, is another you will meet. Brian had so many wonderful band stories to tell me that I needed two chapters to fit them all in. One is in this book and the other is in my earlier book, The Red Cape Boys.

It is said that the 1953 group of boys that Arthur took on tour across Canada and Great Britain was the second best ensemble that he ever assembled. The first of course was his 1936 band that beat all the adult bands at the Crystal Palace in London, England. The 1953 band played the most professional gigs while away on tour, 175 in all. This band spent most of its time playing British vaudeville stages as part of the Moss/Empire chain, from one end of Britain to the other. British vaudeville was still going strong in 1953, unlike its American counterpart. I interviewed several of the boys from this band: Ed Silva-White who met

DENTON PARK ~ 17

Charlie Parker in the backroom of a music store in London and later in life (1982) climbed Gongga Shan (Minka Konka) in the Himalayas. Art Tusvik, another trumpet player extrordinaire, went on three trips with the band in the 1950s and befriended Jimmy Coombes, one of Ted Heath’s legendary trombone players. Art later returned to England and married Jimmy’s daughter Kay. I also interviewed Ron Pajala who was not only a virtuoso saxophone player in the band but was the star accordian player as well. And Gordy Brown, who was one of the three Brown brothers in the band in the 1950s.

On the 1955 tour of Great Britain the boys played the Palace Theatre in Blackpool three times. When they finished each night, they rushed over to the Winter Gardens to hear Britain’s top orchestra the Ted Heath Band. Several of the boys got to know members of the Heath band and it wasn’t long before the boys all had open invitations to go backstage whenever they met on tour. I wanted to learn more about the Kits band’s connection to the Heath Band, so I included in this book a chapter on Jimmy Coombes as told to me by his daughter Kay Coombes Tusvik, Dawson.

The band that went on the 1955 tour of Great Britain included several all-star players: Arnie Chycoski, Donny Clark (both can be found in the Red Cape Boys) and Ted Lazenby, who became the first music graduate of the UBC School of Music in 1962.

Ted later played in the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan. Unfortunately Ted passed away before I started writing my books. You will find references to Ted throughout the different chapters, as he was held in tremendously high esteem by all.

I have included in this book three more boys who were on the 1955 tour: Earl Hobson who has conducted the Kits alumni

18 ~ Brian Parkinson

band since 2005, Dick McManus who directed bands at Burnaby Central High School for many years. And Gerry Deagle who spent a year at Berklee College of Music in Boston and later became a journalist and continues to play his trumpet today.

The last trip of the world famous Kitsilano Boys’ Band to Great Britain in the 1950s was in 1958. On this trip the band travelled to the Brussels World’s Fair and the Kerkrade International Band Festival. The trip was a tremendous success on all accounts. They won double gold medals at the Kerkrade band festival (a feat unheard of in those days), performed at the world’s fair and toured England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland just like their predecessors.

Boys from this trip that I interviewed are Brian Parkinson who entered the iron-man competitions in later years, Major Peter Erwin, who became the director of the 15th Field Regiment Band in Vancouver, Ken Fowler, who went on to become a lawyer and still plays today and Barry Brown, the youngest of the three Brown brothers. Barry became a band director in the Langley Junior school system. And Sandy Cameron who became a band director in Salmon Arm, BC. After the 1950s, the band would no longer travel by train across Canada and take an oceanliner to England. There would still be six more trips to the Old Country but you will have to read my last book in this series, ‘The Lost Chord/Strawberry Fields Forever,’ to find out how they got there. It covers 30 chapters on the boys from the 1960s and the 1970s Kitsilano Boys’ Band.

CHAPTER 1

Barrie Gillmore “I knew ‘Ken Sotvedt’ a little. He had just come into the Kits band as I was leaving. When he was the conductor of the ‘Firefighters’ Band,’ he ask me to join the band.

It was only a couple of years later that he died. I thought that he was a wonderful conductor for that band. He knew how to handle the band. He brought a lot of Delamont’s attributes and mannerisms to the band. He did a great job.”

“How did you meet Arthur Delamont?”

“I guess I knew about the band before I really knew Arthur Delamont. It was through the West Vancouver Boys’ Band. I was about four or five years of age. We lived down on Argyle Street in West Vancouver. Every ‘May Day,’ the West Vancouver Boys’ Band led the parade. That is why that band was started to be a community band for the parade every May 24. I went up to hear the parade and I was very taken by the band music. That would have been about 1937.

When I turned nine, my dad bought me a snare drum and the first band practice after I arrived at their rehearsal with my drum and said, “I would like to join the band!”

20 ~ ‘Staggered Breathing’

That was the first time I had ever seen him. That was in 1944.

I stayed in the band through 1952. In 1948, he asked me and a few others, “Would you like to join the Kits band?”

I said yes! Then, in 1949 he said, “We are going on a trip next year.”

And I went on the 1950 band trip to Europe for five months.

After 1952, I articled because I became an accountant. I wanted to go on the 1953 band trip but I couldn’t get away.”

“Do you have any humorous anecdotes or stories from those days?”

“When I first started, he began us off with a march and I should have been playing on the off beats. I couldn’t quite get it. I would be banging on the beat. He came over and with his hand on my head, would bang out the off beats. I got it quite quickly.”

“It was survival!”

“Yes, one thing I remember, after I had just joined the Kits band, on Semper Fidelis, we all stood up. We stood up by sections during Semper Fidelis. Then we would all stay standing for God Save the King. On the King, I had to play the tympani, so I walked over to the tympanis and he glared at me and said, “Don’t move!”

I think to myself, “How can I get to the tympanis if I do not move?”

Finally, I figured that I had better move earlier, while everyone was standing for Semper Fidelis. He would never tell us those things. We were supposed to figure them out for ourselves.”

“Do you have any other stories?”

“This, I heard on Dal’s program. He was talking about how Arthur played hymns. Arthur would say, “Don’t breath!”

BARRIE GILLMORE ~ 21

A lot of people wouldn’t understand what he meant when he said, “Don’t breath.”

“He meant staggered breathing.”

“That’s right!

Richie Brown said, “One time a guy came along to rehearsal. I don’t know where he came from but he wasn’t one of us because he was breathing in all the right places.”

“Did you have to compete to go on the 1950 trip?”

“There was one other drummer who was not asked to go because I was asked to go along. I sort of bumped him. I think he got to go in 1953. He also asked Howard Lear, of the ‘Four Notes,’ to come along and he had to play the bass drum. He had never banged the bass drum before but he learned.

I think the real competition took place over the previous four years.

By the time the trip came along, he knew who he wanted to take on the trip.”

“I think you are right.”

“Tell me about the trip. You started off across Canada by train?”

Yes, that’s right, we had our own two cars that were taken off and put on a siding whenever we wanted to stay overnight. We would be booked for a concert or some other activity and then they would rehook us up the next day. I remember on BBC’s ‘In Towne Tonight’ program, Robert Sherrin, who was a rather articulate young fellow, was interviewed by the moderator who asked, “What do you think of the trip so far?” Robert said, “Oh the most exciting part was the train ride across Canada. I had never been on the train before.”

I am not sure how that went over with the English families listening to the broadcast but I guess he was being truthful.

The train ride was exciting. We had done it before going to the

22 ~ Fred Whittemore

Calgary Stampede in1948, on the old Kettle Valley Route, Penticton, Cranbrook, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Banff, Revelstoke.”

“Did you get to know Lillie Delamont at all on the trip?”

“I was in their house once, to get my uniform and to sign the band pledge. I don’t think I was ever over again. I never really encountered her much on the trip. What year did she die?”

“1962.”

“Then he married his second wife, Tracy and that of course we all know did not work out.”

“No, I interviewed Clif Bryson in 1988. Clif told me, “We all liked Tracy when they came to visit us in Hawaii. We were sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Has Clif died?’

“Yes, he died in 2004. My mother came back from Hawaii one year and said, “We stayed with an old Kits band fellow who happened to be a friend of a friend. His name was Clif Bryson.”

“Isn’t that interesting?”

“Did you know Fred Whittemore?”

“I just played at his funeral on Friday.”

“I didn’t know he had died. Fred was a friend of my mother’s as well. They used to work together down at Mc & Mc and then at Acklands for years. Fred, Dorothy, Donna and Karen were all friends of ours.”

“He wasn’t in the Kits band” “No but he played in most of the pro bands around Vancouver over the years.”

“He was in the Firefighter’s Band and I am in the Firefighter’s Band. Quite often, we ask the surviving spouse if they would like the band to play at the funeral, so we did.”

BARRIE GILLMORE ~ 23

“Do you recall the boat ride to Europe?”

“Yes, we were on the Samaria, both ways. It was a fun trip. Norm Mullins had taken a psychology course at UBC and he had learned how to hypnotize. So he hypnotized a few of us but it didn’t work for me.”

“Do you have any thoughts about any of the other guys?”

“Bill Good was a great percussionist and a dedicated musician in the VSO. He wasn’t too well received by the other members of the VSO because he didn’t have any formal training, a university degree.

I learned a lot from him!”

“He met his wife to be on the Samaria coming back.”

“Yes, it was just after the war and there were lots of girls looking for husbands in England. They were often lined up at our stage door, ready to latch on to us. The girls outnumbered the boys in England five to one because so many of the fellows were killed during the war, which was fine by us. Not that they were killed but fine that we were out numbered five to one. Good times!”

“What do you recall about England?”

“We were billeted in some places. The English families loved to have us as billets because we had ration books. They were still rationing in 1950. We would take five or so coupons and give them to the lady of the house. They loved it because they could buy extra sugar or whatever they needed..

We arrived in England in early June. A month later we went over to Holland on a ship and we had milk for the first time since we arrived in England.”

“Do you remember the contest?”

“In Oosterbeek, we worked hard on the ‘Academic Festival Overture,’ which was the test piece. Back in England, I remember we took the ‘Flying Scotsman’ from Glasgow to London. Boy, it was a fast

24 ~ Ted Heath Band

train! I was in a compartment with two or three other guys, smoking a cigarette. D came by and said, “Who’s in that compartment?” I said, “I am sir!”

“Barrie,” he said. I never thought that you would be doing that sort of thing.”

“Did you see any bands in England?”

“We saw the ‘Ted Heath Band.’ The first day we were in England, we were in a hotel near Buckingham Palace. That morning we woke up to a rehearsal of the Trooping the Colour.”

“Any stories about the vaudeville theatres you played?”

“It was just a great experience, playing two forty minute programs each night. We were in Ireland a year ago and I was looking for the ‘Royal Theatre’ but I think it was torn down around 1962.”

“When you returned to Vancouver, that’s when you began articling?”

“Yes, I played a little with D at UBC but I didn’t really get involved in bands again until 1970 when I started playing in one of the West Van adult bands. In 1985, I took up the euphonium. I always thought it was a beautiful sounding instrument. My wife rented one for me from Calder Music as a Christmas present, just to see if I liked it.

Eventually, I sat in with the Thursday night group in West Van. I wasn’t good enough for the Monday night group. I have been in the Thursday night band for twenty-two years, a lot of fun! Not quite the caliber of the Kits Boys’ band but a lot of fun.”

“Are you involved with the West Van Youth band?”

“Yes, I am on the Community Music Hall, fund raising committee, which is a part of the new community center being built in West Vancouver. We have had problems getting it off the ground but we expect to commence fund raising for ‘instruments’ and an

BARRIE GILLMORE ~ 25

‘endowment fund’ shortly. There will be a recording studio. It is for all West Van musical groups.”

“It sounds great! Tell me how you got involved with the Kits band Alumni organization?”

“I started the alumni concerts back in 1998. D used to have alumni concerts beginning in 1963. But after his death, there were none until I restarted them in 1998. I thought, “Why not keep putting them on. We still have a lot of talent around.”

I knew Bea Leinbach, who ran the ‘Kits Showboat.’ I called her and asked, “Would you be interested in having a Kits Boys’ band Alumni concert at the Showboat?” She said, “Of course, we would love it!”

I called a few of the old boys I knew from the 1950 trip, Brian Bolam, Norm Mullins, Evan McKinnon and Gordon Laird and pitched them the idea. I suggested that Ken Sotvedt conduct and the rest is history. We had another reunion concert in 2003 and then another in 2007.

This year (2008) of course will be the band’s eightieth anniversary and is somewhat of a milestone. Jimmy Pattison will be eighty years young. Dal Richards will be ninety years young. Arnie Chycoski and Donny Clark will both be seventy.”

“That’s true but I think there will probably be another one after this summer but I am sure not for a few years, keeps us all young.”

“That’s true! How many will be playing this summer?”

“We had sixty-nine on stage last year. This summer, we will have as many if not more. There will be over one hundred attending the alumni dinner on the Saturday before the Monday concert. This summer’s reunion will be a three day event, with a church concert planned as well, for the Sunday evening.”

26 ~ Ken Sotvedt

organization?”

“Only that it is obvious that we are only interested in putting on reunion concerts. None of the present executive is really interested in pursuing other objectives regarding the legacy of the Kits Band. We did arrange for a lot of items for a display at the Vancouver Museum a few years ago.There have been requests by various people to see scholarships set up and other requests for ‘this and that’ but none of us are really interested in pursuing them. If some younger former band members want to come forward to ‘spearhead’ such objectives that would be wonderful but so far no one has stepped forward.”

“Do you want to say anything more about any of the guys?”

“I knew ‘Ken Sotvedt’ a little. He had just come into the Kits band as I was leaving. Then, when he was the conductor of the ‘Firefighters’ Band,’ he ask me to join the band. It was only a couple of years later that he died. I thought that he was a wonderful conductor for that band. He knew how to handle the band. He brought a lot of Delamont’s attributes and mannerisms to the band. He did a great job. He also did a great job conducting our reunion concerts. Earl Hobson did a great job conducting last year’s reunion concert, as well. It was sad when Ken passed on two weeks after conducting the 2003 gig.”

“Anyone else you want to mention?”

“Garfield White was a character!” He used to sing a melody from the Chocolate Soldier.“ “What kind of influence on you was it, having been in the Kits band and having known Arthur Delamont?”

“There are four people who have influenced my life over the years.

The first was Arthur Delamont. The second was the chap to whom I was articled. His name was Chester Johnson. The third was a fellow that I worked with at ‘Western Mack Trucks.’And then

BARRIE GILLMORE ~ 27

ABOVE: 1982 Barrie with Ken Sotvedt at a reception following Arthur’s funeral BELOW:2007 Barrie in foreground (now playing baritione) rehearsing for the 79th reunion concert.

28 ~ John Lansdell

when I started with this business group up here (Barrie points around the office building we are in ) John Lansdell was the president. He died about three years ago but he was very influential. I have been with this group for about 24 years, nothing to do with music. But those were the four people whom, I would say, have been the greatest influence on my life.

Delamont influenced everybody regarding independence and music and he gave us the opportunity to travel. Imagine getting to go to England for five months on only one hundred bucks!”

CHAPTER 2

Gordon Laird “I’ve done six cruises this year. I have four set up for next year. I give a talk on Bermuda and on Ben Franklin. I am not a professor. I am a researcher and a historian and a writer. We have an agent in Florida who gets us our gigs.

It’s a tough life. But someone’s got to do it!”

“How did you first meet Arthur Delamont?”

“I was in grade seven at Point Grey Junior High School.

This man came into our homeroom class. I am guessing that he had a trumpet under his arm. That would have drawn my attention. He said,“I’m starting a band. Is anybody interested in joining a band?”

Glen Startup and I, put up our hands. We were best friends.

I think we were the only two who put up their hands. We went down after school and he had an array of instruments.

We tried them all. By the time we were done, I had a clarinet in my hands and Glen had a trumpet in his hands. I never chose a clarinet. It took me years to feel it was a good choice.

He needed clarinets. He didn’t want everybody playing trumpets. I think we were on stage, at Point Grey Junior High School within weeks, in some sort of little concert, maybe eight or ten of us. That’s how I met him. That would

30 ~ Al Hurd

have been about 1944 or 1945. By 1947, I was in the Kits band. Band practice was on Monday night. We paid a quarter. We went with Ron Wood’s father. Ron Wood’s father published a construction trade newspaper in Vancouver. He became a real supporter of the Kits Band. He ended up as President of the Parents Association. He was a great encourager for us.

“Do you have any stories from the early days?”

“We were all in terror of him. My ego took an onslaught from Mr. D and Glen’s as much, if not more.

We began to take little trips around 1945, to army camps, traveling and the band just went together. Traveling with the band was a different kind of traveling. You were with a bunch of other young people. It was exciting. It was interesting. I do not know how we got along as well as we did! I remember Norm Mullins bringing out his tricks on the ferry, going up to the Sunshine Coast. He would hypnotize people and he was really good at it.”

“Do you remember Jimmy Pattison in the band?”

“Yes, he would be a little older than me. He will be eighty next year (2008) and I will be seventy-six. Jimmy filled the very special spot Mr D had, for a very young virgin sounding trumpeter and if he could stand on a chair, all the better.

He caught them before they ruined their embouchures on jazz. He had a wonderful pure tone. We loved hearing it ourselves. Glen and I went on to form our own little dance band, with a fellow named Al Hurd. Al never played in the Kits Band. When Delamont found out about this, he went over to the clarinet section at General Gordon School and he said, “Clarinet players who play jazz, lose all their tone.”

GORDON LAIRD ~ 31

”Then he went over to the trumpet section and he said, “Trumpet players who play jazz, lose their embouchures.”

He was talking about the two of us. He had his ear to the ground, always. In 1947, we went to Hollywood. For many of the fellows, like Norm Godfrey and George Kyle, who didn’t get to Europe, that trip is still a highlight. George lives in Florida. Norm lives in Nanaimo.They get on the telephone and talk about the 1947 trip. George Kyle was a fine clarinet player. The band was very hierarchical. If a boy was on a top stand, he could criticize those below. You looked up to your elders, your musical elders. The top boys were in the stratosphere. We could only hope to someday get up there ourselves.”

“But you always hoped?”

“Oh, of course we did! And it was always magic how it happened. You never knew when you would get promoted.

You might play second stand for a while and then you are put back on third stand. Don’t get any ideas that you have moved. Unless there was a vacancy, you never knew. After a trip of course, there were lots of vacancies. Then you became important to him.”

“Tell me about the 1947 trip?”

“The 1947 trip was wonderful. It was a bus trip all the way to Hollywood. We had funny little cameras. We had ball point pens. They had just been invented. We all kept diaries which read thirteen cents for this, ten cents for that. We only had ten dollars for the two week trip, in some cases, maybe only five dollars. Again, Glen and I palled around together.

We went to the Palladium and saw Gene Krupa’s band. We played in the Shriner’s Auditorium.

32 ~ Arnold Emery

Going back for a moment to what I said about him getting us on stage within weeks. He wanted us to have no fear of the stage. I still play with people in other bands and orchestras, who are afraid of the stage. That was taken out of us early.

The stage was our home. We expected to be on it. We knew we would be on often because if we were not playing in the Point Grey Band, we were playing in the Grandview Band.

He circulated us around. Whatever cape they had, you put it on and became a member of that band. He was famous for having ringers show up all over the place. I became one of those ringers. I started on an Albert silver clarinet. I always wondered how I survived on that clarinet. It was a strange looking instrument. It looked like a cat that had been in the shower. I took a few lessons from Mr D on the clarinet. He didn’t know anything about the clarinet but I took them just the same.”

“Do you have any more thoughts on the 1947 trip?”

“We played on the way down, at Crater Lake and in Portland and then next came the 1948 trip to the Calgary Stampede. That was interesting because he had me play the hand cymbals. They were heavy beasts. Both Glen and I worked our way up to our respective top stands and wound up turning the page for the lead player. Mine was Bob Cave. Glen’s was Cyril Battistoni. Battistoni and Colograsso were the cutups. We loved them. They were always kind of in trouble but they always seemed to get away with it. They were marvelous and best friends.”

“Tell me about the 1950 trip?”

“We left the CPR station in downtown Vancouver. We lived on bread, jam and peanut butter for a week. Then we

GORDON LAIRD ~ 33

got on the ship and dined like kings. What was kind of neat was that ‘D’ had the idea of this village band. The village band concept was that he would announce to the audience at a concert, that we had something special with us this evening.

This happened at every town we stopped at across Canada.

If we were in Swift Current, he would announce us as a band from a neighboring hick town. It was always from a hick town. In we came. There was Colograsso on trombone, me on clarinet, Arnold Emery on trumpet and Barrie Gillmore on drums. We would play a little ditty and ham it up, with wrong notes and all. We dressed funny. On one occasion, Ron Colograsso let his slide go and it sailed into the audience. He went and picked it up and it still worked. He didn’t do it on purpose. The audience thought it was hilarious. They thought it was part of the act. We did that everywhere across Canada, as a part of the show. Every band had a different shtick. In 1953, they had the shot gun wedding.

Then we had the ‘Four Notes.’ They were a barbershop quartet. Howard Lear is still around. Howard played bass drum. But whenever an important part came along, Mr D would put Barrie Gillmore on the bass drum. He wanted perfection. They were a lovely addition, the Four Notes. Everyone became lovers of England on that 1950 trip, not the food!

We started in England on the south coast. We ran into a strike in Bournemouth. Walter Goral was the one selected to lead the band if Arthur couldn’t conduct because of the strike.

Now, I have to jump ahead to 1990. I didn’t see Walter for fifty years. I am now a minister. We have had several reunions of the 1950s band. In 1990, there was no reunion. I was a minister in Maple Ridge and I envisioned the band

34 ~ Glen Startup

playing in my church. I got the word out. Let’s have a reunion in my church and we will augment it with others. We had about forty-four come out. We found Walter Goral living in Maple Ridge. He still had his trombone in the closet.

We encouraged the trombone out of the closet and he began to play. Also living in Maple Ridge was Tom Walker. Tom had been playing in his closet. He came out. Bill Ingeldew came out. It was an outstanding success. But the interesting part was that, the nucleus of that bunch went on to become the Maple Ridge Concert Band, which thrives today. We had ladies come out and serve sandwiches. Vera came out. She was very impressed by the ladies efforts. Tom has been the President.

Tom, at that time, had in the back of his mind, the idea for a bandstand. He is an engineer. Tom got together with Belle Morse, the mayor of Maple Ridge. She had a group called the Music Makers. The mayor brought Tom and a fellow named George Price together from the Legion, who was a money person. Now Maple Ridge has a beautiful new bandstand. But the point is that all of that happened because we had a reunion of the 1950s band in our church. Walter and I became great friends. We never were fifty years ago.

He was older and had higher status in the band but it was good for him and good for me. We got to know each others wives. Walter had a hip problem. We took a little band to the hospital to serenade Walter.”

“Now back to the 1950 trip!”

“We all became very close, the thirty-nine of us. Close enough, that we became a very solid group. Arthur used to lecture us on of course deportment. But also on getting

GORDON LAIRD ~ 35

ready for those competitions.”

“Do you remember any humorous stories?”

“Ziba told me a story. When Ziba pulled the fire alarm in a hostel in England, he was later called before the Committee, headed by Norm Mullins, being the law student. Glen Startup, stood up for Ziba and softened the blow. To this day, Ziba is thankful to Glen. I had a fight with Jack Hamilton.

Only fight I ever had. It was pretty real. What is more amazing is how few fights we actually had on the trip.”

“See any bands in England?”

“We saw Ted Heath and Harry Secombe at the Golders Green in London. Harry Secombe went on to do the Goon Show. We all remember his act with him shaving. It was interesting to meet all the dancing girls and how popular the band was at the stage door. That never happened in Canada.

We didn’t really have any sense of being ambassadors, until we reached Holland. Our one week in Holland, was the highlight of the tour. We soon realized that every Canadian has a home in Holland. The food was much better in Holland, than in England (powdered eggs). But Holland was wonderful. Some of us decided to go to Paris. Norm came up with the idea. We stayed three days. We walked and walked and walked. Glen spent all his money. When we got back to London, Glen spent the night in a telephone booth.

Back on the ‘Konigen Emma,’ (the boat that took us to Holland) we were all really sick. I managed not to get sick by lying on a bench on deck. The only problem was I contracted pneumonia, as a result.

We get back to London and we go into a YMCA next to Phoenix Park. We had to gather twigs in the park, to get the

36 ~ Pete Merrick Mitchell

fire going in our rooms. People burned up any scrap of wood they could, including furniture.

When we were in Dublin, I asked Mr D if I could visit a cousin nearby. He said okay but don’t make a fuss about it.

I got on a train and went and visited my aunt, my uncle and my cousin. I was the ambassador for my family. I thought that was pretty good of Mr D to let me go. We didn’t tell anyone because he didn’t want to disrupt the band.

Bill Good met a Canadian girl on the ship coming home this story was told at his funeral. I was the minister at his funeral. His family asked me to do the funeral. Brian wrote the story. On the boat, Bill was sitting at one table. There was this family at another table. A waiter came over to Bill and said, “Would you like to meet this nice young girl over there?”

That is how they were introduced. They married and they stayed married until Bill passed away. You know, thinking back to the story of Mr D giving the money to Alex McLeod, to buy an engagement ring, there was a side to Mr D, you only got to see in secret moments.”

“He was a romantic maybe?’

“Yes, he was a romantic guy. He liked dancing. He liked the ladies. Anyway, when we got back, I was sick with pneumonia. My parents wondered what they had done to me. That ties into my next story. My mom, who had never wanted me to go to university, wound up arguing with the registrar, to get me back into the university, and it worked. I went into commerce and succeeded very well.

This pretty much ended my career with the Kits Band, except for being pulled into the UBC Pep band from time to

GORDON LAIRD ~ 37

time, which Arthur ran as well. Our dance band continued on on for awhile, playing Friday nights.”

“You went on and got a Bachelor of Commerce Degree?”

“Yes, my option was accounting. I became a CA with Pete Merrick Mitchell. I graduated in 1957 and stayed with them for a few years. I didn’t like being an auditor and couldn’t see doing that for long. I became a secretary treasurer for Thermalite Plastics. I went into Industry. That was kind of a disaster. The business wasn’t making money. I was it’s treasurer. I don’t like things that don’t make money. I had a falling out with the boss. The next thing I know, I am in my own accounting office. Then I added an office in White Rock. I was the first CA in White Rock. Now they have over seventy in one office. In White Rock, I got involved in the church and experienced a call to the ministry. I didn’t know what that was. I had never heard of it before. Didn’t know what you did with it. But I realized there was a vocational change coming.

I had to go back to school again. I had five years commerce. Three years chartered accounting. Now, I was going back to school, to start all over again. I hadn’t taken any philosophical courses. I went to Union College and took a philosophy course. They accepted my Bachelor of Commerce and I was in theology. Three years later I won the gold medal. I guess I did something right! Then, my whole life turned in that direction. But I never left the clarinet or the music too far behind. It sort of became background. When I finished school, there were some things I wanted to know more about, namely, Martin Luther and the Reformation..

I decided I wanted to do more study and take my family

38 ~ Brock House Big Band

to Europe. My first ministry was in Kaslo. Then, I was called back to Vancouver to an administrative job, which I resisted because I didn’t want to be drawn into anything similar to what I had done before. I arranged for a trip to Germany. We went for two and a half years. I studied at the University of Tuvingin. This totally changed our lives. We had five children at that point. They all had to make their way in German schools. They all came along. I had to learn enough German to be in classes. I had to learn Latin. I learned some Greek.

I took instruments with me, one for each of the children. It wasn’t long before I was playing in a band. I played in the band because I was frustrated that there were no halls where I could practice.

I went to the burgermeister and said, “Where can I practice my horn?” He said, “We have a band on Monday nights. Go and talk to Herr Grauer!”

So, I did! And he said, “Get your clarinet.” and I played for two years in a German concert band. We played for all occasions in the town; weddings, funerals, opening of sewage plants. That was 1972 through 1975. I got an award from the local establishment for my efforts.”

“Arthur was still taking his band to Europe. You could have run into him.”

“Yes, I guess so! I had kind of lost contact entirely with Arthur and the band at that time in my life. But after I came back home, I resumed my friendship with Glen Startup. Glen was being used by Arthur to make his posters. Glen was a commercial artist. I got involved in some of the big reunion concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. But I kind of got

GORDON LAIRD ~ 39

annoyed because I would sit down on the first chair, when not many were in attendance and then when the big guys came in, I got shuffled down to third. I didn’t want to put up with that experience all over again, so I just dropped out. I didn’t want any more of it. Glen hung in. I dropped out. What got me back in, was a telephone call from Vera. She said,“We are having a concert at Delamont Park.” That was after Arthur died, about 1984. I played at the park. I was playing beside Bob Cave. Glen was playing beside Cyril Battistoni. All the wonderful memories started to flood back. Ken Sotvedt was conducting. They were all in the Firefighter’s Band, of which Ken was the leader.

I joined the Fireman’s band. I was still a minister at University Hill. Then, I went out to Burnaby to Capitol Hill.

Gradually, I got back into a dance band playing saxophone with the Brock House Big Band. And now I lead the Brock House Big Band and here we are.”

“It is a thread that has run all through your life, the music.”

“Yes, the conducting thing is very interesting. On Sunday at my church, I am going to talk about fear. I have asked three people to talk about their moment of greatest fear. My story is when I was in grade three, I was in a rhythm band and I was the conductor, with a very big red stick. Everybody laughed at me. I was so ashamed, that I said to myself, “I’ll never do that again!” And sure enough, I never did. I have played in all these bands, but had never aspired to be a conductor. The years went by, until 2001. I was in a writing course and I wrote that story and called it, “My Great Conducting Career.”

40 ~ Clyde Mitchell

When it was over, I looked at my story for two weeks and and I thought, “Everybody in that story that I am annoyed at is dead. How come I am still annoyed?” Then I thought, “How do you become a conductor? ”I went to the conductor of the choir at our church and told him my story. He said,“ Why don’t you come and conduct the church choir once?”

There was also a workshop on conducting at our church.

Clyde Mitchell was in charge. At that time Clyde was the assistant conductor of the VSO. So this blew my mind! You can actually learn to be a conductor. I had Mr D looming way up in the stratosphere. I thought conductors were born not made. I went to a couple of conducting workshops. We created an orchestra. I brought my clarinet and saxophone.

We played a number by Bizet and we each got to conduct for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Everyone was hesitant the first time. Clyde would stand behind you and move your arm. Make it physical. Or if you were moving too much, he would put his arms around your knees and stop you from bouncing, neat guy! He asked me to do a few things, like slow the orchestra down or speed them up. When it was over, I asked,“Now what do I do?” He said, “You need to learn all the instruments you can. There is a course at VCC.” I took the course and then another. The upshot of it was that I began to do some conducting. I now conduct the Brock Brock House Big band and occasionally an orchestra.

“Tell me who the three most important influences in your life have been?”

“Arthur Delamont was the single most important influence in my life outside of my parents. He taught me about

GORDON LAIRD ~ 41

RIGHT :2006 Gordon at the Big band Christmas BELOW: Gordon with the Brock House Orchestra.

42 ~ Jack Schaefer

programming, discipline, travel, love of far away places, about being an ambassador. My other two influences are interesting. The first was Jack Schaefer. Jack was a good friend of mine. He is acknowledged as one of the most fluent theologians in the United Church of Canada. He didn’t go through the normal route. His doctorates were honorary doctorates, a highly practical person.

The third person was a professor at the theological college, David Lochheald. He died in 1999. He and I worked together in the early stages of making a computer network called ecunet, which is still in use today. Those are the three people, who have influenced my life the most.

“What does the future hold in store for Gordon Laird?”

“These cruises are amazing. I give talks and Marilyn does crafts. Ziba Fisher led us into it. Ziba’s wife Jean, said to him on their first cruise,“You can give a talk as good as that guy.” Ziba’s been doing cruise talks ever since. Ziba said to me,“Gordon, you can do this as well as the guys doing it on board.” I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve done six cruises this year. I have four set up for next year. I give a talk on Bermuda and on Ben Franklin. I am not a professor. I am a researcher and a historian and a writer. We have an agent in Florida who gets us our gigs. It’s a tough life but someone’s got to do it!”

CHAPTER 3

Norm Mullins “The movie ‘Captains of the Clouds’ was made in Canada and the Air Cadet band played for the premiere. It was all about Canadian bush pilots ferrying planes across the Atlantic. It starred James Cagney and George Tobias. I have a picture of the band out in front of the Orpheum Theatre with the spotlights shining. We thought we were pretty important!”

The next ‘old boy’ on my list, was a fellow who had also been on the 1950 trip to England and Holland. His name was Norm Mullins. All I knew about Norm was that he was still practicing law and that he had an office near Hornby and Robson in downtown Vancouver. He had also been our host for the garden party just before the 2007 reunion concert. I called Norm and made arrangements to visit him the next day.

As I made my way up Robson Street to Norm’s office, I recalled what Norm had said to me on the telephone: “I played in three of Arthur’s bands, beginning around 1939/1940. They were the Grandview Band, the 111th

44 ~ Laura Secord School

Squadron Air Cadet Band and the Kitsilano Boys’ Band.”

One interesting point that I noted was many of Arthur’s old boys played in more than one of his bands, at least in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He used his other bands as a “farm team” where he started other players off and as they became more proficient, he moved them up to his Kits band.

Making my way up the elevator, as I entered Norm’s office, I wondered what stories this man of the law might be able to tell me regarding his years in the band.

We met and shook hands. The view from Norm’s office was spectacular. Norm was a tall man, in his late seventies, very well spoken and articulate as one would expect of a Barrister. After exchanging a few niceties we got down to business.

“Tell me how you first met Arthur Delamont?”

“I went to Laura Secord School, no music in the neighborhood, no music in the schools. This would be 1939/40. Arthur Delamont showed up with a man named Stan George, who was the President of the Grandview Band Parents Association. Arthur had just come back from Europe and was recruiting for the Grandview Band. He handed out postcards of the band photographed in front of Buckingham Palace on one side and on the other side was written, “If you want to join the band call Beacon 457800.”

There was a rubber stamp signature” AW Delamont.”

Last time I saw him, he was still using that damn stamp.

Those were very tough times. No toys to play with. What I was concerned with was, to be in a band, you had to play an instrument. To play an instrument, you had to get an instrument. My dad was away most of the time. It was the

NORM MULLINS ~ 45

depression. He tried to find work as a house painter. He would travel back to the prairies on the boxcars and be away for quite some time. My mother worked when she could at Woodward’s $1.49 Day. She had to have her own black dress. We were stuggling to put food on the table. It was not too long before my dad, just packed up and left. I saw him from time to time but not much. My mother was left with looking after the whole family. Dad never really helped out. I talked to my mother about meeting Arthur Delamont.

I didn’t know until she died in 1998 that she had been quite an accomplished pianist. She went to a college in Saskatchewan where she had met my dad. I guess she wanted me to follow in her tracks. Somehow we communicated with Mr D and I wound up at the Grandview School of Commerce at First and Commercial. We had a seven o’clock band rehearsal in a hut on the school grounds. All I remember was the flute playing daughter of the band President, she was so beautiful!

We learned scales and notes on a blackboard. We were there about an hour. Next Friday, when we came back, the chairs were arranged in a circle. There were several instruments in the middle. He picked one up and said, “Here’s yours,”and so on. I didn’t know a tuba from a trumpet but I got the shiniest, prettiest instrument there, an alto horn. I was so pleased. He started in persisting with each boy until we got a note, usually middle C. Then we learned to memorize the fingerings, C is open, D is 1st and 3rd and so on.

Later in life, whenever I have something difficult to work out, I find myself saying, C is open, D is 1st and 3rd. In the

46 ~ Roy Dawson

legal profession going to court is difficult. I have been doing it for fifty-four years. I still worry about going to court. Next, he would have us play long notes. Eventually we would move on and play scales and then our first band book. He was smart enough not to bore us. Gradually things got harder and more harmonious.

It carried on, week after week. We played concerts around town. In 1944, I moved into the Kits band. Sometimes I played in his other bands as well. I often played in the North Vancouver Band when ever he needed a horn player. Other fellows, who came through the Grandview band with me, were Cyril Battistoni, Ron Colograsso and Ian Douglas, Roy Dawson as well. He was a good trumpet player but in

NORM MULLINS ~ 47

1948, he was killed, with his wife, in a car accident on the first day of his honeymoon.

Arthur was always looking for a way to make a buck. I do not know if he made a dime or a fortune on the 1950 trip I do know from other sources that he owned several apartment buildings up round Cypress and 16th Avenue. I have some recollection of him pointing out to me buildings that he owned over the years. Years later he consulted me about making a will. I asked him what kind of assets he had and I am sure he mentioned apartment buildings in a general way.

In 1950, every boy’s family put up $100. He covered the rest from the bands funds. The parents raised quite a lot. I often wondered how much money he made out of the trips.

LEFT: 1940s horn section, Norm is third from the right.

RIGHT: 2007 Norm in quiet repose in his garden in West Vancouver

48 ~ Dead On Arrival

We were always taking another gig. He probably got paid for having the Cadet band and also the UBC Pep band. He played in the symphony, the CBC Symphony Orchestra and the Malkin Bowl Orchestra. He was so high up in the Musician’s Union, that he always got first call. He was very active. It never occurred to me that he was suffering from lean dollars.

He loved the Salvation Army and its church and also motorcycle racing. He was quite a guy! I did a lot of public speaking for the band in England. For the Lord Mayor of this or that town. We played at Wembley Stadium in 1950.

The stadium could hold 80,000 people. Unfortunately it was not full when we played, so I couldn’t tell people back home that I had talked to a crowd of 80,000.

I had the Grandview band practice on Friday night and the Air Cadets on Saturday nights.”

“Was Jimmy Pattison in the band with you?”

“Not in 1950, I knew Jimmy mostly from the UBC Pep band and from the Kits band for a little while.

In 1942, the Air Cadet band went to Calgary for the Stampede and stayed in the #3 Service Flying Training School Barracks. We ate in the Mess Hall and marched at the head of the parade. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me at the time.

Then, on Thursdays and Mondays, there were the Kits band practices at General Gordon. I left the Grandview band behind around 1943.

In 1946, three of us from my high school, took a car to California. In 1947, when the band went to California, we played in a huge church, which was Amy Sempel McPher-

NORM MULLINS ~ 49

son’s Church, until she ran off with her boyfriend and disgraced herself in the eyes of the church.

We were invited to the Los Angeles Police Department Charity Show, not to play, just to attend. We returned by way of San Francisco.”

“Tell me about the 1950 trip?”

“I was at UBC in 1947. I spent three summers in school picking up credits for my BA before Law school. There was always expectation that the band would be going to Europe again. I have 283 pages that I have written you know. I am not going to give you those. There are still some points that I want first to clear up. I was 21 on the 1950 trip. He called on me to handle a couple of legal matters pertaining to the band. On the ship going over, some of the boys were in a pub and I am sure Mr D must have come by and seen them but he never said anything. He was smart!”

“Did you meet any famous people?”

“We met Alan Jones Sr. in Manchester. He was famous for the ‘Donkey Serenade.’ Must have driven him mad singing that every night.”

“Did you play the vaudeville circuit on the 1950 trip?”

“Oh yes, about half the time, I would say. In Dublin, we crossed over in a terrible storm. Everyone was sick. We were booked into a theatre with a movie called “Dead On Arrival.”

That was about how we all felt when we arrived in Dublin.

Then we played parks as well. In Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bath we played two concerts a day, six days a week, all different programs. The music was carried in a huge trunk. We had two programs for Canada - fourteen different programs in all. We practiced the different programs on the train

50 ~ United States Air Force Band

across Canada, on the ship to England and then again in England. In Glasgow, we got up and practiced until eleven thirty in the morning, put on our uniforms and we had a problem.

Glasgow forgot that they had hired us.

The mayor and all the councellors had gone out of town and all the councilors. It was Glasgow Fair Week, which meant most of the factories were shut down. They forgot to tell us where we were supposed to play. Finally, somebody scraped up a list and told us we were to play at such and such a park and so forth. But we had no idea where the parks were located. Literally, we went out onto the streets, with our instruments and uniforms on and asked people where such and such park was located. They would tell us to catch this or that street car and ask the conductor where to get off.

We did that for a week. We couldn’t have survived if it had been for more than one week. In Edinburgh, we stayed with the Salvation Army and played at Princes Street Gardens.

We were followed by the United States Air Force band. We thought that was impressive as hell, having the best military band in America following us on stage. We figured we must have been pretty good!

“Did you do any recording on the trip?”

“No, we didn’t do any recording, except on “In Town Tonight,” at BBC. Ron Colograsso and I went into a recording studio in Newcastle and made records, which we sent home; just talking.

In Dublin, Mr D sent me and Gordon Laird to talk to a radio station. We did record ‘Academic Festival Overture’ on Radio Hilversum in Holland. That was our chosen test piece for Oosterbeek.

NORM MULLINS ~ 51

Did I tell you about the movie Captains of the Clouds?”

“No.” “It was made in Canada and the Air Cadet band played for the premiere. It was all about Canadian bush pilots ferrying planes across the Atlantic, starring James Cagney and George Tobias. I have a picture of the band out in front of the Orpheum Theatre with the spotlights shining. We thought we were pretty important.

Anyway, food in England was rationed due to the war and we all had ration cards, no milk or cheese but on the ship to Holland they brought us large jugs of cream, milk and buns and potato chips, anything we wanted; food galore. We couldn’t believe it!

Poor Britain, here they fought a war to liberate the Dutch and the war is over and the British are starving and the Dutch have got milk and cream. That was quite startling. We saw a big submarine go by.

We played in Oosterbeek for the music festival, in a huge tent. There was a stage in the middle. We played the festival and a concert and then we were told we had to play in a marching competition. We didn’t really march much. We thought we would surely play a march we knew well, like ‘Washington Post.’ Instead, Mr D pulled out something we did not know at all. We not only had to learn to march but we had to learn a new piece as well. We had to march down this narrow street with high walls on either side and then do a counter march, with everyone coming through the ranks, playing this march we did not know. We marched like Trojans! I am not sure if we won anything.

I finished my last law exam, the week before we left. It

52 ~ Holland

NORM MULLINS ~ 53

1950 The boys in Holland .

54 ~ Robert Sherrin

was risky business, going on the trip because if I had failed any exams, I would have had to repeat the year. We were in Exeter, playing a theatre. The acoustics were incredible. We sounded like a million bucks or maybe it was because I had just received word from my mother that I had passed all my exams.

One last story, Arthur pulled one of the younger boys out of the band at the BBC, to tell the audience what he liked most about the trip. His name was Robert Sherrin. Here we are in this land of kings and queens, castles and abbeys and all he could think of to tell the audience was how much he enjoyed the train ride across Canada. He later became a producer for CBC. What a great trip and what great memories!”

“Thanks Norm.”

“You’re welcome.”

CHAPTER 4

Cy Battistoni “I remember going down to see Buddy Rich in Vancouver. The musicians all kind of straggled in. His piano player took a couple of numbers. We begin to think that maybe Buddy Rich isn’t here. After the second set, out comes ‘Buddy Rich.’ He’s doing nothing. Then, all of a sudden one, two, three, four and their off.”

Cy Battistoni was another ‘old boy’ who went on the 1950 Oosterbeek Tour. he had also been great friends with Ron Collier (Colograsso), whom I wanted to hear more about.

Arthur brought his alumni band to the Abbotsford Music Festival one year. I was in the Abbotsford band. We played our piece. I had quite a bit of solo work in the piece. Afterwards, he came up to me and says, “Well Cyril.” He always called me Cyril, never Cy! He says, “If they didn’t have you, they wouldn’t have very much.”

That was a compliment from Arthur. That was in the late seventies. Arthur actually conducted our band once. Jack Reid, who was an original member of the Kits band and played in the Abbotsford band said,

56 ~ Ron Colograsso

“We need a conductor badly.”

Jack ask Arthur if he would conduct us and he said, “I will do it under two conditions. We use my music and someone has to pick me up and drive me home because I am not going to drive all the way to Abbotsford and back.”

We arranged a car pool. That was the year he had his heart attack. It was about two months before the band festival. We lost a few members of the band because they couldn’t take his antics. Someone filled in for him when he was sick but he had whipped us into such good shape, that we took first prize and the highest points of any group in the festival, all back to our friend Mr D. Arthur today would have a hard time forming a band. He wouldn’t get young people to put up with him. He softened towards the end but there was still that underlying terror.

The compliment that we all get to this day is that everyone knows the guys who played in the Kitsilano Boys’ band.”

“He was very well respected.”

“He certainly was respected.”

“Tell me about Ron Colograsso.”

“I was working when the opportunity to go on the 1950 band trip came along. I went to my boss and asked, “Can I have my job back when I return?” He said, “I can’t promise you anything.’

But I did, I got right back on. We made dentures. I was a dental mechanic.

When we got back from the 1950 trip, Ron Colograsso says to me, we were best friends, “Let’s go to Toronto!”

CY BATTISTONI ~ 57

There was no work in Vancouver for musicians at that time.

Ron wasn’t one of the top flight players like Ted Lazenby or Donny Clark but Ron had more desire than anyone else to succeed. He said, “Cyril, I don’t see me doing anything else but music.”

He knew though that he wasn’t going to be a player. Even though he had three or four bands and he played all over. He knew he was going to be writing music and arranging. That was his thing.

When Ron was in Toronto, he went down to New York to study. I didn’t go with him. Mr D said to him, “I called Gordon. He said to come and see him when you get back to Toronto.”

So he had his contacts. Most musicians work on contacts.

In about two years he got his big break, a job with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It was based in Toronto. He toured with them. It paid his bills. He ended up with them in Los Angeles, and he says to their director, “I’m done!”

He left them in LA and came back to Vancouver. In Vancouver he got on with Mart Kenny. That would have been in the late 1950s. Mart lived next to me in Mission. I took him over to see Mart. Then he got into arranging which he was happy with because that is what he wanted to do.

Ron was getting pretty well known in the music business.

Eventually someone approached him and said, “How would you like to take over the music program at Humber College?” Ron says, “But I don’t have a teaching degree.” The guy says, “We’ll give you a crash course in teaching. The music is

58 ~ Hal Sherman

up to you. But we will give you some guidelines as far as the teaching is concerned.”

Ron thought it over but it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The pay was good. The fringe benefits were great. As history has proved, Ron put out top bands across the country from Humber. ‘Tom Shorthouse’ came through Humber.

There were rumblings in a few years amongst the elite (Board of Directors). They said, “We have a non-certified teacher here and this is Humber College.” They were going to fire him. Someone interceded and said, “He may not be certified as a teacher but are you going to get someone to bring in the number of awards he has won for the school?” Ron said, “If it is going to cause any problems, I will just resign.”Anyway, they came to some kind of an understanding. Many fine musicians came out of Humber College.”

I remember Humber College in the 1970s. I looked into studying stage band at Humber College. But instead, I went down to the University of Western Washington and took a course with ‘Hal Sherman.’ He directed the Kent Meridian High School bands in Kent, Washington, in the 1960s.”

“Oh yes, I remember him. He came up to Abbotsford. He became really big. We were drawing bands from all over the western US, as far away as Idaho and Montana. I’m not big on test pieces but boy those bands were good. Arthur often said, “There is no way that I can compete with a one hundred and fifty piece band that has oboes and flutes and bassoons.”

After the 1950 band trip, I stopped playing. I was involved in family and work and so on. Eventually, I got a call from

CY BATTISTONI ~ 59

my cousin saying, “They are starting a band in South Burnaby.

Why don’t you get back into playing?’ I thought, “Okay!”

It became the ‘Maple Ridge Concert Band.’ There were so many people from out my way coming into Vancouver that we decided it would be easier for everyone to just come out here. After about a year of going to rehearsals, someone brought a young fellow up to me (a trumpet player) and said, “Cy, I want you to meet this young fellow. He plays in the New Westminster Concert Band. He wants to play so I am going to leave him in your hands. He was playing first in the New West Concert band. As he was leaving he says, “See what he can do.”

Turns out to be Arnie Chycoski. He was just sixteen at the time. That would have been 1955. I am listening to this kid and he’s not just good he’s really good! After a few months, he comes up to me and says, “You were in the Kitsilano Boys’ Band?” I said,“Yes.” He says, “I got a call last night from Mr Delamont. A couple of his solo trumpet players can’t go to Europe this summer with his band. He wants me to go. What do you think?” I said, “Arnie, you told me that you wanted to go into music. You’re going to get more playing going on that trip than staying here and playing.”

After they came back, Arthur Delamont gave Arnie Chycoski the supreme compliment and Delamont never gave compliments. I said, “Mr D, how did Arnie Chycoski do?”

He says,“Arnie Chycoski is the only trumpet player I ever had that I couldn’t wear out! He didn’t tire, and he was a good kid.”

I remember the first reunion concert at the Queen Eliza-

60 ~ Grandview Band

beth Theatre in 1963. Arnie was at the peak of his stardom.

Good healthy looking guy with his trumpet under his arm, no case. I wasn’t sitting next to him back then. He was up at the top. I asked, “What kind of horn have you got?” He says,“It’s an Olds!”

“How do you like it?’ “It’s a good horn.”

“Have you ever played a Schukey?” “Ya, I’ve played a Schukey.”

“How about playing a Benge?” “Oh ya, I’ve played a Benge.” He had them all. A Doc Severenson model Benge.

They would give them to him.

During the concert, Mr. D looks over at Arnie and says, “Are you going to go up the octave Arnie?” He was a real humble guy, not a hot dog. He says “No, I don’t think so.”

But he could have. He was never a show off.”

“How did you get into the Kits band?’

“I actually started in the Grandview band. I was taking private lessons from a guy at a big music store on Seymour Street. When my mom bought my trumpet, the guy said, “I give private lessons.” I took private lessons for five or eight months. He then said to my mom, “There is a boy’s band Cyril should join.”

That would have been around 1940. I was only nine or ten years old. I went down to where the Grandview band was rehearsing. Arthur says to me, “Sit down there!” I had been playing scales. I couldn’t believe chart music. I came home crying. He was ranting and raving but I stuck with it. I moved from third stand up to second stand. Eventually, Delamont in all his gruffness said, “Monday and Thursday, General Gordon School.” That was in 1942 that I joined the Kits band.”

CY BATTISTONI ~ 61

“Did the Grandview Band play concerts?”

“Oh yes, Ian Douglas, Norm Mullins, Ron Colograsso, we all started in the Grandview Band. We practiced at Broadway and Commercial.“ “Do you know when the Grandview band ended?”

“I think it was when the School of Commerce (where we rehearsed) moved to the Vancouver Technical School. I don’t think he had anywhere to rehearse.

‘Gordon Olson’ had a good band, the ‘Vancouver Beefeaters band.’ They got into marching at the end for the Lion’s football games. I think that Olson knew that he wouldn’t make it musically, so he got into marching, but they had some good players come through that band.”

“Yes, they certainly did!”

“Gordon Olson entered his band in a contest against Arthur’s band. Each band had to play an opening warm-up piece. Usually it was a march. As soon as Olson started his opening piece, Arthur knew that he would win. Olson started off with a waltz. Waltzes are extremely hard to play well. I think we had 94 points and they had 73.”

“Do you remember any stories from the 1950 trip?”

“I think that every teenage boy and girl should experience a trip to Europe. We have a friendship, the bunch of us that has never wavered over all these years. We still get together.

It was the band’s first trip after the war. I remember we met two girls in a small town somewhere in England. We took them home on the bus. But it was getting to be about eleven in the evening. Being teenage boys, we wanted to get our little ‘peck on the cheek.’ We missed our bus! We didn’t

62 ~ Glen Buckley

know where we were. They didn’t have street lights. No lights in the distance. We came across some stores. As we were walking, this deep voice says to us from behind, “Here there lads, what are you up to?”

“It was a bobbie! We had our sweaters on with the ‘maple leaf’ on them. We explained our situation to the bobbie and I don’t know about you Chris, but all my life I have been pretty lucky. All of a sudden, ‘dead ahead,’ there comes a bus. No lights! There was a sign on it, saying it was not picking up any passengers. The bobbie gets out in front of the bus and puts his hand up and tells the driver, “Drop these lads off down the road a piece.”

“He was your guardian angel!”

“That’s right. Years after I said to Glen Buckley, “I wonder if we had started walking, if we would have ever gotten back to where we were staying.”

We probably would have wound up in Glasgow. We arrived at our billets. The house was all dark. We had to crawl up the drain pipe and knock on the bedroom window. It was after twelve by the time we got to bed.”

“Did you know Lillie Delamont?”

“For the whole five months we were away, I never saw him get upset with her or lose his temper when she was around.”

“She was a calming influence on him.”

“She told us that he would often be arranging music until three or four in the morning, then he would sleep until six and get up and start all over again. He did this all his adult life, two or three hours sleep was all that he needed. He had too many things to do and not enough time to do them all.

CY BATTISTONI ~ 63

I remember that she took medication for seasickness. On all the previous boat trips, she had gotten seasick. But she said to me, “This is the first trip that I have been on that I have not gotten seasick.”

It was because of the medication. The Delamont’s used to pull in a different boy from the band to make up a fourth player for BRIDGE. We used to teach ourselves how to play Bridge, in case one of us was called upon to play. We always played badly because we didn’t have the proper people teaching us how to play. I got a call one day. Mr. D says, “Cyril, we need a fourth player for our Bridge game.”

There was Mrs. Hamilton. She was a chaperone. Then there was Lillie and Arthur.”

“Arthur played Bridge?”

“Oh he sure did!”

“This is on the boat. I am thinking, I just started. He didn’t get too mad at me. He would say, “What did you play that card for?”

He was really only cantankerous when it came to the band and the music. That is when he really lost it.

A lot of fine musicians came out of that organization. A lot of fine human beings. Arthur was a non-smoker and a nondrinker. He set a good example and he gave us discipline not only in music but in our whole lives. He would have had a hard time today with today’s youth.

Here is something that you probably didn’t know; the three sousaphones, the bass drum and the tympanis, those were all donated to the band by Safeway Stores back around

64 ~ The Mortimer Bros.

1939.”

“Were they really, I didn’t know that.”

“Sure, he made that statement himself. Safeway was a big sponsor of the band. The band had become ‘very famous.’

Then there was Garfield White. His show ‘Madame Olga Petrovich,’ was great.”

“Yes, he was an unsung hero. He was the publicity manager for the band throughout the 1930s. He went off to Europe, during the war years and was a part of the ‘Canadian Bandoliers Unit,’ which put on shows for the troops. After the war, in 1947, Arthur rehired him. He remained with the band until sometime after 1950, when he and Arthur apparently had a falling out and they parted company.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“I always wondered where Arthur had met Garfield? I thought it might have been in vaudeville.”

“Yes, it could have been but I do not know. When we were in Manchester, in 1950, we heard a brass band festival. The Mortimer Bros. had half the competing bands, they were collier bands. They were all good, but the difference between good and really good was that much again. I just couldn’t believe how good they were.

One of the big ones was Foden’s Motor Works band. We saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace and all the bands.”

“Anything more about what Arthur and the band meant to you?”

“There were just so many things. Until you got used to him, we were all scared to death of him, even after.

Going back to that first reunion concert in 1963, I came in from Abbotsford. The rehearsal was down at the YMCA on Burrard Street.

When I arrived, no one was there yet. All the chairs were lined

CY BATTISTONI ~ 65

up. I picked a chair and sat down. Mr D was there, putting the music on the chairs. I said,“ Hi Mr D.” He looks over at me and says, “Don’t sit there!” I said, “Okay. Where should I sit, over here?” He says,“Don’t sit there!”

“Where should I go Mr D?” “Don’t sit there!”

That was the whole extent of our conversation. You had to know Mr D. So, I waited to be seated. What had happened was, he had changed the seating. Ordinarily, his soloists were on the end, which I knew. So I tried to sit in the middle. Now he wanted his soloists in the middle. He knew who his hand picked musicians union top players would be and I wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, I got to play a couple of solos for him in later years. I remember one rehearsal John Rands, myself and Bruce Alsbury drove down.We all came in together. He looks up and says, “You guys all came down from Abbotsford, isn’t that marvelous, isn’t that wonderful!”

He couldn’t always remember my name, so he often called me ‘Earl.’ We are playing and he stops the music before the trumpet solo and says to me,“Take it! ”I played the solo.

At the next rehearsal, he does the same thing. At this rehearsal, we had maybe seven or eight new trumpet players.

Then at the concert, just before the number, he says to me again,“Take the solo!” I figured that I must have been doing something right. Anyway you got to know him. You got to respect him. You got to admire him. You got to hate him. I wouldn’t have had it any other way!”

“Did Ron Collier keep in touch with him over the years?”

“No, he saw Mr D whenever he went back to visit with Gordon. Every time Ron came out here he would look up Mr D. The first time Ron came out here, he was still

66 ~ Duke Ellington

ABOVE: Cy with trumpet after playing the Last Post

CY BATTISTONI ~ 67

struggling back East. We went down to a rehearsal at General Gordon School, where the sound reverberated all over the place. Arthur was conducting and his head goes up. He sees us and his head goes back down. He didn’t say anything. Then, just before he finished the rehearsal, he introduces us.

“For those of you who do not recognize those two they are........”Afterwards, outside, he says to us, “Ron! Why would you change your name? Colograsso is a musician’s name. Ron, a little advice, you’re young, you’re just starting out. For every dollar you make, put ten cents away. No matter what the circumstance, put ten cents away.”

He was doing it for Ron’s good. He wanted Ron to succeed.

But also don’t be stupid about it. No one was more frugal than Arthur Delamont.”

“Do you have any last thoughts on Ron?” “Ron was my best friend for all time. One of the last times he came out with his wife, I took them to Earl’s Restaurant in Richmond. That was the first time I met his wife Cathy. Ron says,“Cyril, our friendship goes a way way back.

Even though we are miles and miles apart, I have never lost the fact that you are one of my best friends.” By this time he had been with all the big names rubbing shoulders with ‘Duke Ellington.’ His wife was a singer. He said,“It has been a friendship that has just lasted and lasted and lasted!”

Ron knew from day one, what he was going to do. He was from a broken home. He was an only child. He was raised by his mother but he was determined to succeed and he did!

Sad he died so young.”

68 ~ Buddy Rich

“How old was he?”

“He was seventy-five. He died on my birthday October 23. The last three or four years were not so good. He couldn’t work anymore. Ron told me a story about Ellington. He said that he got a call from the hospital about one or two in the morning. It was ‘Duke.’ He was dying. He said, “Ron. I’ve got this thought. Write it down.” He’s telling Ron on the telephone. Duke died about a week later. Ron said on his death bed, “I became very close to Duke Ellington at the end because Duke Ellington at the end, was writing a lot of spirituals.”

He had a very spiritual mind and for Duke to come to Humber College as a guest of Ron’s, in his opening year, Ellington must have thought very highly of him. The guy was an icon, a legend and probably one of the biggest musicians in the world at the time.

I remember going down to see Buddy Rich in Vancouver. The musicians all kind of straggled in. His piano player took a couple of numbers. We begin to think, that maybe Buddy Rich isn’t here. After the second set out comes ‘Buddy Rich.’ He’s doing nothing. Then, all of a sudden one, two, three, four and their off. I am watching the tenor player. The guy never looked at one piece of music during the whole concert. That’s how good professionals at that level can play.

That’s how good Ellington and my friend Ron Colograsso were as well!”

CHAPTER 5

Brian Bolam “On Gordy McCullough, Bill Good, Ron Colograsso, Sandy Cameron, Arnie Chycoski, Ted Lazenby, Stu Ross, Wayne Pettie and Ken Sotvedt ...”

Brian Bolam was also on the 1950 Oosterbeek Tour. He told me about several of the boys whom I never had the opportunity to interview.

Gordon McCullough was known as the Marpole Irish Jew. It was so funny because my son married his step daughter and I met Gordy. He was eighty plus when I met him, a very dapper man, impeccable dresser. He owned half of Marpole and a lot of pretty good sized buildings in Calgary, not just residential but big industrial complexes. He was a multimillionaire. He played drums for Delamont in the very early years, one of the originals! He played alittle around town as a pro but he found out in the 1930s, there was not that much work anyway. He was interested in making money and he went ahead and did just that after several years of trying.

He made his money in real estate, bought and sold buildings

70 ~ Bill Good

and generally speaking he accumulated a great deal of wealth over the years. He separated from his wife during the late 1940’s, early 1950’s. They had a son (Dave), just a single child and he inherited many millions of dollars and he’s having a great time traveling the world and buying new cars and stuff, a great guy. But Gordy was impressive from the point of view that the man was an absolutely meticulous dresser and always had a great appearance. Lots of savvy, loved music but he just didn’t have time for it anymore.

“Sounds like Ray Smith, sold his trumpet because the pull was too great.”

“Yes, Ray was a fine player..”

“I played in school with Bill Good.

He was such a good drummer and piano player. Bill and I were together in the North Van Schools band and into Kits.

He was always such a solid drummer, marvelous character. I even worked with him in the meat business for a short while.

He eventually joined the VSO. He was absolutely persecuted by the other percussionists in the orchestra because he didn’t have a degree. If you didn’t have a degree you were nobody.

In later years, in the mid 1960s, Arthur Fiedler came up to conduct a pops concert. Arthur stopped the orchestra half way through the rehearsal and said, “You there the little blond fellow, what is your name?”

Bill’s got these two giant cymbals and he says, “B-B-Bill Good sir!”

“Ah Mr. William Good, I would like you and the rest of the orchestra to know, that you are one of the finest cymbal players I have ever heard.”

“Boy did his marks go up amongst the other percussion-

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 71

PHOTO: 1953 Bill in his cabin on the SS Samaria on way to Great Britain on the band’s 1953 tour (courtesy Gerry Good)

72 ~ Sandy Cameron

ists. They were jealous as hell of him then. He was so good, yet so persecuted. His stomach was a mess. He played so well. He played all the mallet instruments, the xylophone, the marimbas, everything. I played a lot of dance work with him. I hired him every time I could. The guy who is now President of the Musicians Union in Toronto, Bobby Herriot, always ran big bands while he played in Vancouver. Somebody says to Bobby, “Why would you hire a symphony drummer?” Bobby says, “Because he is the best drummer around, that’s why. He is the only guy I know who can keep time and swing a big band. He is so good!”

“Ron Colograsso was another great player that came out of the band. I did a lot of the correspondence with him when he came out for the last reunion concert. He was a cool jazz cat. He says to me,” “What are we wearing?” I said, “We are wearing white shirts, red tie, and black pants.”

I picked him up at the airport and he’s got on a black shirt, white pants and no tie. He just smiled at me. He was a little stubby guy. I thought, you son of a bitch. He was so talented.

We had him featured in a swing band out of the alumni. he came and played one of the swing band numbers he wrote for Duke Ellington. We had Arnie Chycoski on lead trumpet, Donny Clark and Sandy Cameron on lead alto saxophone.

Here is a Sandy Cameron story!

Arthur asked me around 1953, he says in a gruff voice, “There is a young kid over in North Vancouver. Keep an eye on him for me. He’s from Port Alice. He’s a really

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 73

good player keep an eye on him. Keep his nose clean.”

I was eighteen or nineteen years old. I got to know Sandy when he was a kid. His dad died when he was about 16.

He came to me and he was just devastated. He couldn’t understand how that could happen. I’ve known him for many years. He has had cancer recently and has had to come down for the last three years to the cancer clinic. I would go over and see him and drag him out of there to a rehearsal band, any kind.

He just loved to go, played clarinet or sax. I took him to one swing band, pretty good band. The lead alto player’s son in law is a heavy duty musician in southern California.

I gave him this alto solo to play. He worked on it for weeks.

Well Sandy came down and I told him, I have a good alto player that wants to sit in with us. He says, “Sure bring him down. I’ll conduct.” Sandy sat on the lead chair and played this solo so well that the guy said, “Oh God, is that the way it goes?” “He had been playing it for months. Sandy played it so well. Everybody said,” “Oh man!” “He had a Selmer Mark VI saxophone. He sold it to pay for his daughter’s tuition at UBC. He is a wonderful musician. When he was in the cancer clinic, he went up on the roof with his flute and played every day. He was a band teacher, a music teacher.”

“What can you tell me about Arnie Chycoski?”

“He was away in Toronto for twenty five years. He was the lead trumpet in the Boss Brass and he was the lead trumpet in the Spitfire band. There is nobody in this country that ever came even close to him as a lead player in a band of that sort. He did lip trills. He had the command of a lead player that was unbelievable. He went from Toronto, down to

74 ~ Stu Ross

Philadelphia, New York, Chicago. He was always called up by these people. He told me himself, he was really kind of intimidated by the fact that he got called to New York to play lead in a show. In New York, there is a million lead players but he went down because he got the offer. Got the big bucks and found out when he got there it was just like any town. They ran out of lead players! There is so much happening that they need somebody who has this characteristic.

He went down and played with them, found out he fit in pretty well. They had a great deal of respect for Arnie. Everybody knew who he was because everybody who played swing band music listened to the Boss Brass. It was the standard of excellence in swing bands. He had wonderful range, wonderful intonation and a lip trill like nobody else. He had this huge wide lip trill that nobody else seemed to be able to get the way he got it. He played with Guido Basso another marvelous musician. The two of them were just like peas in a pod when it came to playing together. Arnie did very well.

He is about sixty-eight or sixty-nine now. His mother-in-law is fifty-six. Put your mathematics together. His wife is thirtytwo or thirty-four. She was a model.

Arnie’s a great player. I can’t believe that we had somebody with that sort of talent come out of this organization, such a commanding player. He just knows how to do everything. Lots of savvy! He asked me about fixing his trumpet recently. It is about a forty-five or fifty year old Kanstul made in LA by Zig. He’s probably the best manufacturer of brass instruments ever. He built this thing for Arnie.

Stu Ross was another character. He was one of the originals. Stu and I played together in different bands around

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 75

town. One of the funnier stories was, I played many of the circuses in town. I played in the Moscow and the Ringling Bros. Circus. That’s hard music to play. You come in, there is a book of music two inches thick sitting on your music stand, no rehearsal. The elephants come thundering in and you start turning pages. Because of my experience with Delamont, I could read it and I could play it. A lot of guys can’t. I’m playing as a sideman in the Shrine Circus. The contractor is a fellow named Dave Quarin, a sax player, a fine sax player. Stu Ross comes to see me. He says, “Brian, I got a problem with the circus band.” He was the Grand Potentate of the Giza Shriners Temple. “Every time I look up at the band, there are different people in the sections. I want you to run the show and select the musicians. If they aren’t quite as good as those other guys, that’s fine. Will you take care of it?” I said, “Sure! You will have the same people every show.” “That’s all I want, guaranteed?” “Absolutely, you got it!”

I started to put the contract together. I got it all fixed up.

Then I had to take it to Stu to sign it. My name was at the top as contractor. Second name down was Dave Quarin. He was the guy who had been contracting the job for about four years. Stu says,“What’s he doing on there?” “Do you want the best band you can get? You want a good band. Everybody will be there. You want the best sax player? You can’t beat him! I hired him. He was the first guy I hired. That went on for the next thirteen years. I contracted it until it went to tapes. I always had wonderful people. Dave Robbins played trombone. The trumpet section was always very good. The sax section included Roy Reynolds, who played with Stan Kenton for seven years. He was one of his featured soloists.

76 ~ Ted Lazenby

When he moved here, I hired Roy right away. He played tenor with Dave on lead alto. We used to sit there and play jazz for a half hour after the show ended. People would sit back down and listen because it was so good.

“Do you have any stories from the 1950 trip?”

“We were at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, sitting in the balcony looking down on the dance floor and all these people were dancing to a nice big orchestra, Ted Heath.

He had some of the best musicians in England playing in his orchestra. We went down and started talking to them during the break because they played so well. Their instruments were not as good as ours. They couldn’t get top notch brass horns from the US. Of course they didn’t make any in England. They ended up with Super Olds trumpets, which are not the best, but these guys sounded like a million bucks on those horns. They were quite jealous of the fact that we had better instruments than they did.

One of the great stories about that was a guy named Don Lusher. He was the best trombone player in England by far.

He was worlds above anyone else, heads and shoulders. On the 1958 trip, Ted Lazenby was in England with the Kits band. He phoned up Don Lusher and he said to him, “Sir, I am in England with a boys’ band from Canada and I wondered if there was any chance of taking some lessons from you while I am here?” Don says,“I don’t talk to kids and I don’t give lessons to kids!”

Ted found out where he lived. He went on the tube and the double decker bus, out into the country, had to walk about four blocks before he got to this little brick house. He had his horn with him. He had his trench coat on. He knocks on the

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 77

door. This little pipe smoking guy comes out. A little short guy. He says, “What do you want?” “I talked to you on the telephone.” Ted has his foot in the door by then and pushes his way inside and says,“I really don’t think there is anyone else in England that can tell me how JJ Johnson can play this lick. You’re the only man who can tell me how to play it!” Ted kicked his case open, pulled his horn out and played a few notes. The guy says,” “Where the hell did you come from? Come in lad!”

He had never heard anything like him. Ted was magical.

He was so good. He was technically so fast. He played the clarinet polka on the trombone so fast there was smoke coming off the slide. You would just shake your head. He was so technically fast.

We played the Ringling Bros. Circus. There were some marches there that just thundered along. There was Jack Fulton on one side of him and Dave Robbins on the other. He was the only guy who played the part. Dave Robbins played with Harry James for fifteen years. Dave was a monstrous player but he couldn’t play it. Ted was a natural.

The difference between Ted and say Bill Trussell was that Bill could play mezzo soprano in the room and blanket the room with the warmest melodic sound you ever heard.

Ted wasn’t that sort of player. Ted was a rough and energetic bright sounding player, different styles! Bill I admired.

Ted was a technical player. Sadly, Ted died at age 44. He was a good pal. At nineteen years old he was playing on the BBC “In Town Tonight” show. They got him to play “Scenes that are Brightest.” The Lowlands Broadcasting Company picked it up. It went all through Holland and parts of

78 ~ Wayne Pettie

Germany. Somebody in Germany heard it. He was an executive in the television industry and said, “I heard something today I have never heard the likes of before. Absolutely sparkling, some Canadian band,” he says.

“The guys German, his name is Lazenby.”

“Well, it wasn’t, it was English. Anyway, they pursued him for about a year and a half. In his mid twenties he went over to Germany. He played for five years in Germany: television, motion pictures and so forth. The only thing wrong with that was the German psyche is a little different than ours. Over here, the lead player, if you’re playing up in the stratosphere as you often are, the other players you’re sitting next to, will often nudge you and give you a rest and they would cover your part for awhile. Not so in Germany.

In Germany the other players hardly even talk to you.

Ted wound up blowing his face off more or less in the five years. After Germany he went to Spain for five years, playing very little. Then he came back here and played ten years in the Vancouver Symphony with Jimmy Coombes, who had played with the Ted Heath band for many years. Ted played with me at the Vancouver Hotel quite a lot. He could still play, a marvelous musician but he just faded away. There was a newspaper called the Star Weekly, which wrote an article on Ted Lazenby naming him as one of the ten best trombone players in the world. He was in the same class as Arnie Chycoski and Ron Collier.

For my money, Wayne Pettie was the best trumpet player that Delamont ever produced during the time he was in the band. People became better later but when he was in the

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 79

band, I never heard anyone play as well as he did. I thought he was monstrous, from a sound and style and range point of view. He just had it all. The whole package. He could have been as good as anyone who ever picked up a trumpet. I have played a lot with him over the years, I must say, I am very impressed with him, a fine player.

Iain Petrie was another fine player, who just stopped playing and moved to Edmonton.

“What can you tell me about Ken Sotvedt?”

“This guy was a real Delamont aficionado. He kept a lot of things relating to the band. He kept programs and so on.

He was into Delamont’s style of doing things. He acted like Delamont, as much as he could, as a bandmaster. He had the same sort of terse, “do this, do that,” sort of talk. He just patterned himself after Delamont. Ken was a good clarinet player, technically very efficient. He could never understand how Sandy Cameron could sound so good. One day he said to Sandy, “Let me try your clarinet.” He says, “It was just awful. The reed was soggy and half broken and he still sounded good.”

That frustrated him. Of course, Sandy was so musical and Ken was so mechanical. Ken could play all the overtures but when it came to cadenzas, Sandy had to play those. Ken was in the North Van Schools band. He was always a serious, good boy for Delamont. He always kept his nose clean. He never got into trouble. He was a perfect candidate. He was a Queen’s scout. He became a teacher and then a principal. He was the best man at my wedding and a very good friend of Ted Lazenby and Bill Trussell.

80 ~ Ken Sotvedt

1958, Ted Lazenby in London

BRIAN BOLAM ~ 81

What I can say about him was that he was serious about being a teacher and a principal and running the band as well. He bought wonderful instruments for them, the Delta Schools Band, tubas, four great big European tubas. Schools don’t get those kinds of instruments. He really used his principal position to his advantage and promoted the band. All his secretary did was copy music.

When he passed away, his will stipulated that I was to get all his fishing tackle and dispose of it for his wife. Get as much for it, for her, as I could. I was to take all his music to UBC. It was to be donated to the music department. Well, it took me five truck loads to take it all to UBC and I have a three-quarter ton truck. He had a whole large bedroom in his town house, filled from floor to ceiling with music. All catalogued and in good order, shelves full of music. Some wonderful stuff. It will sit in UBC and never be looked at again. When I played in the Air Force band in 1963/4/5, that music, when they folded the Air Force band, went to UBC and it was there for seventeen years and no one even opened the cases. The same thing will happen again. At least all the small size pieces, which UBC didn’t want, went to the Fire man’s band.

“You can access the library, I understand.”

“Oh yes but try and find it. They haven’t catalogued it very well and trying to actually physically find it is a chore.”

“Where else could it have gone?”

“They could have put a library together for the BC Band Association, so that all the bands in BC could have had access to the library. They have a facility and every band could borrow pieces, have a librarian. It would have been so good.

82 ~ Bill Trussell

Even the military bands could have drawn upon it. It is just like Ted Lazenby’s trombone and his records, which were donated to UBC. They just disappeared. Disappeared! Ted had recordings that you can’t buy. He had recordings of just the bass and trombone section of the Chicago Symphony during performance. Isolated recordings, so you could hear how precisely they played together. Arnold Jacobs playing Tuba.

I hope you are not getting bored listening to all these old stories?”

“Never, they are fascinating.”

“Bill Trussell and I go back to 1945, when we both played trumpet. I played with his brother, Boomer. Not many people know Bill started on trumpet. Or that Ted Lazenby started on euphonium or that Wayne Pettie played euphonium on the 1966 trip” “They will now!”

“That’s true. They will now.”

CHAPTER 6

Bill Stonier “Bobby Herriot and Ian McDougall started Northwest Music. I came in after they had incorporated in November 1968. I got involved in November 1969 because they didn’t really know how to run a company. They were musicians!

They had a drummer doing their books. They didn’t pay their sales tax. Whenever they sold an instrument, they would have a party and spend the money.”

“How did you come to join the Kits band?’

“I was playing rugby for Kitsilano high school. My position was full back and the ball came back to me and I punted it down the side line but I didn’t punt it very well. I was pretty good but I goofed this one. This guy ran past me and said, “That was a lousy kick.”

I swore at him and we got into a fight and we were kicked off the field. That night was a Kitsilano Boys’ Band rehearsal night and guess what? When I got to practice, guess who I was sitting next to --- the guy I had the fight with, Bryan Atkins was his name. We both played euphonium. He was

84 ~ Bobby Herriot

from West Vancouver playing on the West Van team. I didn’t know who he was when we had the fight.”

“What a small world.”

“Yes, I went to Kits high school with Arnold Emery. When he graduated, he started a dance band. That was my first experience in a dance band. Arnie asked me to come down to the Kits band.”

“Do you remember Arthur at that time?’

“Oh yes, he was quite happy to have me. I didn’t realize that people had to pay to be in the band. That would have been 1951.”

“In the earlier years, Arthur would sit by the door and check your name off on a list and take your twenty-five cents.”

“Really, I never saw any money change hands. I never did perform with the band. I only went to rehearsals until November 1952 when we were at the Georgia Auditorium.

There was a quartet with two guys who didn’t play an instrument. Arthur suggested that one play the bass drum and the other play the French horn. The ‘Four Naturals,’ were from Kits high school. We were about the second or third group after the ‘Four Naturals.’ Anyway, after the quartet sang, they went home and I went home too. Arthur never talked to me again.

Arnie became a doctor. He diagnosed Bobby Herriot and found he had an ulcer.”

“He was a character!”

“Bobby and Ian McDougall started Northwest Music.

“Oh really! I didn’t know that.”

BILL STONIER ~ 85

“Yes, I came in after they had incorporated in November 1968. I got involved in November 1969 because they didn’t really know how to run a company. They were musicians. They had a drummer doing their books. They didn’t pay their sales tax. Whenever they sold an instrument, they would have a party and spend the money instead of paying for the instrument.”

“Is Bobby Herriot still around?’

“He is in Toronto. Off and on, he was president of the Musicians Union and then he would quit to take this or that gig and then come back. He is now in his eighties.

I did my first year of university in 1953/54. I went to Europe on a Norwegian freighter in 1955. That was quite an experience; six and a half weeks to get to Europe. Then I came back and got married. I had just turned twenty. I tried to go back to university but I couldn’t adjust. I went to work for General Motors. I had an interesting and responsible job, badly paid. I ended up trafficking all the Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles for British Columbia. I went to the boss about a raise because I had a family. I was making less than $300 a month. When he wouldn’t give me a raise, I quit and went to work in Victoria. Soon I learned that I couldn’t sell cars without a better background. I came back to Vancouver, where I got on with ‘Proctor and Gamble.’ That changed my life. What a company! The biggest trainer of people in the merchandising business. Everybody in every company, Cheese Box, Ponds, French’s Mustard, had people trained

86 ~ Ozzie McCoomb

by Proctor and Gamble. They prided themselves on having staff that were only with them for two years, a younger staff.

I worked for Jimmy Pattison for awhile. I actually started the first new car brokerage in Western Canada; ‘Triad Leasing Company.’ We struggled until Bobby Herriot asked me to join his big little music company. I said, “Yes,” then both companies took off. I gave the car company to my wife. She ran the company for twenty-five years. She put out over 7,000 units. She closed it down about five years ago. The telephone still rings! Buying a car for the first time is a very traumatic experience. We showed people the invoice so they knew what the actual price should be.

I played professionally around Vancouver over the years.

I have been in the RCAF Reserve band for a number of years.

I play bass clarinet. Ozzie McCoomb was their conductor.

Before the war, Ozzie was a violin player. He played in the symphony. After the war, he went down to California and took lessons on the bassoon, from some of the studio musicians. Ozzie was born around 1910 or 1911.”

“Tell me about Northwest Music?”

“When I came on board, they were buying their instruments through a dealer instead of buying them direct from Selmer of LeBlanc or whoever. I changed all that and we became the agents for LeBlanc and for Gemeinhardt. We were the first company to sell a thousand Gemeinhardts in one year. We changed the whole concept of renting instruments.

BILL STONIER ~ 87

We were the first ones to begin ‘rent to purchase.’ One time we had about four thousand instruments out in one year.

Then the others caught up. Then they started doing straight rentals. The prices were quite different. Our rentals were fifteen dollars a month and everyone elses were ten dollars.

About five years ago, we went into straight rentals. Gradually I bought the others out and it was just me.”

“Any interaction with Arthur over the years?”

The thing about Arthur and Bill Stonier was, after I didn’t come back on stage at the Georgia Auditorium, he never spoke to me again. Jack Reynolds often asked me to sub for him when he had to be in court. He would be booked to play a cruise ship departure and I would turn up and Arthur would say, “What are you doing here?”

“I played well enough that I didn’t care, it was just the social part of it, when he gave me a hard time. I played many, many times with him that way. Then the last thing that he did was a gig at the PNE and he hired me. He was dead four days later.

The first time I was in the band, when I was in grade ten, he growled at rehearsals. I had already been playing the violin for eight years and I also played in a Salvation Army band, so I played very well. I was only in his band for about ten weeks. The guys who learned how to play with Arthur, would put up with his behaviour. I didn’t really want to, mind you I paid for it for the rest of my life.”

“You had to go into the music business in Vancouver!”

88 ~ Don Cromie

“I remember when I was playing in the dance band with Arnie Emery, we played a Halloween dance. It was a big seventeen or eighteen piece band. We each made about thiryfive cents. Six months later I joined the union.

When I joined the Airforce Reserve Band, Arnie was there as well. He played with Dal at the Panorama Roof for quite a few years, while he was at university getting his doctorate degree. He wanted to be a musician. He didn’t want to be a doctor. His father was the push. His father was the unofficial Mayor of Kitsilano. He owned a drugstore.

Don Cromie played in the Airforce Reserve band, Ron Wood played as well, so did Bill Millerd and Ken Sotvedt and Norm Godfrey played as well.... Jim Sotvedt....Sandy Cameron.....”

“Any of the guys drop by your store over the years?”

“Yes, Art Tusvik would come in and ask to buy a trumpet every two years. Donny Clark would come in every two or three years and try every single Bach trumpet I had and we stocked a couple a dozen. Donny was number one call in Canada in those days. He would blow the horn out in a couple of years. Then he would come in and replace it.

Another thing that we did that no one else was doing was we would hire these guys to come in and give workshops. They would travel around with me, great guys, great times!” ”Any other fellows you want to mention?”

“I knew Jimmy Coombes. He played with the Ted Heath

BILL STONIER ~ 89

ABOVE: clate 1950s Bill with bass clarinet, seated second from right in the RCAF Reserve Band. Others include Fred Whittemore (top left), Don Radelet (seated, third from left). Ozzie McCoomb conductor.

BELOW: c1960s Bill with saxophone in the PNE band.

90 ~ Doug McCauley

band. “Did you know Ted Lazenby?”

“Yes, I used to hire him. He was a hell of a player. He would get upset that I wasn’t picking the right kind of music and would intentionally play it out of tune or change key and play it in six sharps, amazing! He was the lead trombone in the Berlin Philharmonic for one year under Herbert von Karajan and afterwards he came back here. Bobby Herriot hired him to play on stage at Isy’s Supper Club.”

“Any thoughts about the state of music education today?”

It really is a unique situation. A lot of the old band directors who played in the military bands are dying off. They lived and breathed music. The new teachers are coming in straight out of university and do not have the practical experience their predeccesors did but they certainly have the technical training. There are a lot of good programs all over town and the parents are very supportive. It is the usual generational transition. In North Vancouver, they had a big program but the school board stepped in and cancelled it.

The parents got together and said, “If you are not going to do it, we will do it!”

Now they pay for a teacher to teach. They have pretty good programs in North Vancouver.

West Vancouver is doing pretty good with the West Vanband. That is Doug McCauley. He is dynamite!

When I got into the business, it started to blossom in the mid 1960s. Traditionally, the schools had tried to give everybody the instruments. That went out with high button

BILL STONIER ~ 91

shoes and silent movies. When we got involved in it with Northwest Music, it started to move. I taught for two years in Aldergrove. My school board gave me two days off a year to go to Seattle to buy music. That is when we got the bus!

We didn’t have enough money to set up a store. The bus was our first store. For a couple of years, I drove the bus to Winnipeg and back, selling band music. That would be about 1970 when we started going into Banff and Calgary and Edmonton. Then in 1971, we went to Winnipeg in the spring.

Then I bought a Winnebago. That went on until 1975 or ‘76.

In 1976, I opened the first store in Toronto. I was doing a workshop in Nova Scotia and the bus broke down. I shipped it back by train.”

“You had other stores?”

“I had a store in Toronto for fourteen years. Then I found that it was getting to be just too much work. I had to be back in Toronto ten days of every month. We had over one thousand rentals in Toronto. Then I had a bad stroke. That was around 1978. One of my employees stole everything, my mailing lists, everything I had developed all of a sudden it wasn’t there anymore. Geoffrey was down in Toronto at the time and he came in and we gradually wound it down.”

“What is the state of music stores these days?”

Long and McQuade just bought out Ward Music. They have opened a beautiful new store over on Terminal Avenue.

The problem we have found is that many stores do not

92 ~ Cameron Willis

keep knowledgeable staff. We have had people here for twenty-five years. Cameron Willis in our band department, he is relied on by all the band teachers to select good pieces for them, out of the seven hundred new band pieces that come out each year. We run a workshop every summer. The 38th annual workshop is this summer. That was never done before in Canada. We started a lot of stuff!”

CHAPTER 7

Michael Hadley “I remember a concert during the 1950 tour when Bobby Campbell was playing the euphonium solo ‘Scenes that are brightest,’ with variations, from the opera‘Maritana’(1845).

Playing from memory, he suddenly lost his place and turned to Mr D with a puzzled look on his face. We all wondered how we would get out of this one. Mr D abruptly stopped the band and nodded to Bobby who immediately launched into a free-play extemporizing cadenza until their eyes met again. With a broad grin and a nod in reply, Mr D brought down his baton again, and we carried on. That was musicianship!”

Michael Hadley had been on both the 1950 and 1953 tours and gone on to wonderful multiple careers in external affairs, the Navy, as a university professor and as a writer.

“I joined the band just a few months before the 1950 concert tour of the UK. Precisely why Mr D. chose me at such a young age (I would celebrate my fourteenth birthday on tour) has often triggered reflection. Doubtless my presence

94 ~ Keefer Street Band

helped give the impression that this was, after all, a boys’ band. But I had already been playing trumpet with Mr. D for two years of private lessons, as well as in his band at Point Grey Junior High School. Years later my father recounted that Mr. D had phoned to ask whether he might take me on the tour to England. Dad retorted that in his own view I was not yet good enough for the Kits band, whereupon ‘D’ responded in his characteristic way: “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Mr D had always formed his premier Boys Band by drawing on talented youngsters from a number of his junior ‘feeder’ bands: West Vancouver Boys and Girls Band, North Vancouver Band, Point Grey Junior, and the Keefer Street Band.

Needing to gain as much experience as possible prior to departure, I ended up playing in all of them: practices every night of the week, plus my regular lessons. Rehearsing in East End Vancouver, The Keefer Street Band was an example of Mr D’s social concern: a poorer population with numbers of youngsters of Eastern European and Asian extraction. I do not think that he charged them anything, nor do I recall anyone from the Keefer Street band who went on to play in the Kits band. One evening with the Keefer group, though, Mr D took the trumpet out of my hand, passed me another instrument, and said: “Here, young feller, blow this!” It was a gnarled, upright Eb Alto horn that smelled of garlic (Thinking of the story of the cow with the crumpled horn, I called it ‘Clarabelle’). Anyway, I stayed with the E flat horn (later a proper mellophone), for both the 1950 and the 1953 UK tours— only switching back to trumpet for the last couple of months that I was in the band.

Though I enjoyed playing in the horn section I really

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 95

wanted to play trumpet. Even while in the horn section during my last months before leaving the band I was a ‘closet trumpeter.’ Then came the rehearsal when Mr D caught me. I remember, for example, surreptitiously playing my alto horn with a trumpet mouthpiece, which at one point caused me to crack some notes. Mr D stopped the band and scowled: “What’s going on here?’I scrambled to switch back to a horn mouthpiece in the vain hope of not being found out.

Of course, the other fellows knew that I had been playing the trumpet, doing gigs, and I could hear groans throughout the band as Mr D stomped off in my direction to give me a piece of his mind. Eventually, he did invite me into the trumpet section, but he trumped me once again. I can remember one time the band’s rehearsing a suite of classical works featuring our best soloists. At one point trumpeter Roy Griffiths was within a couple of bars of picking up his cue to play Schubert’s “Serenade.” Roy played the sweetest and most delicately articulated trumpet I had ever heard, superb in classical lyrical passages. And, of course, Schubert’s “Serenade” demands of any performer the acutest and most expressive delicacy of control. Now, just as Roy was raising his trumpet to his lips Mr D shouted at him to “Get out of it!” - and pointed to me to take over. I played the solo—but when my top note fell flat ‘D’ stopped the band and glowered: “Thank you,” he said. “Owning a trumpet and playing it well are two different things.” One learned to accept his criticism and press on. The demands he made of all of us were often more than we thought we could produce. It wasn’t unusual to see one boy or another with watery eyes because he didn’t think he could do it. Mr D never let up.

96 ~ ‘Five Months out of 50’

And he never put up with anybody who tried to skive off.

You worked! That was his demand. Once, when a parent complained to Mr D that his approach was upsetting her boy he responded: “I’m not interested in having boys with psychological problems in my band.” (The story is retold in many versions). He was never politically correct in dealing with people. His tacit motto struck us as ‘shape up or ship out.’ I don’t recall anyone ever shipping out. But through it all we had tremendous fun! Happy fellowship, and great music. It was the most memorable time of our lives.

I continued to play trumpet in the Kits band, eventually playing in a trumpet trio, and he offered me a place in the trumpet section for the 1955 concert tour. But by that time I was both at university and in the navy.

The overseas concert tours of 1950 and 1953 remain vivid in my memory. Like many others, I regard the 1930’s, ‘40s and ‘50s as as the halcyon days of the Kitsilano Boys’ Band experience, for it was in these pre-television years that Britain’s great Moss-Empire theater chains in the UK was big business. With two shows nightly in every British city, the chain booked acts of impressive variety, everything from acrobats and jugglers, to comedians, singers and animal trainers. (Such were the shows in Vancouver’s old Pantages Theatre in the early years when Mr D played trumpet in the pit orchestra). In all this, the Vancouver Boys Band, as the Kits Band was called abroad, received top billing. These were exciting times to be in the professional entertainment business—and if truth be told, most of the ‘boys’ were underage for stage-work. What this meant for those of us in the 1950 concert tour is a matter of record. Norman Mullins, the

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 97

lead horn player in the 1950 trip, has given us his illustrated memoir Five Months out of ’50: A Chronicle of the Kitsilano Boys band 1950 Trip to Britain, Ireland, Holland and France (2009). A day or two before we left for the tour, I ventured into downtown Vancouver for the first time on my own; off to Tip Top Tailors on Hastings Street by bus and street car to get my uniform. For my parents, allowing their youngster to set off downtown unaccompanied was a major step.

Little did they know how I would be living for the next five months.

My first impression was the train journey across Canada.

I was struck by the enormity and diversity of this country. It took us twelve days by CPR train from Vancouver to Quebec City, PQ, to catch the Cunard Lines Samaria to England. We were living in two ‘colonist cars.’ I had never been in a train before – let alone a colonist car. These were long passenger cars with a large ‘galley’ kitchen at one end, and a communal wash place (complete with brass cuspidors) at the other.

Two of the mothers accompanied the tour to do the cooking.

Every morning Mr D would pass through the cars blowing ‘reveille’ on his cornet. We would get up, the porters would come in and make the beds into sitting compartments, while we set up the folding tables, put out the cutlery and the plates.

It was extraordinary.

As concerts had been scheduled right across Canada, the CPR would shunt our cars off to a siding at each destination.

We’d play our concert and live in the rail-yard until the next train hitched us up and continued our journey. We played music every day. At each whistle stop the band would get out and play on the platform, while ‘the little fellas’ sold

98 ~ ‘theatre routine’

souvenir postcards (On the ship as well, we rehearsed at least once a day and gave daily concerts).

Once in the UK we fell into ‘theater routine’: travel by train or bus and settle into the new city on Sundays; gather Monday mornings at the theatre with the other acts and the theatre director; rehearse, play our nightly shows and then— once a grueling week was over—move on to another town.

Thus we criss-crossed the UK for four months. When we arrived on the Sunday night, always in a strange town, in Manchester, for example, we would each be given our billet’s address, and set off with our bags to find it. Ron Wood and I were always billeted together, and I can remember the two of us, barely turned fourteen, setting off with Mr D’s admonition “Be at rehearsal at 10 am at the Hippodrome on Monday!” And that was it! We were on our own, and headed off into the night. The next morning we would go to the theatre wherever it happened to be—the Hippodrome in London, or the Palace in Blackpool, for example. This routine remained essentially the same for the 1953 concert tour.

On both tours the band participated in another British tradition: concerts in the parks. Whether at the London Embankment, or in Edinburgh, or the south coast spas like Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Weymouth and Bath we presented any one of the twenty-one different programmes we had rehearsed. It was a huge repertoire for the boys to master. We rehearsed daily as well as giving concerts. Of course, all the musical scores from which we played had been written for professionals – not for school bands.

During the UK tour we were billeted in what the theatre business called ‘digs.’ These were rooms in working-class

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 99

homes that catered to vaudeville people, and would take boarders for a week at a time. As wartime rationing was still in force, we would give our ration books to the woman of the house so she could buy butter or sugar or meat, whatever she needed. Breakfast in the morning, and night supper around 10:30pm after the last show. It was the old-fashioned, nineteenth-century way of working-class life at the time. No bath tub, no running water in the room; we had a wash stand with a pitcher of water and wash bowl. Toilet facilities were usually in a ‘wee house’ outside in the ‘garden.’ On Saturdays we would go to the bath house, or what was called the Public Baths. The bath house was a building with a series of twenty-four or thirty cubicles with a bath tub and a stool inside each. The taps however were out in the hallway controlled by the person in charge. You would pay a few pence, and a penny for a towel and a piece of soap. In you would go, and he would turn the taps on for you. It was an introduction to lower working-class England.

It was such an exciting, unprecedented thing for us to be in vaudeville. We especially anticipated Monday mornings. (I still recall the smell of the theatre, its sense of drama and anticipation). All the acts would arrive, including the pit orchestra—splendid pit orchestras, amazing sight readers.

Each act brought its own musical scores. Each of the acts would each come up on stage in turn and give its scores to the director in the pit. Parts would be handed out to the pit orchestra. They would walk the orchestra through their act.

Then the the musicians would run through the cues with each of the acts. Maybe the juggler wished special dynamics, or the female contortionist who would twist herself on a glass

100 ~ Boosey & Hawkes

table while the orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake wanted a particular crescendo, or trapeze artists who would be signaling the percussionist for special effects. “This is what I want you to do when I do this part of my act, when I raise my wand or pull out the rabbit. This is what I want to have happen, and so on.” Once the orchestra and the performer were satisfied that it was going to work, the next act would come on. Meanwhile backstage, crews were unpacking equipment, costumes and gear.

We would all be sitting down in the audience, waiting our turn to see how they were going to set up the stage for us.

Eventually it was our turn, a time for the pit orchestra to take a break. We would set up, work out the lighting, and play samples of our repertoire in order to test the acoustics. It was exhilarating.

Often we got to know many of these performers because we were on the same kind of circuit. We readily recognized the difference between the stage personality and the authentic one. The stage personality was but ‘smoke and mirrors,’ a created fiction. Take, for example, the contortionist I mentioned earlier who performed to the music of Swan Lake. She was a remarkable and dynamic performer whom we got to know quite well. She would come out in a bikini with tassels on her bra, and special-effects lighting. From the audience, you would think she was a vivacious eighteen-year old. That was illusion. In fact, she was a very tired, well-worn, and aging middle-aged woman. And kindly. It was a tough life on the stage. (In 1953, she took a motherly interest in four of us 17-year olds who were heading off to Paris on our own for four days prior to the band’s sailing back home from

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 101

Southampton, and recommended a cheap hotel where ‘nice boys’ like us would be entirely safe. And she was right). As well, we often caught glimpses of very touching human relationships among the travelling players. One of the acts featured a superb soprano. She had the mature voice of an adult, but the body of a twelve-year old child. Billed as a child prodigy, the tiny singer had a charged stage impact. The lights would come and this ‘young thing’ in child’s frock and bows in her hair would appear centre stage and fill the theater with song. The voice was genuine, but the stage personality was illusion, for she must have been about thirty years old. Back stage we saw her as an adult. But we could sense the tragedy of such a life. I can remember one Monday morning when we all came together at opening rehearsal one of the actors who was clearly a long-time acquaintance, picked her up and stood her on a table, and gave her a hug and began chatting.

We could see these two adults sharing life with one another.

The travelling players were their family. There were many such poignant moments! We were seeing the disappearance of vaudeville on the ‘53 trip. Some theatres were boarded up, television was coming into vogue. For these people, a whole livelihood was disappearing and so was their family.

We gained a lot of insight into what the human condition was about, and matured rather rapidly.

Vaudeville was but one experience of the arts. The other was the tradition of the British Brass band and concert band.

I have fine memories of the various colliery bands and the motor works bands so typical of the world of manufacturing and industry. Using mainly Boosey & Hawkes instruments, all the instruments were matched, and their tone and

102 ~ Bryan Atkins

intonation was uniquely mellow. Theirs was a sound and range of repertoire we had literally never heard in Canada before; angel music. It was just beautiful. Besides this, being part of of the Moss-Empire chain, we had free access to stage shows wherever we were: stunning shows like Enzio Pinza and Mary Martin in “South Pacific,” for example.

Arriving back home after such a colourful tour was something of a culture shock. Like the old stage song “How do you keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen Paree?”, we, too, had come back changed. We had undergone an experience that was both broadening and liberating: we youngsters had rambled through Piccadilly Circus late at night, ridden the London tubes unescorted, and had set off on train journeys on our own. We had met famous musicians like the Big Band leader Jack Parnell, knew the world of show business, and had lived largely amongst working class Brits. We had become acquainted with the pub culture (Vancouver didn’t have any at the time). We had played billiards in pool halls, taken stock of Soho (we didn’t know whether Vancouver had such a place), and had taken in sports events in Twickenham, and motorcycle races at Wembley, and had toured factories in Bolton. We had experienced castles, churches and cathedrals, and museums. We had steeped ourselves in Britain’s rich world of music. Yet when I got home my parents still saw me as a wee lad of fourteen who still needed chaperoning. (From my present perspective as a grandfather I understand them completely). So it was that we arrived back in Vancouver on a Sunday morning by train, where all the parents were down to take their boys home. Mr. D said, “Boys, be at the Denman street auditorium in time for the

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 103

homecoming concert.” Business as usual, as we saw it. But immediately we were back under the tutelage of our parents—who got us to the concert on time.

As part of our homecoming concerts, some of the boys spoke briefly about highlights that had particularly captured their imagination. I recall Bryan Atkins enthusing about the sports events he had enjoyed, and Ziba Fisher about ‘show biz’ and its great characters. Another offered impressions of England, and yet another about the music and musicians we had met—everything from Big Band jazz to the concert bands. All this gave the audience graphic impressions of our trip.

Of course, none of us spoke about the meta-narrative, namely what the experience was really all about. It is only now as we are in our mature years that we begin to look back at the meaning of things. Memories of the music can still haunt. Some of the passages we played in the band were so profoundly moving, that they sometimes come flooding back. I remember thinking to myself at the time, ‘I am never going to hear these sounds again,’ or ‘never again will I be living inside this musical passage;’ and ‘this moment is it.’

It was like a spiritual trip. You didn’t want to grow up. You wanted to stay in that particular moment forever. Indeed, I often thought of this many years later when teaching as a professor of German literature and dealing with a particularly poignant passage in Goethe’s Faust. That’s the one in which the beguiling Mephistopheles says to Faustus—who never wants to stop craving one new experience after another— and who never wants to be satisfied: ‘when you say to the moment, tarry a while, you are so beautiful…(‘Verweile

104 ~ Arnold Emery

doch, du bist so schön!”) – then I’ve caught you!’

But, of course, one reaches an age when it is time to move on and leave the band. In my case, I went on to university studies, but continued to play trumpet: in the UBC band under Mr D’s baton, then in my own quintet, and with Arnold Emery in the UBC Big Band.

I was working in Brussels in 1958 with the Department of Trade and Commerce during the Brussels World’s Fair, when Mr D took yet another band overseas. While playing concerts in England that summer he sent me a startling telegram that gave me one week’s notice of his arrival. I still have the telegram in my scrap-book: “Band in Brussels August 7 or 6 and urgently require accommodation party of 47 includes 39 boys conductor with wife and two lady companions assistant conductor with wife and two children. Also advise regarding band playing Brussels August 6th or 7th. Reply care of W Fielding, 54 Haymarket London, SW1. Regards Delamont.”

You can imagine my consternation. I scrambled to arrange their accommodation and two bookings, and met their tour bus on the approaches to Brussels where I briefed Mr. D on his visit. Neither he nor I had really doubted (though I a little bit) that what he asked for he would in fact actually get.

Again, in 1961 while I was in the Foreign Service working in Cologne, Germany, he was alone in England planning yet another tour. As I was temporarily running the Canadian visa office in Hamburg at the time, he flew over to consult with me. I had booked him a room in my hotel, where we discussed his forthcoming overseas concert tour. I have very fond memories of our reminiscing over strong German tea

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 105

while mulling over the possibilities of future engagements.

Though we made no firm decisions or commitments, one thing was certain: sometime the following year he would bring the band to Germany. Then, months later, with but as little advance warning as in the Brussels case, he sent me a similar telegram. Again, I jumped in. With accommodation arranged as required – as well as a major engagement with West German Radio, and the city’s ‘concert in the park’ series – the band enjoyed a fine visit. Mr D and I negotiated the programme with the station’s musical director, and once on the air I acted as an interpreter and commentator. The unique program they played displayed the band’s virtuosity.

Of course as the on-air patter and the interview with me was in German Mr. D couldn’t follow, so we had to keep close eye-contact so that I could cue him in. I may once have fantasized as a young horn player that we were working closely together, but now we really were. Mr D and I enjoyed a hearty, genuine relationship. Indeed, I felt that most strongly when he marched the band past the balcony of the flat in which my wife and baby daughter were living about a block from the Rhine river in downtown Cologne—and saluted.

Since my retirement as professor of German literature in 2001 I have been teaching off and on in Uganda, East Africa. January 2010 marks the fourth time that my wife Anita and I have returned. We teach a segment of a Bachelor level program for adult students in health care, given by the International Christian Medical Institute. The students are a mix of nurses, administrators, accountants, and nuns, who come in for the course as a part of a degree in Health Care Administration. My wife Anita and I offer a course on ethical

106 ~ Living and Dying in Uganda

decision-making. So much in Africa is openly corrupt that its quite a challenge.

My work there brought me into contact with Hospice Uganda and palliative care, and engaged me with an interdisciplinary and international team of researchers based at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society our aim is to explore end-of-life issues from both a multi-faith and multicultural perspective. I contribute a Third World dimension. Together with a Ugandan colleague I have written the project’s chapter on Living and Dying in Uganda.

A key to understanding the final stages of life is the dying person’s need to find and affirm the ‘meaning’ of his or her life. (I suggest that your writing your books on the band is but another example of wanting to round off life’s experience). They need a reassurance that their life had been meaningful and purposeful; they often feel a need to forgive and be forgiven; they seek healing for the various kinds of pain they are feeling. They experience what the founder of Hospice called ‘total pain’: an amalgam of physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain. Associated with these is care-giver pain, for while tending to the needs of patients throughout a prolonged end-of-life crisis, care-givers frequently ‘burn out.’ Its a harsh reality. Put the whole package together, and you have total pain. The question is how to deal with it. Prior to these trips I hadn’t given it much thought, but in the Third World you see a lot of suffering. There is a lot of death and a lot of illness.

What I learned during my time in the Kitsilano Boys’ Band was really the pivotal point in how I lived the rest of .

MICHAEL HADLEY ~ 107

Photo: Michael Hadley today (2011) is enjoying retirement with his wife and family in Victoria, British Columbia.

108 ~ Naval Officer, Foreign Service Officer, Author, Professor

my life. From Mr D I had learned that at any given stage of my life I always had more music in me than I ever thought; that with discipline and the courage to accept competent criticism I could make that music actually sing; and that whatever my‘music’ might be in my different careers - naval officer, foreign service officer, author, professor - it would become richer by my listening closely to all the other players around me. Mediocrity was never an option. Mr D’s greatest gifts lay in teaching me to work within the music, to set high standards, and to accept the responsibilities of a disciplined life. And if my own life is any example, particularly as a teacher, he taught me as well to risk investing in the raw potential of other human beings. How else could I explain the impact of four short years in the Kitsilano Boys’ Band.

CHAPTER 8

Gerry Deagle “I’d get occasional calls from Dave Robbins to work the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. It was on those gigs that I got to play with Arnie and Donny again. I was in the trumpet section with them for the Sammy Davis, Jr. show. We also worked Henry Mancini, and Andy Williams together.”

“Tell me how you came to join the Kitsilano Boys’ Band?”

“My dad, in 1950, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, took the family down to Locarno Beach to hear the Kits Band perform. We lived in Point Grey. Brian Bolam was playing ‘I’m For Ever Blowing Bubbles.’ I remember running up to the bandstand and just looking up. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I went back and told my dad I had to get a trumpet. My dad was a school teacher but he was also a well known piano player in Vancouver. He played at the Palomar, the Cave Supper Club and at CBC.” “What was his first name?”

“Eugene Deagle, a short time later he came home with a trumpet and within a year I was in the Kits band having my knuckles rapped and being hit over the head.”

110 ~ Ken Sotvedt

“Do you remember your first meeting with Arthur?”

“No, I don’t!”

“That’s probably good.”

“True, two years later the 1953 band trip came along and I didn’t make the list to go on the trip. Brian Todd was the last trumpet player to be selected. I was disappointed but I moved on to other things. Then, about a week before the band was to depart for England, the telephone rang and my dad answered it. When he got off the telephone he said, “Do you want to go to England?’ I said, “Yes,” and he replied, “Well, you are going in a week.”

Brian Todd had come down with yellow jaundice. You can imagine the excitement we all felt with this great trip pending.”

“Isn’t it funny how things turn out?”

“My life has been full of that sort of thing. I always tell people when they’re going through a down period that life can turn on a dime - from good to ugly, from bad to great. You never know when a ‘life changer’ might come along and set you on a brand new path. Opportunity strikes with the suddenness of lightning. But you gotta be prepared to seize it.”

“Tell me about the 1953 trip?”

“It was terrific! We traveled across Canada on ‘The Canadian,’ the CPR’s flashy new stainless steel train with the dome car affording a fantastic panorama of the Rockies. We had our own private coaches and at every major city between Vancouver and Quebec City where the Cunard Liner Samaria awaited us, we’d get off to play a concert. I was the youngest kid on the trip. The older boys were like big brother watch-

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 111

ing out that I didn’t fall into harm’s way. We had chaperones, of course – Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Brown. But the bigger boys kept watchful eyes too. I literally have my life to thank for that. It happened about two days out from Bell Isle, the last dot of land that ship’s passengers see as they leave the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We were now somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic. At dinner earlier they posted a storm warning - something about gale force winds and a caution not to venture out on deck. To a small boy it was an invitation to forbidden pleasure. Weighing all of 79 pounds soaking wet I made my way on deck. The roar and scream of the winds was otherworldly. In the pitch dark, mountainous green breakers boiled and crashed against the ship, causing it to shudder and pitch and yaw crazily. I was jumping up and down trying to see if the wind could catch me and apparently it did. It threw me against a stack of deck chairs. I bounced off a flag pole. They say I was unconscious going over the rail at the stern of the ship when a guardian angel pulled me to safety. As they took me inside I came to and squirmed out of the person’s arms and ran down five flights of stairs to my state room where I collapsed and slept ‘til morning.

Delamont told me not to write home about my experience; it would just cause unnecessary worry. And I didn’t.

About five years ago I was playing in a Kits Band Reunion concert. Ken Sotvedt was conducting. I hadn’t seen or heard from Ken since that 1953 trip. Afterwards, he said to me, “Gerry, do you know who saved you that night? It was me!”

I had finally met my guardian angel. A tragic irony was that one week after that concert Ken died suddenly in his sleep.

112 ~ Vera Lynn

“It was as if he needed to tell you that he was the one who had saved your life before he left this world.”

“Yes.” Another thing that’s stuck in my mind all these years is why me? Why was I saved? Does he have a special purpose for me? I don’t think about it a lot. But now and then I do. Over the course of life I’ve logged hundreds of hours of community volunteerism – from drug crisis counselor and blood clinic greeter to cancer patient driver, Block Watch captain and community police patroller. Just taking the time to put a smile on someone’s face who’s struggling is serving a special purpose, don’t you think?

I have many fond memories of that first trip to England.

I remember that first bus coach ride up from Southampton.

The summer of 1953 was one of the driest ever recorded in Britain. And that June day was heaven as I looked out at the verdant fields, lined by hedge rows with castles in the distance. I was awestruck. Few North Americans traveled in that age before jetliners. The world economy was still recovering from the ravages of war. England was in particularly bad shape. And in every city we visited, there were scenes of devastation. The cleanup of bomb damage had only just begun. People were still giddy with relief that they had somehow survived Hitler’s rampage. And they filled the vaudeville theatres where we staged two shows a day, six nights a week. They were marvelous places with pit orchestras and steep balconies five stories high (the cheap seats were at the very top). Backstage there was a labyrinth of ten passageways leading to multi levels of dressing rooms. We were on with acrobats and animal acts and comedians and singers.

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 113

We even shared the bill with legendary songstress Vera Lynn.

I remember emerging from the stage door on many evenings. There’d be a line-up of girls seeking our autographs.

They all wanted to get married and move to Canada. England was poverty-stricken and they had all heard stories about American streets being paved with gold. Everything was ‘dear,’ including cigarettes that came in packages of five or ten.

“I’ll never forget the smell of the grease paint. Even today when I go to one of the grand old theatres like the Orpheum, if I take my seat early I swear I get a whiff of that mystique and can feel all the performers who’ve played the theatre down through the years.”

Delamont, always the great showman, would have the smallest boy in the band play a little solo, a crowd pleaser.

The selection was “Abide With Me.’ The first night I played it fine. I was reading it. The second night, I decided to play it from memory. It was only four bars long but I messed it up. Was he angry?? No more solos for you kid! But he could never hold a grudge and I was reinstated after a while.

It was Coronation Year. Queen Elizabeth was ascending to the Throne. And everywhere we went there were magnificent floral arrangements in the shape of crowns and clocks.

Every city square was bedecked with flowers. Even as our ship sailed into Southampton a coronation event was happening – the naval review at Spithead. We had ringside seats as sailors saluted the young Queen aboard her Royal yacht.

I took pictures with my baby Brownie camera. The objects were too far in the distance to show up.

114 ~ French Gaitanis and Galois’s

I’ve always had a love of history. In every city we visited I would go to see the graveyards and talk to the people who worked there. From reading the inscriptions on tombstones one could learn a great deal about trials and tribulations of working families.

We spent a number of weeks in various districts of London and I was fond of strolling through the narrow crooked roads of the poorer areas. It was like stepping into a Dickens novel.

“Anything more you want to say about the 1953 trip?”

Following our 26-city tour, we had five days to kill before catching the train to Southampton for the voyage back home.

Most of us elected to fly to Paris. We flew into Le Bourget Airport and indelible on my mind is the sight of a beautiful young hostess striding across the tarmac to greet us. Looking every bit like a fashion model in her tightly fitting blue skirt and white blouse and high heels, she had us all drooling. We were ushered onto a bus for a short ride to a university in the center of the city. There we split up into small groups and headed off in search of a place to stay. I was with Russ Robinson and Ian Gregory, two trombonists just a year older than me. We walked for miles along side streets before running into a gorgeous young Parisian. She told us her folks had a small hotel along the way. It was getting dark and she was too beautiful to pass up. The room had a window that opened up onto a wrought iron balcony. From my bed I could see a searchlight playing in the night sky.

When I opened my eyes the next morning my heart skipped a beat as I gazed upon the Eiffel Tower framed by a clear blue sky. The next five days were among the most

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 115

wondrous of my life. Amid the ever-present aroma of French Gaitanis and Galois’s, we sat to midnight dinner on the Avenue des Champs-Elysee, strolled the Seine and Montmartre, and even (despite our tender ages) took in shows at the Les Follies Bergere and Moulin Rouge.

Talk about a fast flight to reality after our brief taste of boyhood debauchery in La Ville-Lumière. We were flat broke as we flew back to London. I had to write my folks for an emergency loan of fifty dollars. Along with most other band members, we slept the last night in Britain in a park on the Thames Embankment shivering under newspapers to ward off the morning dew.

It would be two years before the band went on another trip to England. In addition to twice-a-week band practice, there were occasional concerts including some at local correctional institutes. For me they were definite learning experiences.

We played a concert at Okalla, a provincial jail where offenders served sentences of up to two years less a day. And we played another at the BC Penitentiary, an Alcatraz type ‘big house’ of the same design as all those other concrete fortresses featured in the cops and robbers movies of the 1940s. Okalla and The Pen were two of the most depressing places I have ever visited. And they left a lasting impression. No better deterrent to stay out of trouble for the rest of my life. We performed in chapels and to get there we had to go through heavy steel gates that clanged shut behind us and then walk single file along a narrow range of cell blocks where inmates sat on bunks, hunched over, heads in hands, looking hopelessly despondent in grim-gray uniforms.

116 ~ Brian Todd

“How old were you on the 1955 trip?”

“I was 15 then. And that trip too, was filled with extraordinary experiences.”

“My friend, Brian Todd, was able to make it this time, as were Ian and Russ. We were all about the same age and hung out together.

Since 1953, the attraction of vaudeville for Britain’s had waned somewhat and more and more of the old Hippodromes and Empire and Palace theatres were being turned into bingo and dance halls. Consequently we played more and more of our concerts in parks. But that created an opportunity for the band to go to the Channel Islands – an absolutely fascinating destination.

Hitler’s forces occupied the island of Jersey during the war. The Germans had constructed many defenses along the coastline that still remained to be explored. Polish slaves were used to construct a mammoth underground hospital.

The British were still exhuming bodies of slaves who were entombed in the walls that summer as we played in the main city of St. Helier.

The Great Castle Break-in was probably the most exciting adventure we had on Jersey. The event even made The Vancouver Sun back home.

It was all just innocent fun.

We were playing in a park. And in the nearby harbor was a castle that we dearly wished to visit. We couldn’t banish the idea. Problem was that one could only access Elizabeth Castle via a causeway at low tide. And daytime low tide was when we played our concerts.

I think it was Ian who thought of it first. Tides happen

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 117

118 ~ Arnie Chycoski.

twice in a 24-hour period, right?

And so it was that we waited until dark, and crept out on the causeway when the tide recessed. We weren’t deterred when we got there to find the castle locked for the night.

Castle walls are scaled lots of times in the movies. So up we went, stone by stone. Then suddenly a big voice bellowed in the darkness.

“Who goes there?”

No amount of explanation could convince the warden that we should be granted a tour. We retraced our steps and there was a friendly bobby waiting for us on the mainland.

“Do you remember the big bands in England?”

“Oh yes, one of the big bands was playing in Blackpool when we were there. Donny Clark amazed us all when he got up and played a jazz solo with the band. Donny, of course, developed into one of Canada’s premiere trumpet players.

We had another amazing talent – Arnie Chycoski. He was our lead trumpet and night after night he played a double high ‘C’ at the end of something called ‘The Gremlin Ball.”

It was a huge hit with the audiences. Both Donny and Arnie were parachuted in for the 1955 trip. Art Tusvik, another one of our trumpeters, got in pretty good with the Ted Heath band. In fact, Art even married the daughter of one of Heath’s band members.

I left the band two years later. But I continued playing trumpet off and on through my adult years. I served in the military for about three years and while based in Ottawa was encouraged to try out for the RCAF Central Command Band. I began practicing in earnest and this led to a six night a week job in a show band at The Chaudiere Golf Club in

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 119

Gatineau, Quebec. The pay was good for a kid of eighteen - $400.00 a month. And the work was challenging. Families across North America in those days sat down in front of their TVs every Sunday night to watch The Ed Sullivan show live from New York. It was a variety show, and many of the featured singers and comedians would become Chaudiere headliners. In the year or so I worked in the Harry Posy Orchestra I got to back The Four Lads, the Four Aces, the Platters and a host of other performers.

It enabled me to save for a semester at Berklee School of Music in Boston where I honed my skills. I eventually made my way back to Vancouver where I finished school and enrolled at UBC. Music helped to pay the bills. I got a job playing in the Doug Kirk Orchestra at the Commodore Ballroom, and I’d get occasional calls from Dave Robbins to work the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. It was on those gigs that I got to play with Arnie and Donny again. I was in the trumpet section with them for the Sammy Davis, Jr. Show. We also worked Henry Mancini, and Andy Williams together.

During that time, I’d also get occasional gigs at the Cave and Issy’s.

A year short of a BA in English, I quit university after discovering a new passion - journalism. I was the first Vancouver Sun reporter in twenty years to go undercover onto Skid Road for a story on drifters. I got that job by convincing the Sun’s brutish managing editor, Erwin Swangard, that I was the next best thing to Clark Kent. As a staffer on a local construction newspaper, I had done a series of articles on the need to revitalize False Creek – then a light industry backwater - as a place to live and play.

120 ~ Harvey Kirk

“I just blew your City Hall Planning Bureau away,” I told Swangard. He must have figured there was room for one more arrogant, pompous son of a bitch in his newsroom because he hired me.

“Was your skid road story about the homeless?”

In those days ‘homelessness’ wasn’t part of the lexicon.

What I discovered in joining soup lines and sleeping under the Cambie Street Bridge were young kids – 16, 17 years of age – who kept their hair short so as not to attract police.

These were runaways, transit youth.

I followed one to see what he was about. He delivered newspapers for the Georgia Straight, a brand new hippie newspaper. I interviewed him and he had run away from home, back east. Some of the kids – like this one - were from abusive families and they didn’t want to go back. They felt free to travel. And Vancouver with its mild climate and miles of beaches was their favorite destination.

The Vancouver Sun was a great experience but I have a short attention span. And there were lots of jobs for itinerant reporters back then. Within a year I was off – first to The Edmonton Journal and then to The Calgary Herald, the latter being a good fit for me. I was practically self assigning and having the time of my life covering coal mine disasters and murder trials and aircraft hijackings. The local CTV affiliate hired me and that led to stories on hippie colonies and the plight of psychiatric patients. All through life, my dogged persistence has paid off.

I was flat broke the night I arrived in Calgary from Edmonton. I had to sleep in my car and change clothes in a gas

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 121

station. Then I walked into The Herald and spent a good hour and a half negotiating salary with the city editor.

Finally he said, “Okay you’re hired. Start tomorrow!”

Without hesitation I asked, “Can I have an advance?”

“You’re broke?”

“Yep! I slept in my car last night.”

A lesser man might have kicked me out.

I spent five rewarding years in Calgary. But towards the end I was beginning to get antsy. I needed energizing. And that’s when serendipity caught up with me again.

I drove out to Vancouver to be alone for a week to ponder my future. And I decided that I would go to Mexico to work on a book I was writing about the murder trial of an Eskimo named Apakark Thrasher I had covered.

I recall striding up to the door of my apartment fresh off the road from Vancouver. The phone was ringing inside as I fumbled with the lock.

It was CTV News calling from Toronto. Would I like to come down and join the Canada AM team?

A few days later I met CTV anchor Harvey Kirk and the gang and settled into my cool new pad in trendy Cabbagetown.

The year was probably the most exhilarating yet exhausting of my life. Canada AM news writers work overnights.

And as anyone who’s ever worked a graveyard shift knows, you eventually die of sleep deprivation. I was also working on the Thrasher book and separately writing scripts for legendary producer Doug Leiterman of ‘This Hour has Seven Days’ fame. CTV asked me to sign on for another year -

122 ~ Arthur Kent

but I’d had enough of those hours. I labored away on the book which was eventually published and became a Canadian best seller.

The following year I joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship Toronto station, CBLT. I spent 22 years there working first as a reporter and then as senior editor.

Most reporters just scratch the surface of a story. But some are diggers. I pride myself on being a digger. Diggers are journalists who are not content to write a story based on information a public relations person has handed them.

They’re not cheerleaders - they are cynics. You can blame cheerleaders in the American media for not spotting the fact that the Iraq invasion was a bad decision. You can blame cheerleaders for not reporting that something was rotten among the ranks of regulators that would lead to the collapse of world financial markets. Diggers in the world media are few and far between. And we’re all now suffering for it.

I have a friend named Arthur Kent. He is a foreign correspondent who has covered mafia wars in Sicily, the first Iraq war, the Bosnian War and the Tiananmen Massacre. Arthur is a digger. In our email exchanges he has told me how repeatedly he tried to interview Donald Rumsfeld when Rumsfeld was US defense minister. He didn’t get to first base because Rumsfeld would only speak to cheerleaders.

They packed the Pentagon news conferences – reporters who would lose their beats and special contacts if they stepped out of line.

“Tell me what the whole Kits Band experience meant to you?”

GERRY DEAGLE ~ 123

“It was a fabulous development platform for a young kid.

It certainly taught us self-reliance. The twice-a-week band practices were a form of discipline that will never leave us.

Not to mention that the band gave us an appreciation of music. To this day, I spend hours practicing my trumpet. I still play in a couple of bands, for my own enjoyment. I get a thrill out of playing even when I’m the only one in earshot.

We were expected to perform to a very high standard.

On the trips, especially aboard ship, Arthur worked us hard.

It was on the ships after embarking from Quebec that he’d hand out the new charts we’d be performing on stage in England. He demanded our presence at daily afternoon rehearsal no matter how seasick we might be. Over and over he would run through the program, coaxing the best out of us.

“You got a chance to see what life would be like on the road as a professional musician.”

“That’s true! I can still smell the aroma of Paris!”

124 ~ The Palace Theatre, Blackpool

CHAPTER 9

Ed Silva-White “I remember going into this one music store and after the owner found out who we were, he said, “Do you want to meet someone?” He took us into a back room and there was legendary saxophone player, Charlie Parker, sitting on a chair. We spent the next hour or two reminiscing and learning breathing skills. We continually listened and met with Guards bands, gathering more British history and stories to add to our musical experiences.”

“How did you come to join the Kits band?”

“I was in grade six at Pauline Johnson Elementary school in West Vancouver. Delamont came around with all his instruments one lunch hour looking for boys to join the West Vancouver band.”

“What year would that have been?’

“In 1949, I was eleven. My dad played clarinet and piano.

However, I felt I wanted to play the trumpet. My uncle had a Besson cornet that had passed through the family so I inherited it. Delamont was fascinated when I walked through the door with this original nickel-plated Besson cornet in its

126 ~ Dave Hughes

original leather case and attachments to play in a Salvation band. He picked it up and made it sound like a gem. I started with his West Van band and in those days we often played with his North Van band as well. Then in 1952 four of us were invited to play in the Kits band. We knew Arthur was planning another trip so Bill Trussell, Bruce Chadwick, Stewart Scott and I went over to practice and play with the Kits band too. One time, I quit the band for about six months to play soccer. I realized this was my mistake because I really missed playing music too much. Over the years I worked my way up through the trumpet stands as many before me.

If you want something that bad you were encouraged to set a goal to improve one’s skills. My parents were supportive and became active in the West Van executive and often volunteered with the Kitsilano activities.

In 1953 I was lucky to be chosen to be on the tour for four and a half months to England. We left in April and we didn’t return until mid September. My mother grew up in Chilliwack but was sent to elementary school during World War I in Victoria and when my dad finished school in Sunderland, England, his father told him to go to Canada for a better future. He never had the opportunity to see his father again.

They knew that this was an opportunity of a lifetime that was being offered to me. Ironically, the band was to have its first theater engagement in Sunderland and I got to see my grandfather before he passed away two weeks later. We spent the first two weeks crossing Canada by CPR train. We experienced the historic connections that Mr. D had made over the years with former band members and played with the RCMP in Saskatchewan. Our trip across the Atlantic was about

ED SILVA-WHITE ~ 127

ten days with some pretty fierce storms. We didn’t think much about the danger, that was just how you got to England in those days. On the 1953 trip, we saw much of England especially playing in cities with an Empire and Hippodrome vaudeville theatre. Because we were in show business, we had free access to every form of theatre entertainment and movie theatres. Our band sweater with the crest allowed us to pass through stage doors and at least sit up with the gods in the top balcony of a theater. It sure saved a lot of money with these perks. I saw Kay Starr, Bob Hope and Abbot and Costello and others at the London Palladium. When in London, Delamont spent most of his free time in the music stores buying music. We spent most of our time trying to absorb as many historic sights, museums while collecting local decals from hotels for our instrument cases. Generally we marched through town on the Monday before our opening night at a theatre. Being top bill we were the last act which was approximately forty minutes of solid playing. In Bristol we played at the Hippodrome and on the first night show, we were doing the Ragtime Wedding skit but this time with an unusual twist. Dave Hughes, one of the clarinet players always dressed up as the minister with his red band cape reversed. He came quickly running through the aisles of the audience on cue and over the side to run up the stairs to the stage, only to fall head over heels down into the orchestra pit. We continued to play but still wondering what had happened. He slowly crawls out of the pit, back onto the stairs only later to find that he had broken the strings of the bass fiddle. He suddenly looks up and sees a beautiful golden naked bust of a lady which was of course part of the

128 ~ Doug Holbrook

presidium arch. He looks at the bust, then at the audience, and he pulls out his white handkerchief, folds it into a neat triangle and places it delicately across the lady’s bust. Dave was a quick theatrical thinker which later became his area of study and success with CBC radio and theatre in the east. He stood up and walked very stately onto the stage to perform the marriage ceremony. The audience roared with appreciation and this became part of the act for the rest of the week. I remember the time we went to practice and play at Wembley Stadium where the motorcycle races were taking place. One time I saw Arthur’s motorcycle boots at his house and knew that it was one of his early passions. He sat on the edge of his seat throughout the races reliving his own motorcycle racing days.

“How come the 1953 band lost the Victoria Music Festival?”

We went over to Victoria and played Zampa. As was his style, we saw the music about six weeks before the festival.

We polished it up, went over and played it but the Victoria Boys’ band beat us by half a point. We were developing into a very strong band. Those of us from West Vancouver were playing and practicing six times a week which was in preparation for the overseas trip. We came back and went to the usual Monday night Kits Band practice pretty well everyone was there from the festival experience. Delamont handed out the music as usual to the senior band and the first piece he asked us to play was Zampa. We thought we are going to hear about it now. After playing about sixteen or twenty bars, he stopped and sat down and said, “You did well and that was what I expected of you.” We actually couldn’t believe

ED SILVA-WHITE ~ 129

it, however, he said, “The problem was the adjudicator did not know the difference between the original version and the one played in a simpler key. They didn’t play the original version, we did!”

They did a great job but the original was much more difficult. The adjudicator didn’t make the distinction so we felt pretty good about it in the end. We also knew that if we were getting better, he would raise the bar even higher.

We would struggle through it but if we hadn’t had the leadership on the top stands with Arnie Chykoski, Arnold Emery, Doug Holbrook, Roy Griffiths, Ron Wood, and Donnie Clark it would have been more difficult. We were as dedicated as the boys in the 1930s, but in the 1930s, music was all the guys did. In the 1950s, we were dedicated to other things as well and the band was split in different ways. We did get credit for what we accomplished from him but we were always glad when certain pieces of music came along that there was a Trussell, a Lazenby or an Emery to lead the way. We had some fabulous trumpet trios over the years. Everyone could play certain pieces, so we all pulled together.

I remember we played the BBC Television Commonwealth Show, ‘Gay Parade’ in the London Ealing Studios in 1953. Over lunch some of us met a fire eater representing one of the African colonies. He was studying medicine to become a doctor. He said he was going to return to his homeland that week due to his grandfather’s failing health.

He had to learn the ritual of being buried alive as this was part of his responsibility for eventually becoming leader of his tribe. I felt we gained more knowledge and understanding of another culture in that hour than if we had been home

130 ~ Bill Cave

in school.

The band played the opening for the ‘Gay Parade’ special. We played our signature pieces later in the show. The fanfare was written by the BBC. There were about twelve or fourteen of these scorewriters sitting at a table below our podium. Our trumpet part didn’t work and the tuba part was written in five sharps. “Throw it down here and they will correct it for you,” Delamont said. Bill Cave replied as he shouldered his sousaphone, “No, don’t worry, the basses will play it by ear” and they did of course! We threw ours down, they scribbled something on it and sent it back to us, and we continued to practice the opening number. That was BBC TV at its best.

I remember in 1953 our first week was at the Sunderland Empire and after the first show, we were in our dressing room and the older boys shoved us little guys out once we were dressed. It took me a while to figure out why they did this. We had finished selling the post cards and we thought we had done our part. What it really was, was there was always a crowd of girls outside the stage entrance door wanting autographs, so we were sent out to entertain them so the older boys could get away quickly to the pubs and see the town. Mail call was also lots of fun. Delamont would hand out the mail, he would read out our names. Sometimes the letters would be addressed to, ‘the good looking one, third from the end, second row, or any boy,’ for example. Mr D would say, “Who will take this one?’ one of the guys would take it, open it and say, “Oh, this one’s for so and so,” and pass it on. There were girls of course who followed the band from town to town.

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which meant So Much In Love With You. They were apparently codes from the war days that were used when they sent letters to the troops. Delamont just raised his eyes, he knew what it was all about.”

“Do you have any stories about Mrs D? She was pretty much an unsung hero.”

“No, she was very quiet. He ran the show. She played the mother role and was always there if you needed her. You had to perform, that was the key. If you didn’t he would say, “I am sure the boys will work it out.” And they did.

You got the word from the top stand to shape up. It all worked. If you were going to do something stupid, don’t do it with your crest on. We had great bands in the 1950s and great guys.

In 1955, I was going into Grade 12, when the second trip came along. As with the first trip I didn’t have much money on that trip but I was determined to make do. Alex McLeod had to act as our manager in England during the latter half of the trip because the Fielding Agency was having financial problems. We were in Swansea at the time. We had to decide whether to return home or change from only playing vaudeville to some park sites. Alex’s job was to go ahead and set up the engagement and arrange for our digs. Delamont didn’t want us to play three concerts a day because it would cut into our site seeing but sometimes we had to, to make ends meet. When our four days of holidays occurred at the end of the trip, most of us went to Paris in 1955. Because I couldn’t afford to go Don Charles, Bill Trussell and I stayed in London. We went to as many clubs, dives, and after hour spots as possible to listen to small jazz groups and

132 ~ Gongga Shan (Minka Konka)

musicians we had met out of Ted Heath’s band when in Blackpool. We had our sweaters for free access. Don Charles always brought his clarinet with him. One evening we lost him and we had to go searching. We found him down an alley – he had been practicing on his clarinet those beautiful long melodic tones he was known for. Unfortunately a bobby arrived and because he didn’t have a passport, we had to convince the bobby that he was touring with us, and not to take him to the station. Every day we hit a music store or two. I remember going into this one music store and after the owner found out who we were, he said, “Do you want to meet someone?’ He took us into a back room and there was legendary saxophone player, Charlie Parker, sitting on a chair. We spent the next hour or two reminiscing and learning breathing skills. We continually listened and met with police and Guard bands, gathering more British history and stories to add to our musical experiences.

Back home, I wanted to go into dentistry but my marks hurt a little from being away so much. Someone said to me, “Why don’t you go into education?” So I did and eventually teaching became my profession. I studied classics, physical education and teaching special needs students. I eventually ended my career working in the head office of the Burnaby School District. In those days I also became involved in the magic community. I decided to go back on the stage with my magic and used it as a tool in working with students, teachers and parents. I was known in the magic world as Mr Goof-Oh! Often I would walk into a teacher’s classroom in a suit and tie, and a student would blurt out “Oh, I know you –- you’re Mr Goof-Oh!” It was always a surprise to any

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new teacher who looked embarrassed, but the students knew from the year before when I performed for them. In outdoor education I was known as ‘Serac,’ spelled backwards it spells cares. ‘Fast Eddy’ was another one of my nicknames and Ken Sotvedt called me “snivel.’ I had lots of nicknames.”

“Tell me about your climbing in Mt. Everest?”

“No, it was Gongga Shan (Minka Konka), not Everest.

The Everest team was leaving in the same year we were going to the Himalayas. We were the largest expedition to come out of Canada and we were headed to the highest peak on the Chinese side of the Himalayas. It hadn’t been climbed in fifty years. It is a unique mountain, it stands high above the surrounding peaks. Our team was composed of climbers, a movie crew, and Peter Worthington, a correspondent from the Toronto Sun. Labatts and CP Air were also our sponsors.”

“What year was it that you went?”

“It was in 1982 and the Everest team went six months later. The expedition leader and I were surprised that we were given permission to go after visiting the Alpine Club of Great Britain in London where we were searching for possible mountains to ask the Chinese permission to climb.

The mountains had been closed for years to outsiders under Mao’s leadership. We took a team of sixteen in all. Four of us had our own climbing and ski school here in the Lower Mainland. We created the opportunity. We had a dream and set our goals and followed through with determination to try to pull it off. I was base camp manager and it was a great experience. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top because the monsoons just kept coming on us during the climb.

134 ~ We were proud of this gentleman!

These storms come in very quickly in the Himalayas. Within two to three hours the whole mountain environment can change radically. We developed a great respect and appreciation for the mountain. It was hard work and a personal achievement for each of us. You learn much about yourself, discipline, leadership and dealing with people. It all comes back to what I had learned from my earlier days with Arthur Delamont. There was no room for egos and showoffs up there on the mountain either. You learn not to become a liability but to become an asset, a part of the team.”

“An experience like that would certainly teach you many things about yourself.”

“Yes it did, you learn to assess your own strengths and abilities in order to fit into the team. I think everyone realized they could do much more than they ever thought they could, again coming back to what we learned from Delamont.

All you have to do is work hard and you can achieve your goal.”

“Who were the three people who influenced your life the most?”

“My father and mother of course passed on a very strong work ethic, without question Delamont as well. Teachers have been a great influence; one was Brian Todd’s uncle. He taught Latin and extracurricular soccer at our high school, and played clarinet in the North Shore operatic society orchestra. Delamont’s influence was highly significant. My peer group associations were amazing and many were talented. People always knew if Delamont was mentioned as a reference, they were probably going to get a good report because there were not many kids who went through his

ED SILVA-WHITE ~ 135

organization that were not successful. All were achievers in their own way.

The superintendent of schools in Burnaby also left a lasting impression on me when I worked for him. I met him briefly before deciding to put my name in for supervisor of phys ed and athletics (director of education), in his administration.

His style was different than anything I had encountered. I got the job and spent the next twenty years until my retirement there. This educator was of the caliber of Delamont. He always created a vision and really knew people. I enjoyed working for a person who is always asking the question, “Why are we doing this?” We are doing this for the betterment of young people of course. It didn’t matter who you were or how much money you had.

I have been lucky in my life and the camaraderie I have experienced in the band, sports and in mountain climbing have served me well. I have experienced good health thanks to my involvement in physical education.

“Any more thoughts about the band experience looking back from where you are today?”

“I don’t think that you ever lose it. It was an experience I wish others could have had. One of my grandchildren has already had an opportunity to travel and I would like the others to do as well. It makes a world of difference when kids get to break away from the comforts of their home to see another culture and share in how they live. You see another side of life. For us at that time it was England still recovering from WW II. When I was in Tibet, we encountered Tibetans who had never seen Caucasians before. They were just beautiful,

136 ~ The Superintendent of Schools in Burnaby

Mark of a real world traveller is stickers on luggage, and Edward SilvaWhite, a 15 year old globetrotter, has plenty to show his mother, Mrs. R. Silva-White, 2585 Marine, West Vancouver. Edward, a member of the Kitsilano Boys’ Band, just returned from an overseas jaunt and shows off gaily decorated cornet case to proud mother. Sept. 28, 1953

ED SILVA-WHITE ~ 137

warm and friendly to us. I remember sitting high in the mountains in a yak tent all afternoon teaching the English language and learning theirs. It is opportunities like this that you develop skills to survive anywhere in the world.”

“Do you have any last thoughts?’

“I was so fortunate to have had these opportunities. They were nothing but positive (which my parents had always believed in). Don’t spend too much time with those who dwell on the negative. Today a young person would love to learn and work with someone such as Delamont who didn’t drink or smoke and portrayed such a high value structure. We were proud of this gentleman and he was proud of us. He was always honest about the situation and he emphasized the need to obtain an education and further your knowledge. The legacy was not only his but it was all the boys who had come before us. We had respect for him and respect for our peer group. It was an alumni that didn’t have a club or a regular meeting place. If the call was made to come, there would always be a positive response from the boys, and they were all so successful in their own ways. It was a great organization to belong to for any young person. People gravitated to him for his ability to teach music and as a leader of young people. We never had a rotation of bandmasters like others fortunately. It is a legacy that is dissolving itself in a credible and appropriate way.”

138 ~ Johnny Dankworth

CHAPTER 10

Art Tusvik “I worked with Johnny Dankworth’s band at the Marquee Jazz Club in London. Quite an experience! When he and Cleo Laine came to Vancouver, I went back stage at the Orpheum. Cleo remembered my first name. I only subbed in his band for one night. At the time, I didn’t like the way she sang. She had this unbelievably big sound but she was really a phenomenal singer.”

Art Tusvik had gone on three trips with the band in the 1950s, ‘53,’55 and ‘58. As one of the best trumpet players to ever play in the band, Arthur often called back his more experienced boys to help him out. Art was one of the boys during the 1950s trips who got to know quite well, some of the members of England’s famous Ted Heath Orchestra. He wound up marrying the daughter of Jimmy Coombes, one of the original founding members of the Ted Heath Band.

“Tell me about Jimmy Coombes?”

“Jimmy Coombe’s daughters name is Kay. Jimmy played with the Ted Heath band right from the start. He grew up with Ted on the streets of London. They had to put cardboard in their shoes, they were so broke. Both of them played in the

140 ~ Tug Wilson

‘Ambrose band.’ After Jimmy left the band, he was number one call in London for legit theatre, TV, recordings and movies. He played on the sound track for the ‘The Guns of Navarone,’ with Dimitri Tompkins. Guys like ‘Frank Sinatra’ would ask for him, ‘Johnny Mathis ‘was another.

It was so sad when Jimmy came to Vancouver. He went from being number one call in London, to nobody calling him in Vancouver. It was really amazing how he had to struggle to get gigs over here.”

“Why did he move to Vancouver?”

“His wife moved here, Kay’s mom. Her name was Audrey. He wanted a change. He taught at UBC and played with the VSO. That would have been around 1965.”

“How did you meet Kay?” “We were in London at the Hammersmith Palais. Ted Heath’s band was playing. I happened to see her running out on to the floor to dance and I liked what I saw. That was on the 1958 Kits band trip to Europe.

“The first time I saw Ted Heath’s band was in Blackpool on the 1955 Kits band trip. I knew her dad, Jimmy because I introduced myself to him. I never did play in Ted’s band but I knew many of the guys who did. I wasn’t as good as some of them.”

“Oh I don’t know about that, I think from what I have heard that you were pretty darn good.”

“Delamont taught us the real world, the world of hollering and screaming at us. He toughened us up for life.”

“How did you first meet Arthur?”

“I started taking lessons with a guy named ‘Tug Wilson.’ He was in vaudeville with Arthur. I started with him in 1949. I was eleven.

We had all heard about the Kits band. I lived at First and Alma, in

ART TUSVIK ~ 141

Kitsilano. So, I went over to the General Gordon School. I had a brand new trumpet. My father was a fisherman. He had a particularly good trip, so I got a really good horn. I had a copper bell and I traded it in for a ‘Constellation.’ It was the same horn that ‘Bobby Pratt’ was playing. Bobby was the lead trumpet player in Ted Heath’s band.

What a sound! That’s what turned me on, when I heard him playing at the ‘Winter Gardens,’ in Blackpool, in 1955. The Ted Heath band played dances at the Winter Gardens. One marathon dance they played was six hours long. Bobby’s sound was remarkable. At the end of the six hour dance, he was still playing screamers. He had as big a sound on double G, as he did on middle C, unbelievable sound.

When they recorded, they had one mike in each section. They had to put him about five feet behind the rest of the guys. Jimmy would be sitting in front of him. He figured that that’s where his hearing problems began. They would say to Bobby, “Take it easy Bobby. You don’t have to work so hard.”

Bobby would just laugh and say, “Oh let’s have some fun!”

He died tragically. He left Ted’s band to do section work in London.

Went off to do a Frank Chacksfield (British bandleader during the 1950s) recording and he didn’t turn up for it. The guys said, Where’s Bobby?”

Three days later, he turned up at home, neatly dressed. His wife asked him, “How did it go?” He said, “First take!” As far as he was concerned, he had been there and done the take. What it was, he had ‘wet brain’ from alchoholism.

Ultimately, he set up the chairs in his kitchen, in front of his gas stove and gassed himself. It was just a tragedy.”

“Did he have an Arnie Chycoski kind of sound?”

142 ~ Winter Gardens, Blackpool

ABOVE: While in Blackpool on the 1953 and 1955 tours, the boys were always booked into the Palace Theatre. After they finished performing each night, they would go over to the Winter Gardens seen above, to hear the most popular band in England at the

ART TUSVIK ~ 143

time, The Ted Heath Orchestra. No photos exist of the band playing at the Palace Theatre but this shot above shows the Winter Gardens during the mid 1950s. It is unknown who the band is performing.

144 ~ Bobby Pratt

“Arnie had a very beautiful, very controlled sound. The Rob McConnell band was very symphonic. The Ted Heath band had a roaring kind of sound. Bobby had the ability to hit double G’s. Arnie had the ability to hit double C’s. It was almost like he was playing a C Melody trumpet. It’s not easy to play that kind of stuff. They were just different kinds of players. Bobby was a jazz player. Arnie was more symphonic and a lead player. In a comparison to Maynard Ferguson, Bobby Pratt would say, “I don’t have that double C.” But he had a photographic memory and he could remember charts like you wouldn’t believe. He was just an amazing player.”

“You went on three trips to Europe with the Kits band, in 1953, 1955 and 1958. You didn’t see the Ted Heath band in 1953?”

“No, the big deal in 1953 was at the BBC studios where we met Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on the ‘In Towne Tonight’ show. We also played on the ‘David Whitfield Show.’

Later on, when I went back to live in England, from 1959 through 1963, I did a Christmas show in Brighton with David Whitfield. It was called ‘David Whitfield on Ice,’ that was at the end of his career.

One of his big records was ‘Cara Mia.’” “Let’s go back to when you first met Arthur.”

“He hated me because I had a brand new trumpet. He unloaded on me. He hit me on the back of the head with his trumpet. Good thing the guys stopped me because I was going to wrap him on the head with mine. He backed off. I had a kind of love, hate relationship with Arthur. I was either really on side with him or really off side.

But that’s the way he was. He was either hollering at you or he was nice to you.”

“He was always testing the guys.”

“I remember a fellow who came from London, ‘Parker Brass

ART TUSVIK ~ 145

Studios, Phil Parker was his name; a trumpet player. He came from London to Vancouver and he settled here. Arthur scared the hell out of him. He hated Arthur! He played in the Parks Board band, one of Arthur’s professional bands. He didn’t like the way Arthur behaved.

Phil was a fabulous trumpet player but he couldn’t play in front of people because he choked. I sometimes did the same. I remember I was working in a show in London with Michel Legrand, ‘Modern Jazz Ballet’ with Zi Zi Jan Mere. She was the star. She was in ‘Les Girls’ with ‘Mitzi Gaynor.’ It was big in France. Her husband was a choreographer. I came back from a break, to the pit. I was playing with a guy named Stan Roderick, great trumpet player. I was playing fifth. He was playing lead. I was doubling on double G’s and double C’s. Anyway, when I came back from the break, I saw that the lead chair was empty. I said, “Where’s Stan?” Someone said, “Oh he ruptured his lip.”

So, I was moved into the lead chair and I choked. I was heart broken because I had been really lucky and fortunate to get the gig. It was my chance. I was in tears. I said to Michel, “I’m sorry.” He said, “Don’t worry. It’s all right!”

“He knew you were sincere.”

“Yes, I thought it was the end of my night but it wasn’t. After that, I made sure that I was never without a bottle of scotch in my trumpet case.

That’s another story! One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was later in life, when I finally realized that I didn’t need booze to play. Ted Lazenby had the same problem. He was a wonderful player. Don Charles was an interesting fellow. He was a good singer as well. The girls loved him. He looked a little like Dean Martin.

146 ~ Bill Trussell

Later on in life, he packed on much weight. He didn’t play so well anymore and ended up working in the post office.”

“Youth doesn’t last forever.”

“No, that’s true. Bill Trussell was a fine player. He deserved far more success than he got, beautiful sound! Donny Clark is another good player.”

“Nice guy as well.”

“Ian McDougall played with Johnny Dankworth in England. He was not in the Kits band but he was a part of the pro music scene here in Vancouver. I worked with Johnny’s band at the Marquee Jazz Club. Quite an experience! When he and Cleo Laine came to Vancouver, I went backstage, at the Orpheum. Cleo remembered my first name. I only subbed in his band for one night. At the time, I didn’t like the way she sang. She had this unbelievably big sound but she was really a phenomenal singer.”

“Did you play in any of Arthur’s other bands?”

“Yes, I played in his pro bands, his Parks Board band, the Cunard Band. I played at Chinese funerals. We went and played a Chinese funeral one time in Chinatown at the Armstrong Funeral Parlor. One of the guys, ‘Jack Reynolds,’ said, “This guy in here wants to talk to you.” So, we opened the coffin and here’s a stiff inside. They were great times!”

“You must have been pretty young on the 1953 trip?”

“I was almost at the bottom of the totem pole. Gerry Deagle was at the bottom. Gerry also played later in Dal Richard’s band. I worked for Dal at the Hotel Vancouver. Lots of ex-Kits guys in Dal’s band.”

“Do you recall anything about the 1953 trip?”

“We had a great trumpet trio on that trip. Doug Holbrook had a beautiful sound. Arnie Emery played lead. He had amazing technique and an iron face, triple tonguing, double tonguing, he could

ART TUSVIK ~ 147

do it all and Roy Griffith’s was the other.

Ron Pajala was another good player. Played virtuoso saxophone and was also a great accordion player. We went to Paris on the 1953 trip. Ron was supposed to be my chaperone. I made a deal with him.

If he went with me to the Follies Bergere, I would go with him to the Opera. We were in a cafe in Pigalle and a naked lady came and sat on his lap. From that point on, he was never the same. He said, “To hell with the opera and the museums, I’m going to spend my time here!”

I am not sure if those were his exact words but you get the idea.

Kenny Douglas had a great sense of humor, he is a natural born comedian. Bill Good was a great drummer. Too bad he died so early.

He died of cancer. Bill Cave was quite a character. It was so great to play in all the old vaudeville houses on the 1953 trip. To be able to play in all those shows, where you actually had to be on, that was the real deal, great experience!

Arthur’s showmanship was so innate. I can remember going to the Pantages Theatre when I was a kid. I saw the ‘Clyde Beatty Circus’ and they actually had all the animals on stage and the pit orchestra.

Zoot Chandler was another good player in the Kits band.”

“Do you remember Lillie Delamont at all?”

Yes, a very dignified lady but very low key, lovely lady! He was always such a tyrant, such a contrast. Do you remember what Arthur did when he was meeting somebody important? He would extend his hand but miss their hand. He was just letting them know that he didn’t think they were as important as they thought they were.”

“Yes, I remember that!”

“When he wasn’t looking, we would imitate him having a nervous breakdown in front of the band.

“Oh gosh darn it fellas, why don’t you try harder” and he would

148 ~ Frank Millerd

throw the music around.

On the 1955 trip, we heard the Basil & Ivor Kirchen Band in Cheltenham. Donny Clark sat in with their band. Here is this little kid standing up with this really fabulous band. These guys were dumbfounded because he could play such good jazz. Donny always had his own way of playing, even at that early age.

I remember when we played ‘At The Gremlin Ball.’Arnie would end on a screamer. Arnie was always a very controlled player and Arthur liked that. Whenever I did it, he would get upset because I would just stick it in.”

“Oh, I think he was proud of all of us. We were all his extended family.”

“Yes I know, I was very close to him, especially later in life. I would drive down and play for the cruise ship departures in my taxi cab. Then afterwards I would get back in my cab and go back to work.

One time I was working at the Hotel Vancouver with the ‘Claude Logan band.’ Brian Bolam was playing as well. Afterwards, I went driving taxi and I saw a really good looking girl who had been at the dance, looking for a taxi. I picked her up and drove her home. The next morning I awoke on her couch, in a house on 33rd avenue. To this day, I have no idea what happened. She said, “I thought you would be better off sleeping here rather than driving home.”

She had remembered seeing me playing in the band.”

“Do you remember anything more about Ted Heath in 1955?”

“When Ted was playing at the ‘Winter Gardens,’ in Blackpool, we were playing down the road at the Palace. Every night after we finished playing, a bunch of us would go down to see the Ted Heath band play. Their trumpet section, just made your hair stand up. I had

ART TUSVIK ~ 149

never heard anything like it. We got to meet the guys down at the local pub afterwards. ‘Earl Hobson’ got to know one of their sax/clarinet players quite well, ‘Henry McKenzie,’ he died just recently. He was a conscientious objector. ‘Frank Horrox’ was their piano player. He also was a conscientious objector. Neither would fight in the war. Nor serve in the military.. Jack Reynolds spent more time in the washroom than anyone I ever met.

Bill Millerd was a very quiet guy. When I was badly injured on the bus, I was sure lucky. Frank Millerd, who was only sixteen, had the presence of mind to take his shirt off and wrap it around my foot, to stop the bleeding. In the hospital, they were able to catch the best foot surgeon in England, before he left on holidays. They brought him back to perform the operation. There was a Catholic priest there as well, wanting to know if I wanted to confess my sins. I wanted to strangle him. And I will never forget, there was another fellow who came to see me from the Salvation Army. He took off his coat and said, “Son, how can I help you?”

He made sure that my parents were notified.”

“Can you tell me anything about Ted Heath himself?”

“Ted was a very quiet man. Not that easy to talk to. He was just very quiet. When he was conducting his band, if someone was having trouble, he would go and stand right in front of him, like Benny Goodman. You didn’t want him standing in front of you. His band was so good, so precise!

After Cheltenham, I baled out because my foot got infected. I left the band. That was in1958. The Heath band was in Cheltenham at that time. I stayed at Jimmy Coombe’s house. His wife Audrey took me to the hospital every day to change the dressing on my foot.”

“That is when you got to know his daughter Kay?”

150 ~ David Whitfield Show

“Yes, eventually I rejoined the band. They didn’t want me to play the homecoming concert because they felt that I had abandoned the band but I was seriously ill! Luckily I got full mobility back in my foot, so that was good.

I went to a few recording sessions and concert dates with Jimmy. It was a great experience. He was a real character. I kept asking Bobby Pratt, “How do you play like that?” He would say, “I don’t know. I just do it.”

So, one of the guys says, I thought I was really going to hear how he did it, he says, “I do it with brute force and bloody ignorance!”

“How old were the guys in Ted Heath’s band?”

“They were anywhere from twenty to sixty. Roy Reynolds played with Stan Kenton. He was at my house when Stan died. Just broke him up. He played baritone sax and then switched to tenor sax. If you ever get the chance to hear a recording called, ‘Roy’s Blues,’ do so.’

“After London, you came back to Vancouver?”

“I came back of course, with the band in 1958 and then I went back to England in 1959. Kay and I were married and we lived in England until1963. I kind of regret leaving England, I think that I might have done better in England.”

“You played professionally in England?”

“Yes.” “Anything more you want to add about England?”

I played a summer season on the North Pier in Blackpool for the David Whitfield Show. At the end of the season, the weather was getting rough and the sea was actually coming into the pit. I remember thinking, “I’m not going down with the ship.”

ART TUSVIK ~ 151

In order to stay in London, I got myself a job as a chauffeur. So I had a day job. I was working nights at an Irish Club in ‘Cricklewood,’ six nights a week. I will never forget St. Patricks Day. We were told there would be no breaks. There was a guy being chased and they tried to get him on the bandstand. The leader of the band was a tenor sax player. He had about size twelve brogues. I remember him putting his foot in this guys face and pushing him back into the crowd.

The music went flying like confetti.

I did a show here in Vancouver with Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer. There was a fight afterwards in the parking lot, band mentality, I guess! My first gig in Vancouver was playing at the Cave with Fraser MacPhearson for the Mills Brothers. I was really too young but I got called because I could read and that was all because of Arthur Delamont. I knew how to read the cuts and to be spontaneous.

Arthur taught us how to do it all. He also taught us endurance. Nonstop playing! You had to learn to pace yourself.”

“Brian Bolam worked many circus gigs. You had to be able to read the music quickly.”

“I remember a circus story, after the show, I was trying to get back to my trumpet case to get something. This rental cop was trying to stop me from going into the bandroom. So I pushed him out of the way. I went roaring around the corner and I’m looking at the lion tamer. His name was ‘Tarzan Zirini.’ He was standing looking at this lion, which was out of his cage. Tarzan had a chair in his hand. The lion looked at me and then looked at him and turned around and went back into its cage. I said to George, that was his actual name, “I am sorry I got in the way.” He said, “I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life. If the cat looks at me, he’s got trouble. You’re dinner!”

Another fellow named Bob Hamper who played trombone in

152 ~ Gerry Deagle

Brian’s circus band, always liked to give the cats a razz! They were bringing the cats in, in the wagons and Bob’s making noises at the cat with his trombone.

“Rah,Rah,Rah,Rah.” The cat leaned over, lifted his leg and pissed at him. Must have gone thirty feet! Bob had to throw his suit away because it smelled so bad.

The bandleader was a real character. He says, “I told you so. Don’t mess around with the cats.”

He was part Apache, Mexican and Italian. There was a guy who threw a bottle at the band. The bandleader tried to chase him through the stands. He had a pacemaker. He had to telephone in because the pacemaker started acting up. They said, “We are sending an ambulance to get you Where exactly are you?”

Great memories! There was this kid who played trumpet and his wife played piano and organ. I remember this Norman Rockwell painting on the wall; of the old farmer and his wife in rural America.

They looked exactly like them.”

“Did you ever hear of anyone jumping over board in Southampton, as the boat pulled away?”

“Gerry Deagle almost fell over board in a storm. I remember on the island of Jersey, we would get the smaller boys to go down these holes and bring up German army helmets that had been dumped. The Germans left a lot of stuff!”

“Do you remember any other bands?”

“Kenny Ball was later on in 1959. He recorded Midnight in Moscow.’ We used to go to Archer Street in Soho, where the musicians congregated. Thousands used to go there to get gigs and to get paid.

ART TUSVIK ~ 153

ABOVE: 1955 ‘The Three Amigos, ‘Art, Donny Cark and Don Charles BELOW 1965 Mr D, Art and Arnie Chycoski at a BC Lions game

154 ~ Gordy Delamont

Gordy Delamont, in 1958, bet me I couldn’t play a Double F. I did it every time. Just popped it out! Gordy’s daughter Susan came on the 1958 trip. He had a hard time keeping the guys away from her.

She looked much older than fourteen. Brian Parkinson started going out with her on the trip.”

‘How was Gordy Delamont?”

“Nice guy, someone you could hang out with, nothing like Arthur.

Arthur was very strict. Gordon was not nearly as strict. I remember in Paris, everyone thought the bidets were foot baths.

Arnie Emery was a remarkable player. Wound up becoming a good doctor as well. His daughter was born blind. She became a good singer.”

“Who would you say were the three people who influenced your life the most?”

“I would have to say for sure, Arthur and Jimmy Coombes. The third one, I will have to think about that for a while!”

CHAPTER 11

Jimmy Coombes “Dad loved Sinatra!

Dad said,’ We went in and rehearsed his numbers. Sinatra came in and sang them perfectly; in the can the first time, “Thank you gentlemen, a case of scotch for the band.”

Unbelievabl stuff! Mel Torme, and Tony Bennett were others whom were as professional as Sinatra. Dad worked with them as well. He also worked with the lovely Rosemary Clooney in London.” (PHOTO: 1966 Jimmy with Bill Good) After hearing Art Tusvik’s stories about the Ted Heath band, I was interested in finding out more about the Kitsie boy’s relationship with Ted Heath, Jimmy Coombes and England in the 1950s. I called Kay Coombes, Tusvik, Donson, Jimmy’s daughter, and ask her if I could drop by and talk to her about those days. Here is what she had to say: “Dad was an orphan. His mom died when he was born.

When he was six months old, his dad took him and his brother and dumped them on the steps of an orphanage. Dad never saw him again.

Dad was raised in the orphanage in Manchester. When

156 ~ Geraldo’s band

Dad reached fifteen, he was out of the orphanage. He had only two choices, either go and work in the cotton mills in Manchester or join the army. He went into the army, the Lancashire Fusiliers. Somebody recognized his musical ability and they got him playing the trumpet. From the Lancashire Fusiliers he went into the Scots Guards and then into the Welsh Guards where he stayed for twenty-five years. He was in the Guards during the war and then for a while after the war. During that time he switched to the trombone. Also during that time, the army sent him to Kneller Hall, which is the British Military College where they train band directors for their various military bands. That is where he received all his training and degrees which helped him immensely when he came to Vancouver.

During the war, he played concerts in Hyde Park with the Welsh Guards while the bombs were dropping on London.

My mother was evacuated to Wales. I was born in Wales in 1940. The concerts in the parks continued throughout the war in order to keep up the morale of the people. At the same time he was playing in the parks with the Welsh Guards, he was working in ‘Churchill’s Club’ at night; out of the Guards uniform and into the tuxedo. He also played with Geraldo’s band. This one night there was a big event at Buckingham Palace because the King and Queen stayed in London during the war. Dad thought, “I am going to miss my gig at the club.”

He really needed the money because he didn’t make much in the army. Dad had to stay and play with the Guards at this fancy ball at Buckingham Palace. That night, the club that he worked in was wiped out by a German bomb. All the

JIMMY COOMBES ~ 157

musicians he worked with were killed. Dad was so lucky!

Dad met Ted Heath when they were both playing in Geraldo’s band. Geraldo’s was THE big band during the war. They both played in Geraldo’s and the Ambrose bands.

Dad also sang in the band during the war. There was a vocal group called “Four Boys and A Girl.” Dad was one of the boys.

After the war ended, Dad was still in the army, Ted said, “I am going to form a band like Glenn Miller.”

He was very impressed with the Glenn Miller sound. He said to Dad, “I want you to come with me.”

Dad was the original member. Then Les Gilbert came along on alto sax. His musicians all came out of the army. They were playing lots of gigs but making no money. It was a case of having just enough money for the arrangements and the guys had to play for nothing. For years they didn’t make any money. And then they took off!

Jack Parnell was the original drummer. Paul Carpenter was their original singer. He was a Canadian. Jack Parnell used to sing as well.

When dad came to Vancouver he got a job teaching at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind. He taught at UBC as well.

Sharman King was one of Dad’s students. So between UBC, the blind school and the VSO, Dad made a pretty good living with his music in Vancouver. The sad part of it was when he turned 65 the VSO forced him to retire. He had played in the London Symphony and with all the big guys in London before coming to Vancouver.

After the Heath band disbanded, Dad was really lucky.

158 ~ Frank Sinatra

He did, “Stop The World I Want To Get Off,” with Anthony Newley. Anthony Newley was really a good friend of Dads.

He worked with Tom Jones. He did a recording with Frank Sinatra. Dad knew Sinatra very well. He said, “Sinatra was the most professional person I have ever worked with in my life.”

Dad loved Sinatra! Dad said, “We went in and rehearsed his numbers. Sinatra came in and sang them perfectly, in the can the first time. Thank you gentlemen, a case of scotch for the band.”

Unbelievable stuff! Mel Torme and Tony Bennett were others whom were as professional as Sinatra. Dad worked with them as well. He also worked with the lovely Rosemary Clooney in London. Dad said, “Sinatra could hear every note the band played.”

“How did your dad first come in contact with the Kits Boy’s Band?”

“The band was playing at the Palace Theatre in Blackpool.

Art and some of the others went to hear the Heath band at the Winter Gardens. Afterwards, Art went up and introduced himself to Dad. It was not too long after that, that the Heath band came to North America on an exchange with the Stan Kenton band.

When the Heath band came to Vancouver, Art met him again.

Then in 1958, Art went to England again with the Kits band.

Art and some of the boys went to the ‘Hammersmith Palais’ in London to hear the Heath band. I was there with a girl friend and went out on to the floor to dance.”

“Art told me, “I liked what I saw!”

“Dad was pretty impressed with the level of playing of

JIMMY COOMBES ~ 159

the Kits band.

Art and I were married in London in 1960. We came to Vancouver in 1963. Dad came over a year later in 1964. Art loved London and did pretty well in London. I think that he would have been happier if he had stayed in London. There was much more going on musically in London than in Vancouver.

It was a tough life for Dad in the army in England. The trooping of the color lasted four or five hours. That is a long time to be standing around in uniform. They did not make much money in the army. It was not much better at first in the Heath band. When I was a child, I would go for weeks without seeing my dad. He would be in bed when I left for school and when I returned home he would be gone to a gig.

I got into a routine of getting up at three in the morning when he got home and sitting and talking with him for a while.We would talk about music, about the rehearsals, about the gigs.

I still had to get up and go to school the next morning but it was the only way that I could get to see my dad. To this day, I still wake up at three in the morning. When they were working locally, I would go to their dances. As I got older, the guys in the band started looking pretty good but they were all forbidden to have anything to do with me. Dad made sure that they all knew that I was off limits. They were all such good friends. Whenever a new member joined the band, like Bobby Pratt, they came over to the house and lived with us for a while. Jackie Armstrong lived with us for six months.

Stan Roderick did as well. And I, of course, was very popular in school because the Bobby Brittens and the Dickie Valentines of the band were like the Beatles of the day and I

160 ~ Hyde Park

day and I knew them all. All the girls knew, if they hung out with me, they would get to know these guys because they all hung out at our house. It was amazing how many friends I had in those days.

Dad had a lot of close calls during the war. One time he was chugging along to the train station, his case in one hand and his mute in the other and a bomb came down about a block away. He just went flat. It wrecked his trombone and his mute. He was okay! He was on his way to a Guard’s concert at Hyde Park, every Sunday afternoon. “We do not stop the band concerts,” they said. Around the bandstand in Hyde Park it was just packed. People knew the band would be there and they looked forward to the concerts.

In the early part of the war, it was not so bad because they only bombed at night. But later they bombed day and night. The bombs fell often in Central London and that is where Hyde Park is located.”

“Do you have any other stories that your dad told you about playing with the Guard’s Band?”

“Yes, we had a Scotty dog named Kim. When Mom and I were evacuated to Wales, Dad didn’t like leaving him at home, so Dad took him with him to a band concert at Hyde Park and put him under his chair. In those days, the bandsmen wore these

JIMMY COOMBES ~ 161

long ‘grey coats’ in the winter, when it was cold, so the coat hid the dog. Dad thought, “I’m laughing!”

Except he forgot the dog howled. When the music started the dog howled. The band conductor looked at my dad and he got six weeks scrubbing barrick’s floors.

Life on the road was tough in the early days, with the Heath band, town after town, no money. Get on the bus, C1945 - Back row: Harry Roche, Laddy Busby, Harry Letham, Dave Goldberg, Jimmy Coombes, Ted Heath, Jack Parnell, Reg Owen, Les Gilbert, Johnny Gray, Norman Stenfalt, Ronnie Scott, Stan Roderick, Alan Franks; Front row: Dave Shand, Charlie Short, Kenny Baker, Jack Bentley

162 ~ Bobby Pratt

play the gig, no showers, no hotels. After two weeks, Dad would come home a mess. It is a wonder that he lived as long as he did.”

“Maybe it kept him young.”

“Maybe it did! They slept on the bus.They didn’t eat well.

They were drinking all the time. There was always a Mickey in his mute case.

I remember when Bobby Pratt joined the band. He was in his early twenties. No one had ever heard a trumpet player like him. He was an amazing man. Every Sunday night, the Heath band would play at the London Palladium. Bobby would drink a bottle of scotch before the show. This one night, he just fell off the stage. He stood up, fell off the stage, got back up and continued playing. You would never know that he was drunk by his playing. It was very sad in the end.

He wasn’t allowed to drive anymore and didn’t play. But he knew whenever a recording session was coming up. He would put his trumpet in the case and go down to the studio.

He would walk into the studio; sit down with his trumpet on his lap. He was beyond playing; the drinking had gotten so bad. At the end of the gig, he would put his trumpet back in the case and walk out. Tina, his wife would say, “How did the gig go?”

“Oh great, we got it the first time.”

The recording studio was really good about it; they would leave a place for him. He would think that he did the gig.

Eventually, he stuck his head in the gas oven in his kitchen.

He was just a good old Scottish lad who liked to drink.”

“What was the story surrounding Art leaving the band in 1958 after his accident?”

JIMMY COOMBES ~ 163

“Art decided that he was going to leave the band because he injured his foot when a piece of glass had fallen on it, on the bus in Scotland. My mom took him to the hospital to get his foot fixed. He felt that he needed to have some treatment for the foot but his trumpet was locked up in the bandstand. My mom and Arthur Delamont were in a pub drinking sherry.”

“Did Arthur know that he was drinking sherry?”

“I think so. He may not have known what sherry was but he was drinking it. While Mom was keeping Delamont busy, Art and I broke into the bandstand and retrieved Art’s trumpet. This was in Cheltenham. Everyone was laughing about it because it was the only time anyone had ever seen Delamont drink. It was my mom’s job to keep him busy and she got him into the sherry.”

“I’ll bet that he thought it was nonalcoholic. But I wonder how she got him into a pub?”

“That could be. That is when Art left the band and stayed with us. I was working, so Mom took him everyday to the hospital to get his foot dressed. His foot had gotten infected in Scotland. I think going to the hospital everyday, saved his foot. When Art rejoined the band for the trip back to Vancouver, none of the boys would talk to him. They thought that he had abandoned the band but he was so sick. I do not think that Delamont and the guys realized how sick Art really was at the time. Art was quite upset about the way he was treated. Delamont actually told the guys, “I forbid you to talk to him!”

The band was sailing back to Montreal on the boat. It was a four day trip and none of the guys would talk to Art.”

164 ~ Ted Heath

“Not even Ted Lazenby and Ken Sotvedt?”

“No, not even them. The guys were all scared of Delamont.

I remember in the summer, the Heath band would play in Jersey and at the Tower Ballroom and at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. It was great as a kid because we would go for a month. In the daytime, we would hang out on the beach. In St. Helens, on Jersey, we had a great time. I still have a scar on my thumb where Ted jammed my thumb in the door of his car. That’s my Ted Heath scar. It was just great! We were so lucky as kids. That was before they got really big. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Once they got on the charts and became really big, there was no more Jersey and Blackpool for a month. No more going to Torquay.”

“What was Ted Heath like?”

“He was a very quiet man, a nice man, a good guy but a taskmaster. If you played a wrong note, he would go over and stand in front of you and stare. He was a good man to work for and his band was so tight. Every one of his musicians was top notch. There was no room for any mediocre players.”

“They were the top band in Britain.”

“That’s right! Johnny Dankworth had a good band as well.

But I really think that the Ted Heath Band was the best band that Britain ever had. John Keating was Ted’s number one arranger in those days. Other bands in Britain during the war were Geraldo’s, the Ambrose Band, Cyril Stapleton, Henry Ball but they were more like society bands. They would play for the Balls at the Savoy and at the Dorchester hotels.

The Heath band did five months at the Savoy as the back up

JIMMY COOMBES ~ 165

band for Lena Horne. Dad said, “She was lovely!”

There was another band in England in those days called Edmundo Ross. He was very popular, a Latin band! The resident band at the Hammersmith Palais in London was Ken MacIntosh. Roy Reynolds played with that band.

There was a ballroom called the Astoria Ballroom on Tottenham Court Road. Art used to work there with a band called Ronnie Rand and his band. They did four o’clock in the afternoon tea dances and singers could come in and sing with the band. This one guy comes in named Gerry Dorsey.

Art says, “There was this one guy who worked on the double decker buses. He was a conductor, a good looking guy! The women all loved him. He comes in, sings a couple of numbers and then goes. Our bands resident singer left, so this Gerry Dorsey comes in and auditions for the job. He didn’t get the gig because his timing was so bad. Later, he changed his name to Englebert Humperdinck!”

When the Heath Band played Sunday nights at the London Palladium in 1959, I used to go up and watch the band rehearse and then we would all go down to the pub. This one time Dad says to me, “Love, you should stay and listen to this young group.

They are opening for us. They are called the Quarrymen.

They have rather long hair but they are very interesting.” I said, “Okay Dad! I didn’t really want to; I wanted to go to the pub. Afterwards, I went and had a little chat with these guys.

Their names were John, George and Paul. I told them that

166 ~ The Beatles!

everyone was going down to the pub, so they escorted me down to the pub. Really nice kids! Anyway, I didn’t give it another thought. I came to Canada and all of a sudden I am watching the television and these three guys come on stage.

There was actually four now. The fourth one’s name was ‘Ringo’ and they had changed their name to the Beatles!”

Just a great time!”

The Coldstream Guard’s Band in London in 1953 from Bill Good’s albums, courtesy Gerry Good

CHAPTER 12

Ron Pajala “Tell me about playing in the vaudeville theatres in England?”

“We would play for a week in each town. There were lots of billboards with our name on them.

I played the accordion on all the stages. At one of the places, there was a ‘tassel dancer,’ named ‘Tessie O’Shea.’ When her act was on, us boys were always there watching.”

Ron Pajala was my old band director at John Oliver high school, so it was a real treat to see him again after so many years and to hear his stories about his days in the Kits band.

“How did you get into the Kits Band?’

“I was taking saxophone lessons at ‘Barney’s Music,’ from one of the top saxophone teachers in Vancouver. I cannot remember his name but he was top notch. That would have been around 1952. I think my teacher mentioned to my mother that she should take me down to the Kitsilano Boys’ band. He thought it would be a good experience. On Monday she took me down to General Gordon School. I took my saxophone and sat down with the band. When Arthur started the band, he usually gave the down beat and boom the band

168 ~ Bob Dressler

was off; immediately! I could hardly keep up and he kept looking at me. It was a frightening experience, going from an understanding music teacher to this guy. Tears started coming from my eyes. After it was finished, I said to my mother, “I’m not going there again!” She said, “Oh yes you are!”

She knew! She knew because she had heard the band playing somewhere. Once I started going, it got better. Soon, I learned to read music quickly. His idea was to read a piece of music through and then go on to the next piece. I remember one thing that I got into trouble for was I never turned the music over properly. I jumbled it up. That really upset him.”

“You turned it over to the left.”

“He always had it done ahead of time and never take it home. I think he barked at me about that.

Anytime I honked a sour note, he looked at me. I didn’t honk it again. I was in the PNE parade.”

“When did you start playing the accordion?’

“Oh, I was playing the accordion a long time before Kits. I went to Bob Dressler’s studio for accordion lessons. Bob Dressler was the accordion teacher at ‘Barney’s Music.’ They were located downtown on Granville Street next to the old Hotel Vancouver. Later they moved to North Vancouver.”

“How did Arthur find out that you played the accordion?”

“Good question, maybe my mother told him. I was doing stage shows. There was a stage show at the old Orpheum Theatre, where the Sears Centre is now located. I played accordion solos on the stage of the old Beacon Theatre as well.”

“That must have been the tail end of vaudeville?”

RON PAJALA ~ 169

“Yes, it was very frightening and quite an experience.”

“How did you get involved in that?”

“I was in a ‘young peoples’ variety show. I can’t remember the name of it. The old Orpheum Theatre faced on to Granville Street, just east of the old Hotel Vancouver. The hotel was in the process of being torn down. The new Hotel Vancouver had already been built.”

“Do you remember the Castle Hotel?”

“Oh yes, It was on the other side of the street, across from the old Hotel Vancouver. “ “Maybe Arthur saw you playing on the stage of the old Orpheum?”

He was pretty in touch with what was going on in town.”

“Maybe, maybe he did! Anyway, he asked me to go on the 1953 band trip but my parents couldn’t afford it. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“How old were you on the trip?”

“I was fifteen or sixteen. I was the same age as Art Tusvik. We were two of the younger boys.

Before the 1953 trip, I played the accordion at a few concerts with the band around Vancouver. It was frightening. I had to get out there while the band was having a rest. He didn’t want a piece that was too long. He knew what he wanted and he didn’t want anything too heavy. I did things like, ‘The Beer Barrel Polka,’ with the bellow shake, well known, entertaining tunes. On the concert stages in Europe, in the theatres, it went over big time. The audience would clap.”

“Any trouble lugging the accordion around Europe?”

“No, it was well padded. He was very fussy about the instruments.

That was very important! Before I went to Europe, I had to learn

170 ~ Lady Alexandra

to march. We marched British style, being that Arthur had been in the Salvation Army. That was a good experience. I can remember marching in the PNE parade. It was a long way up Burrard Street to Hastings Street and up to Clark Drive. The thing that you had to watch out for in those days was the street car tracks. At Hastings and Main, there was an island, where people could stand and wait for the street cars. I could see ahead that the band was dividing up when it reached Hastings and Main. I almost tripped on that island.”

“Tell me about the train ride across Canada?” Was that when you became a life long steam and rail aficionado?”

“No, I had been a big steamship and rail fan long before 1953.

It all started when we lived in Britannia Beach. My dad worked in the concentrator. He was a millwright. He worked in the townsite up above. He was quite an outdoorsman and a hunter. He would go out in the morning and come back with a deer.

When we went to Vancouver, we went on the Union Steamships.

So, I got really interested in Union Steamships. I remember the first time that we went to Vancouver. We stayed in the old Orville Hotel on Hastings Street. It is still there! My parents were both born in Finland. On that first trip we were on the Lady Alexandra. I would have been about five years old. We were on the upper deck and the whistle blew. I cried but I loved it. From then on, every time I went on those boats, I had to be by the whistle. We were a very emotional family.

My dad built a house at Britannia Beach. I used to go down to the waterfront. As soon as the boat came in to Britannia Beach, I would wave. One of the captains must have noticed me because he always blew the whistle. That became a habit. I got to go on the Lady Alexandra and the Lady Cecilia. I could tell them apart from a distance.

So, I got really interested in steamboats. That eventually switched over to steam locomotives.

RON PAJALA ~ 171

The trip across Canada in 1953, on the steam train was great! I finally got to go on an extended rail trip. We had tourist cars, uppers and lowers. Anytime we stopped for longer than ten minutes, the band got out with their instruments and played a little concert on the platform for the locals. I think that our cars were right behind the baggage car. There was the engine, the baggage car and then our two cars. Arthur had his own little compartment for himself and for Lillie.

We practiced sectional rehearsals in the cars. We played our concerts in each town. Some days we were just traveling. I would be in my upper birth at night and the train would come to a halt with a loud screech. and then complete silence. I would get down and go to the nearest vestibule, to see at which town we had arrived.

It was interesting and we kept our playing up. That is something that I learned which I applied in my own band trips in later years. You don’t go somewhere without playing for long periods of time. There has to be three things! You have to play as much as possible, there has to be an educational component to the tour and it has to be fun, exciting and interesting for all.

On the boat, we played for the first class passengers and for the third class passengers. Because the Samaria was an older ship, we went the northern route, through the Belle Isle Strait, above Newfoundland. There were all these huge icebergs. On the bridge, they kept watch because we didn’t want to become another Titanic. The icebergs were just amazing. Only one third of them is above the water. After that, we ran into a huge Atlantic storm. We would be out on the deck and try to run from one door to another and hope that we did not get soaked by a gigantic wave. Art Tusvik and I were out on the middle of the stern (back) deck and Art says, “Why don’t we go from here right to the back?”

We took off and the next thing I hear is a bang coming from the

172 ~ ’Tessie O’Shea

deck. I didn’t know what to do. Art had fallen on the deck. He got up quickly and followed me back but it was very dangerous. I bawled him out for that one. I couldn’t believe that such a big ship could be tossed around so easily. When we arrived in Southampton, we sailed right through the ‘Spithead Revue,’ past two Russian ships. We were playing on deck at the time. It was during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. I wanted to take pictures of the ships but it was awkward.

There was some intrigue surrounding the two Russian ships. Apparently the British caught some frogmen in the water near the two ships. The ships were the ‘Kruschev’ and the ‘Balganin.’”

“Tell me about playing in the vaudeville theatres in England?”

“We would play for a week in each town. There were lots of billboards with our name on them. I played the accordion on all the stages. At one of the places, there was a ‘tassel dancer,’ named’Tessie O’Shea.’ When her act was on, us boys were always there watching.

We saw the ‘Ted Heath Band’ in Blackpool. Often we would follow or would be followed by one of the Queen’s Guard bands; the Grenadier Guards or the Coldstream Guards.”

“It was pretty good company!”

“That’s right!”

“Do you remember anything else about the trip?’

“In Paris, Art Tusvik and I went to the Follies Bergere. Afterwards we went to a cafe in Pigalle and a naked lady sat on my lap, so much for the museums. We were late getting back for the bus but at least he didn’t leave us stranded. In Portsmouth the largest cruiser in the Royal Canadian Navy, the HMS Ontario was in dock. We were invited by the admiral to tour the ship.”

“Tell me about after the trip?”

“The year 1955 was my high school graduation year from John Oliver High School. Arthur wanted me to go on the 1955 trip but

RON PAJALA ~ 173

174 ~ Sherwood Robinson

if I had, I would have missed graduation. I also had my own dance band that played regularly for Scandinavian functions and the other fellows in the band would have been out of work had I gone. We played at the Swedish Park on Friday and Saturdays.

After high school, I went to UBC, into education. I took history and geography. I graduated from UBC in 1959.”

“Did you play with Arthur’s pep band at UBC?” “I played some but not much. It wasn’t really my cup of tea. Funny though when I started at John Oliver, the first band I started was a pep band (chuckle, chuckle). I had my own dance band all through university. I remember Arthur asking me to go on the 1955 trip but another reason I couldn’t go was the money that I was making with my dance band, also went to help out my family. I think that he was disappointed that I couldn’t go.”

“Your first teaching assignment then was at John Oliver?”

“That’s right. ‘Sherwood Robinson had an orchestra but that was all they had when I started. As I said my first band was a pep band. In 1963 I took my first trip with my own band to Rossland, BC.” “I remember! I was on that trip.”

“Yes, you certainly were. The next one we went on was to Jasper/ Edmonton. Then another year we went to Lillooett, in the spring. I always tried to travel by train. We got great rates back in those days.

We put the cars off in Edmonton. The day we were supposed to leave Edmonton, the trains were a day late because of a big snow storm. The steam hoses would freeze up. So we had an extra day in Edmonton. I had to call back to the school and tell them that we would be a day late. When we arrived back in Vancouver, the principal ‘Eric Kelly,’ was down at the train station with several parents to greet us. I always thought that was very nice of him.”

‘He was a nice guy, as I recall. Tell me about Wally?”

RON PAJALA ~ 175

“Allen Lehtonen was his real name. He was a Finlander as well.

His parents had broken up and he wound up at Tupper High School.

Then he came to John Oliver. His picture is up on the wall in Tupper school. Apparently he was quite a character. The band kids though, just loved him! I took my junior band to Saskatchewan one year on an exchange with Wally at his school in Saskatchewan. He taught at a school in a small town just north of Moose Jaw. That year I managed to get our principal to agree to two trips for my band, one for the seniors and one for the juniors. That would have been in the late 1970s. That was the last chance anyone had to travel that route on the CPR.” “Did you go on any other trips after Saskatchewan?’

“Oh yes, many, one year the senior band went across Canada to Oshawa, Ontario. My senior band actually made two trips across Canada. Our second trip was to Ottawa. We played for Prime Minister Trudeau in the lobby of the Parliament buildings. On the second trip, we played for Jean Chretien. He came down and spoke to the band. He wasn’t the prime minister yet. Then, in 1973, I took my senior band to Europe. That was like one of Delamont’s trips. It was for four months. There was muchfund raising for that trip.

We played for Trudeau once here, as well, in Vancouver, at the Italian Centre. I always joked that, “After we played for him, he had a hard time getting re-elected.”

He was very gracious. He spoke to the band. We called ourselves the ‘John Oliver Pops band.’ We went to the US a couple of times, once to Portland.”

“Tell me about the trip to Europe with your own band?”

“Actually, we went twice to Europe, once in 1973 and I forget the other year. The first trip we played in Holland. We flew to Amsterdam. We went to Cologne, Germany. We traveled down to Paris.

176 ~ Jim Killeen

We played in Copenhagen. On the first trip, we played for the ‘Chancellor of West Germany.’We played in Rotterdam. The parents committee arranged the trip. We had one bus with a trailer which took us everywhere. In Denmark, we played for ‘ring-tilting.’All these horsemen come with a a lance and they have to run their lance through the rings. It is a big competition in Denmark. Before the competition, there is a parade and a tattoo. We marched in the parade.

Then we took a boat to England across the North Sea. We stayed in hotels most of the time. We also went to Belgium and to Ireland.

We played in Hamburg and played in the ‘Princes’ Street Gardens,’ in Edinburgh, Scotland. We went to Glasgow and played in Victoria Park. All these bandmasters came up afterwards and shook my hand.”

“What do you want to say about your time at Tupper High School?”

“Jim Killeen was the principal at Tupper High School. He asked me to come over and see if I could develop a band program. I started Tuesday night band rehearsals. Some of my kids from John Oliver came over. As soon as they saw that the band had structure, they didn’t miss. There were a couple of teachers at Tupper who played.

They had a spare during band rehearsals, so they came over and joined us. One was the constable for the school. He played the tenor sax. It was a smaller band than I had at John Oliver. We went on a few trips. I retired from teaching in 1991. I taught bands for thirtytwo years. That was long enough!”

CHAPTER 13

Gordy Brown “I remember the Ted Heath Orchestra. We would go up and listen to them between breaks.

One time we were invited back stage to meet the guys. Bobby Pratt was the lead trumpet player. I had all his records.

At intermission, he comes down, opens up his trumpet case, grabs a chicken and a bottle of rye. I remember thinking to myself, “And you’ve made it?”

The Brown brothers, Ritchie, Gordy and Barry were all in the band throughout the 1950s. Their dad supplied the food for the bands train trips across Canada. Ritchie had passed on some years before I met Gordy and Barry. I thought they might be able to offer some insight into what it had been like to be in the band during the mid 1950s.

“How did you get into the Kits Band?”

“My brothers were in the band, my older brother Richard.

My mother started me out on guitar but she found out I was going to football rather than going to my guitar lessons. She had paid for a month. This was around 1946-47. I wound up taking private lessons from Mr D. She bought me a C melody saxophone from Mr D. I still have it. We lived quite close to him, so he would pick me up and take me to his various

178 ~ Richard Brown

various bands, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Kitsilano and so on. I was invited to join the Kits band in 1950. In 1953, I turned sixteen on the trip.”

“In how many of Arthur’s other bands did you play?”

“I played in most of his bands.”

“Do you have any stories from those days?”

“Over the years I came to the conclusion that I had many friends who started off in the band but never made it. They couldn’t take the discipline and his mannerisms. You had to be the type of person who when he said you can’t do some thing, you would say, “I’ll show you. I can do it!”

“And that’s exactly what he wanted. He had a habit of asking us what we thought of the programs he chose. In 1955, I remember he asked me and I said, “Mr D, if I’ve learned nothing else it is that you are going to play the program you want to play, regardless of what I or anyone else says.”

“He always seemed to be busy recruiting boys from all over Vancouver for his various bands.”

“That’s right, he had his finger on the pulse. He knew where all these players were and how to draw on them.”

“But he was also the only show in town.”

“Yes and he didn’t have to worry about a lawyer, in those days, if he hit the kid on the head.”

“He also had a lot of lines that he kept on using throughout the years and the same with the music and they continued to work. It’s really amazing!”

“It was phenomenal actually,” I added.

“He knew exactly what was going on. I remember

GORDY BROWN ~ 179

smoking on the train with the window open and Delamont walked by. He didn’t say a word. Can you imagine going on a trip today for five months with thirty-nine boys, who were all sixteen years of age, no way.”

“Your brother Richard did not go on any trips?”

“Yes, he went on the 1950 trip. He passed away about four years ago.”

“Do you have any stories from the trips?”

“On the train, the ladies and Mr D and the younger boys, all stayed in the first train car, with the food. The older boys were in the second car, including myself. My dad had organized all the groceries for the train. There was a case of crab meat in the first car. We tried to swipe a few of them. I remember the first morning. I’m standing trying to shave and I remember thinking to myself, “What am I doing here?”

All the war stories that were floating around from people we met in England were amazing. At the end of the trip we had three days off and we went to Paris. We found a hotel at a low rate, only to find out it was a hotel of ill repute. Here I am, a fifteen year old kid, walking across the street, while all these ladies are gathering in the pub. We talked to them and to find out it was just a business to them was a great education.

One of the boys wrote home and told his parents about the hotel. When we arrived home, my dad said to me, “How was the accommodation in Paris?”

“In England we played three shows a day in vaudeville.

When we traveled by bus, two of the guys would go with a lorry and the instruments. The lorry kept passing us and then would disappear when a pub came along. I don’t think

180 ~ BBC

GORDY BROWN ~ 181

1953 The boys performing a broadcast at BBC Studios in London.

Gordy is the third boy along in the saxophne section. Ron Pajala is to his right. Michael Hadley is behind, second boy in.

182 ~ Bobby Pratt

Arthur ever caught on.”

“Vera said an interesting thing to me the other day. She said, “Dad was not a very educated man. He had very little education. And he was a very shy man, except he had his circle.

If he was talking about music or to a musical person, he was in his element But outside of that, he couldn’t sit down and talk about world affairs or whatever.

And I guess it was true.”

“I never thought about it.”

“Here, he took many boys on educational trips to Europe.

Everyone regarded him as well educated and well traveled.

He was well traveled but not well educated. Not even as well as most of the boys. I wonder if he ever went into a museum.

He never did anything else, never knew anything else.”

“It was an incredible experience. I remember the Ted Heath Orchestra. We would go up and listen to them between breaks. One time we were invited back stage to meet the guys. I had all their records. Bobby Pratt was the lead trumpet player. At intermission, he comes down, opens up his trumpet case and grabs a chicken and a bottle of rye. I remember thinking to myself, “And you’ve made it?”

That was the life of a professional musician. If you think about it, you’re working while everyone else is playing. It’s a tough life.”

“What do you recall about Ted Lazenby?”

“Tremendous trombone player but he never could settle into the establishment. If he knew he could play better than the guy playing first on a symphony part, he would say

GORDY BROWN ~ 183

something like, “He shouldn’t be there, I should.”

“Do you have any stories from the 1955 trip?”

In the staterooms on the boat, which were converted troop ships, we used to fill our sink with water and put beer bottles in it. With the ships swaying, the bottles used to clang against the sink. There was a knock on the door. It was Arnold Emery’s mother. I sat in the sink, to keep the bottles quiet. She said, “Arnold, Mr. Delamont has heard that some of the boys are smuggling beer into their rooms. He just wants to let them know that he’s aware.”

I thought at the time, “How naive.” But now, I realize they knew exactly who was doing it, us! They were giving us some rope.

Sneer, was my nickname. Often when someone told a joke, I was capable of keeping a straight face to the end and then asking, “What was the punch line?”

To this day they call me sneer.

There was one fellow in the band who had no trouble meeting girls at any place we stopped. We knew ahead of time where we were going to be. We arranged for one of the girls to write him a letter and say, “I am so excited. I am in a family way. I can hardly wait to meet your parents.”

When the mail came, we watched him open the letter. One boy was humming a lullaby. He turned so white that we decided that was enough and told him.

I had to write home to get permission from my dad to go

184 ~ Jenny Emery

to Paris. Arthur told me to. For most of us it was our first time away from home. Some of us lost all our spending money by the time we reached the east coast of Canada, from playing cards. One of the guys stepped out of line, so we tied him to a chair and then to a post in the ladies washroom. That smartened him up. Someone released him but it was all just good clean fun.

In Regina, the RCMP came to the train. We had curtains on the bunks, so we tied them across the aisle. It had nothing to do with the band, just being kids.

“After the 1955 trip you left the band?”

“Yes, I used to play in professional bands with Dal at the Lion’s games and with Arthur on the boat jobs. We would have to change outside the car, into our uniforms but we were Kits boys, so we could do it.

Just to qualify professional, we were not Arnie Chycoski’s but we did get paid. Arnie was a star!

My four boys were all introduced to an instrument but they didn’t take to them. They went into sports instead. Soccer was big. I became President of the soccer club for fifteen years. That would be 1965 to 1979.

Then I have played the last twenty years with the Legion band, as well as the reunion concerts.”

“What can you tell me about Arnold Emery?”

“He became a tremendous musician and an incredible doctor. Anytime you confronted him with a problem he didn’t know, he would send you to someone who did know.

He was a very capable and dedicated doctor. He passed away a while ago. I wanted to go and see him at the end, but his wife said,

GORDY BROWN ~ 185

“No, just remember him the way he was.”

His daughter was a terrific singer. Her name is Jenny. She lives in the US now. She came over to the house one day and was playing catch with my number three son. She missed the ball and he said, “You’re supposed to catch it.” She replied, “Well, I’m blind you know!”

She was born blind. She could ride her bike. She got around on the bus. She just recently married another blind fellow, who teaches computer to blind kids. Roberta was his first wife. Robin was his second. Arnie said, “Jenny has perfect pitch.”

2008 Gordy far right at a rehearsal for the 80th reunon concert

186 ~ Harry Bigsby

He was an exceptionally strong trumpet player. We played in the Lion’s band together. I often wondered why he didn’t play trumpet as a career.

“Too many trumpet players. Somebody had to be a doctor. Do you think Arthur was impressed by what all his boys became in life?”

“He always let on that he was unimpressed. But I am sure he got a lot of satisfaction at seeing what his extended family did with their lives. But he would never let you know it.”

“How do you think Arthur influenced your life?”

“At the time, we didn’t realize it but there were so many lessons that we learned from him and from the trips, at a very impressionable age, camaraderie! He was a tremendous teacher and a hard teacher.”

“Three people who impressed you the most in your life?”

“First, would have to be Arthur Delamont. My dad was President of the band for a number of years, so my dad. And the third would be, I’ll have to think on that a while and let you know!

CHAPTER 14

Earl Hobson “My first music supervisor in Victoria when I was teaching was Harry Bigsby. He was in the Kits band. He helped me get out of high school early to go on the 1955 trip. We both played clarinet. Harry Bigsby played clarinet like Benny Goodman. I just played a Goodman style solo the other evening.”

After Ken Sotvedt passed away in 2004, Earl Hobson was asked to conduct the Kits Alumni Band. Earl had been one of three boys sent over to join the band for the 1955 tour of Great Britain from Victoria. He went on to become a music educator and music supervisor in Burnaby. Very well thought of by all and also the director of the Royal City Band, Earl was only too glad to tell me his thoughts regarding his days in the band.

“How did you meet Arthur Delamont?”

“I met him in two ways. I met Arthur through my band teacher in Victoria, Howard Denike. Arthur brought the

188 ~ Dennis Tupman

band over to Victoria. It was the first time I got to hear this absolutely famous band that I had heard about but never seen. When I was in the Victoria High School Band in 1954, we came over to Vancouver. We were in competition with Arthur’s band. Afterwards, Dennis Tupman and I went up to Arthur and expressed to him how much we liked his band.

Ours was the only high school band that ever beat Arthur’s band in a festival. It was backstage at the Pender Auditorium. He said, “We should have won that one (grumble, grumble)!”

Only one point difference.

About a year later, just before the 1955 England trip, he was short a couple of clarinets and a trumpet player. He contacted Howard Denike and asked if he had any students. He did, so Dennis Tupman, myself, Donny Clark and Donald Kirkby joined. We scurried in order to leave on time with the band. It cost us very little. The day before we were to leave, we came over to Vancouver and played in the rehearsal that evening. We stayed that night with the Brown family. The next day we left on the train. Both Dennis and I were put on first clarinet. I remember talking to Dennis about how the band was so good and showy.

They would be playing through a piece of music and then all of a sudden a section would stand up and play their eight bars and so on. It took us a while to catch on and stand up with the rest of the boys. Must have looked like a Muppet show at first. Some of the guys helped us out. I got along with Mr D quite well. He barked at me a few times but what teenager hasn’t been barked at. He treated us with much respect.

EARL HOBSON ~ 189

“Did you stay in the band after the 1955 trip?”

“We left high school early to go on the trip. I applied for Normal School - first year of teacher training. When we came back, one month late, the principal of that school in Victoria, was quite determined that I would not be able to finish the year. Anyway, we went back to Victoria. I took my teacher training. I got my diploma. Four years later, I headed back to England for almost two years. I loved England! Everything seemed to be happening in England - music and opera. I also did the ‘grand tour’ at that time. I motorcycled around parts of Europe.

I came back to Victoria and then I went over to Vancouver.

I got a job teaching and I have been here ever since. Through the connections I made in the band, I have done dance work, concert band work with Delamont in PNE parades and in the Lion’s games. I met a great number of fine musicians.

“It was more of a fraternity than a band.”

“Funny you should say that because I am not a fraternity type. I am not a joiner but get two or three Kits band members together, from any era and there is an incredible bond, camaraderie, respect.

“It was a mutually shared experience.”

“True, my first music supervisor in Victoria when I was teaching was Harry Bigsby. He was in the Kits band. He helped me get out of high school early to go on the 1955 trip.

“Harry was called on whenever they needed a clarinet player who played liked Benny Goodman.”

“Really, isn’t that funny because last night in the band I was playing in, there was a Benny Goodman piece and I

190~ Mickey Crawford

was playing the solo. Maybe there is a thin line of connection there.

There was another guy in Victoria. He was a flute player in the Victoria Symphony, Mickey Crawford. He was an extraordinarily fine flute player. He was in the 1932 Kits band.

Things changed in later years. School music programs were everywhere. High school bands were traveling to Europe. Their trips were not as long as the Kits Band trips but there were school bands traveling to Russia, Japan, Disneyland and so on.

Also the attitudes of people changed. Delamont could tell us we were fat heads and it would roll off. Not now adays, if you told someone that, you would have both band parents and students complaining to the school board. It had to be hard for him because of the high expectations he brought to the kids and their families.

I remember stories from when I was teaching in Vancouver back in the late 1960s and 1970s there are stories about my students being recruited to go on his trips. He came to my classroom and recruited. In those days he flew rather than took the train across Canada.

“First time he flew was in 1966!”

“On the train, we would pull into a stop and we would have to get our instruments out and go outside, play a few numbers and then get back on board before the train departed. That was a smart move on his part because it prepared us for England and helped us to bond with each other.

In England, we played heavy duty stuff, major repertoire.

We had top people like Harold Fielding booking us and he expected quality. We had to deliver! We played first class

EARL HOBSON ~ 191

music. Mr D didn’t use color instruments (flute, oboe, etc.).

He re-wrote parts in for many of the instruments.”

“Play all your parts as if they were solos,” he would say.

“We played all sorts of music, pop tunes, and overtures and so on. Much of it was edited, so that it worked with our instrumentation. He was smart enough to load you up with so much music - you had to learn to sight read well. As a result, you became more confident with the pieces you had been rehearsing. The other intriguing thing is, some of the music he played from the first 1930’s concerts, he played in his last concerts. There was this thread of heavy duty pieces that were successful, such as ‘Overture of Overtures’ and ‘Creme de la Creme.’ It gave a strength and a history to the organization. In the current school system, where band personnel is changing every year, you may have the objectives that Arthur Delamont had but you don’t have the continuing group of members. He did that extraordinarily well!

Those of us who went on to teach music or work with community bands, tried to bring in Arthur’s sense of the showman, into the classroom. He would play a heavy piece and then follow it right up with an encore. It’s not the Kits Band of course but it just utilizes some of the same techniques. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it was difficult!”

“How did your experiences with Arthur impact your life?”

“He was a major mentor in my life, even though I only worked with him for five months. I liked his discipline. I liked his musicality. I had a great deal of respect for him. I have been very pleased that I was on the trip and that I got to know so many fine musicians through the organization.”

192 ~ Dick McManus

“You may have only been in the band for five months but you continue to come out to reunion concerts, fifty years later and you conducted the boys at the seventy-nineth reunion last summer.”

“That was an incredible honor to be asked to conduct the band for the seventy-ninth reunion concert. I think that the incredible draw with these guys and with this organization is that we all still come back and get together occasionally.

It was that powerful an experience. We were on the train together and on the boat together. We played together. We had great experiences and we came back bonded. One of my very closest friends, whom I met on the trip, is Dick McManus.

“Tell me about the 1955 trip?”

“It was an incredible trip! I joined the night before we left. We got our uniforms and stuck them into our luggage.

We played a couple of concerts across Canada. Our trains were left on a side track in a few places. Nothing like train travel today. We got on the boat. We did more rehearsing.

We played a few more concerts and arrived in London. We were on the Ascania. It was a pretty small Cunard liner. We bussed to Eastham. We were put up in the Theatre caretaker’s home. Her husband was a coal porter on the dock. They were very sincere people. We played a week of concerts. We played in Blackpool often. It was a hot summer in 1955. Our vaudeville concerts started diminishing. People were not going out as much. Television was just starting. Part way into the trip, we almost went home because there was not enough work. Mr D called us all together and asked us what we wanted to do, play parks and so on? It was too late to go

EARL HOBSON ~ 193

ABOVE: 2007 Earl conducting the Alumni band at the 79th Reunion Concert at the Kits Showboat in July.

LEFT: 1955 Earl in Trafalgar Square, London

194 ~ Henry McKenzie

to summer school. So, we said, “Let’s do it!”

“It came together. We played week long concerts in the parks. We were often on the bill with famous people such as Vera Lynn and locally interesting people. It was a good trip.

The Channel Islands were a great experience. We stayed in a hostel. We rode scooters. Our main responsibility was to be at the concert ready to play and look good. The rest of the the time, we were on our own.

Everything was new and exciting. I think we knew a few days ahead, where we were going to next but that was about it.

Arthur took a lot of talented kids on the 1953 trip but he found himself in a kind of a jam afterwards because when they came back, they all went to university and had to work to make money. He needed to find a new crop of boys for the 1955 trip.

When we were in Blackpool, we played two shows each night. After, we would go over to the Winter Gardens to see Ted Heath. We got to know a lot of the band members. Henry McKenzie was his clarinet player at that time. We were going to trade clarinets because he wanted the Buffet I was playing but he could only offer me a Boosey and Hawkes. That never came about because I was afraid of having a problem at customs on the way back. We saw Johnny Dankworth as well. A bunch of us hired a plane and went to Paris for five or six days. We all grew up on that trip and that was good!

I loved London, thought I might live there when I retired but I didn’t. I go back every year. Fish and chips in newspaper, I loved them too!”

CHAPTER 15

Dick McManus “Jack Benny came to town.

His accompanist got ill, so they asked my grandfather to accompany him. After the show, Jack asked my grandfather, “Would you come back to Hollywood with me?” My grandfather said, “No, I like Vancouver!”

“I met Arthur through my friends. Bill Trussell was a good friend of mine in my youth and his older brother Bud. They both played in the band. Bill kept saying, “Come and join, come and join!” This was in West Vancouver. It was either that or Saturday morning soccer. I knew I wasn’t going to be a soccer player, so I joined the band. I was almost thirteen or fourteen. That would have been 1948 or 1949. I didn’t know anything about the Kits band at the time. I started on mellophone, alto horn actually, then mellophone. Then I heard about the Kits Boys band.

One of Arthur’s brothers conducted us during the summer of 1950.”

“That would have been Walter!”

“I just remember that he was a much kinder, gentler man.

That’s when I switched to French horn. The mellophone was getting rather boring. Arthur was not very pleased about

196 ~ Dick Douglas

it. I was taking lessons from Doug Kent. My grandfather was a musician and he played all over the place, the VSO, Leicester Square and old Broadway. His name was ‘Dick Douglas.’ He was a solid pit musician. He could improvise.

He played piano.

Jack Benny came to town. His accompanist got ill, so they asked my grandfather to accompany him. After the show, Jack asked my grandfather, “Would you come back to Hollywood with me?” My grandfather said, “No, I like Vancouver!”

But the next time Benny was in town, he gave his accompanist the night off and hired my grandfather. Such was the level of his playing.

So, the French horn was a thorn in Arthur’s side. When the 1953 trip came along, Arthur said, “If you play mellophone, you can come along.” I said, “No, if I go, I want to play French horn.” I was somewhat arrogant. I didn’t go!

I wasn’t in the Kits band at the time but I often subbed in the Kits band when Arthur needed me. I was a bit miffed because I felt if I was good enough to sub, why was I not good enough to play the French horn on the trip.

Then, the 1955 trip came along. You are probably going to get the impression that I didn’t like Delamont. Well, I didn’t! I admired him. But I thought he was a bully. I think he turned off many sensitive musicians. When the 1955 trip came along, he read off the list of names of the boys who would be going. My name was left off. At the time I was in the Kits band and played the first horn parts. I had to go up

DICK McMANUS ~ 197

to him and say, “Mr. Delamont, if you want me to play mellophone I will, if I can go on the trip.” He said, “No, that’s okay! You can go and you can play French horn.” I feel though, if I hadn’t done that, I probably would not have gone on that trip.

The 1955 band was very unique because he had to bring in some of his lead players from outside of the band. He brought in two lead clarinet players from Victoria and two lead trumpets. Howard Denike sent four boys over from Victoria. Dennis Tupman and Earl Hobson on clarinet, Donny Clark on trumpet and he thought Arthur had asked for a good solid trumpet to play third stand. Arthur had wanted another lead trumpet to play the third first stand. So, Howard sent over another trumpet. Somewhere on the Atlantic one day, when he was upset with some of the boys, Arthur said, “You shouldn’t be here. You are not what I wanted. I wanted another lead trumpet player. Not somebody at your level.

I have kids at your level, they are a dime a dozen.”

He was totally insensitive to this boy’s feelings because the boy didn’t know anything about the mix up. That was the side of him I did not like. But I did learn many things from him. I didn’t learn any technique from Delamont. But I learned how to play.

I taught band in high school, actually, I started in elementary school teaching band.”

“What year?”

“I started teaching around 1959, in Nanaimo. I didn’t intend to teach band. I started out as a classroom teacher. The principal came up to me at the end of the year and said,

198 ~ Elliot Weisgarber

“I understand you play an instrument?” I foolishly said, “Yes.” He said, “Well your teaching band next year!”

In those days, there wasn’t any university program you could go through.”

“You went through the Delamont School of Musical Knowledge.”

“That’s right! I used exactly the same technique he did. I got myself a trumpet and stood behind the band. I looked at pictures, to show me how to hold the instruments, fingering and so on. The one instrument I could never get a sound out of was the flute.

It was because of what I learned observing Delamont that got me through those first three or four years of teaching band. Gradually UBC started assembling a teaching department and I was able to take a course on technique from time to time.”

“Do you know anything about those early days in the music department at UBC?” “I was taking a Bachelors Degree in education when they were assembling the music staff. So, I was able to take a fair number of music courses. A group of us had formed a brass quintet. We wanted to put on a performance at the AMS but we had to be vetted by the music faculty. They needed to see if we were good enough, we passed! Elliot Weisgarber was the composition teacher. Prior to those days, he taught music theory and harmony. I remember I would get behind in my assignments and I would take my assignment to my granddad, who wrote scores for the VSO and he would dash it off in five minutes and I would hand it in. It would come

DICK McMANUS ~ 199

back to me with all these red marks all over it. I would take it back to my grandfather and say, “Granddad, look at this!”

He was rather portly and I could see his belly chuckling as he looked at it. He said, “I guess I shouldn’t have cut corners but that’s what you do when you’re a professional.”

“You taught band for how many years?”

“I pretty much taught band my whole teaching career. I taught for forty-one years, starting in Nanaimo. ‘Fred Turner’ used to come over. He said to me, “Why don’t you come over to Burnaby?”

He was the assistant superintendent of music for Burnaby.

In those days you could travel all around teaching. I got a job in Port Alice. I thought I might get out of teaching band.

I didn’t really feel qualified but they stuck me with the senior band. I learned by the seat of my pants! I was fortunate to have had Doug Kent as a teacher. He taught me about ‘breathe control,’ which helped me a lot with the kids. It was like with Delamont, he didn’t teach technique. He just taught you how to play.

I expect the reason that most of us put up with his abuse was the expectation of those amazing trips. Our trip started in May and we got back in September. It wa a long time!

When I took my kids on band trips, there wasn’t anything that surprised me. I had seen it all.”

“One of the interesting things I have noticed is that there did not seem to be any kids acting excessively. They all seemed to be pretty good kids.”

“I would say that is true. Mrs. Delamont was very ill

200 ~ Doug Kent

on that trip. The chaperones had to look after her. We were pretty much on our own. The word was out that when you were performing, you had to be there one hundred percent or watch out. Somewhere on the trip, at some big theatre, we were all set up and ready to go behind a curtain, no Delamont! So the curtain opened and we started immediately to play. Someone must have given the down beat. He came running out I am not sure if it was the first or second piece and finally caught up to us. We knew what to do! He was a showman, with his pristine uniform and his shocking white hair. That was one of the hottest summers in England.

We spent most of our time sight reading in parks.

On the down side, I had a choice of going on the 1955 trip or playing with the VSO that fall, but I couldn’t do both.

I asked Doug Kent why I couldn’t do both. He said, “One, you will be late for the season and two, by the time you get back, your tone will be shot. It will not be symphonic anymore and you will not fit in. You have to choose between the orchestra and the band.”

It was a tough decision but I felt that I would never get such an opportunity again, to travel with the band. It was unique! I went with the band and he was right. I never got back to the level of playing that I was at before I left. School and UBC took over and the thought of being a professional musician didn’t really interest me, maybe burn out! I don’t know. It is only now, that I am retired, that I am getting back to where I was, maybe fifty years ago, but now the diaphragm isn’t as strong.

I never felt any repoire between myself and Arthur. He came to my defense once. I was trying to play a difficult

DICK McMANUS ~ 201

passage and he was giving me a hard time. Some of the kids started to join in. He cut them off at the knees and said, “You can’t do what he’s doing, so don’t say anything.”

“The only time I ever got a compliment was one time when I was playing with him out at UBC, in his Varsity band. It was in the summertime. I was playing a nice little horn solo. I knew when I had played it that I had gotten the nice ‘Doug Kent’ sound. Doug wanted a nice dark tone. He said, “That was well done Dick!”

First time he ever complimented me.”

“That was his way.”

“Yes, that was his way. It worked for him. But he discouraged a lot of players, especially the color instruments, oboes, flutes and so on.”

“As long as you were not on the receiving end of anything negative, you could count yourself lucky. Don’t look for accolades.”

“That’s true!”

“I think he knew how to exploit us. He had a product to produce and he did just that. He was not a people person, I don’t think. He was often insensitive in those days to what was going on in our private lives.”

“He was larger than life.”

“Oh yes, but having met his brother, such a gentle soul, the extremes were amazing. He would show us how he could play a high C, while dangling his trumpet on a string and gently putting his lips on the mouth piece and out popped this note. It was just a totally different approach.”

“He led a Salvation Army band, for a number of years,

202 ~ Harrogate

in Toronto.”

“I had heard rumors that Gordon and Arthur did not get along. It was at a reunion concert, early on, that they were both on stage and I remember feeling that Gordon was trying to pour his heart out to his dad --- and it wasn’t happening.

It was sad.”

“They were different people.”

“I stayed in the West Vancouver band until 1955 as well.

Lorne Husband was another horn player. We played a piece and somebody made a mistake. Delamont went into one of his tirades and said, “The next person who makes a mistake.......”

We go through the passage again and I mess it up. I put my horn down and said to Lorne, “You’re really going to get it now!”

Delamont just laced into him. I still give him a hard time about that. I guess if you survived with Delamont, you had to have had a sense of humor and not have taken it too seriously.

My sister is five years younger than me and she told me when he came into the schools to recruit, “I was terrified of him. He stuck a clarinet in my mouth and said, “BLOW” Nothing came out, so he snatched it out and went on to the next one.”

No note and you were not in the band. If you couldn’t make a sound, you were not worth the risk. I remember once on the boat and I was talking. He stopped us in our tracks and said to me, “You say one more word and you are going home.”

There was a line you were not allowed to cross. One of the

DICK McMANUS ~ 203

things I learned from him personally was, ‘to be afraid to make mistakes’ and I do not think that was a good thing to learn. That has stuck with me all my life. It took me a long time to overcome that. Probably didn’t over come it until I retired.

I remember playing a little solo in a concert after we had just landed in England in 1955. My legs were a little wobbly from the sea voyage and I dropped an octave on one of the notes and then came back up again. That was enough for Delamont. Never again did I play that solo.

I remember in one of the parks, we held a talent contest, win five pounds, that sort of thing. This little girl insulted Delamont somehow, about wanting a strict tempo and he took offence to her directions. She kept trying to slow him down and he kept speeding up the tempo. He was just brutal, sparks were flying! I think it was in Harrogate or Bath.”

“Do you remember Arthur pulling the band together and telling all of you that you were switching to park concerts, half way through the trip?”

“Yes, my take on that was, it was a very hot summer and people were not coming into the theatres. We were a costly act because we needed to pay for our theatrical digs and our traveling expenses.”

“It was nothing to do with the end of vaudeville?”

“I don’t think so, but it could have been a reason as well.

In Blackpool, we were just pulling them in.”

“Do you remember Garfield White?’

“No, just by name.”

“Is there anything about Lillie Delamont that you can tell me?”

204 ~ Kerry Turner

“She was very ill. The chaperones abandoned us to look after her. It was come and go as you please. She sort of disappeared. I can’t even recall her being introduced at a concert, at least not during my time in the band.”

“Do you remember anything else about the trip?”

“No, when we played in Blackpool, the second show was not always as good as the first.

Sometimes Arthur would throw you for a loop. We had a weekend that we were free, so I asked him if I could have it off to go visit my relatives in Scotland. He said, “Yes!” “You just never knew what shade of his character he would show. I was very grateful to him for letting me visit my relatives. I have to say that he was a major influence on my life in both a positive and a negative way. I don’t think I would have been as successful a band teacher as I was without the experience I got from watching and observing him and just knowing what to do in front of an audience.

This is directly related to Delamont. It was my first year teaching in Burnaby. It was a brand new school. The band had thirty or forty people in it. The principal asked me, “Would you like to invite another band to play at your concert at the end of the year?” I said, “No, this is our school. We will play.”

There already was a ‘Night of Bands,’ where all the bands in the district came together in a kind of a jamboree. ‘Fred Turner’ came around and asked me, “What piece are you going to play?” I said, “Standard Pop Favorites” I had a trumpet player who could play the Jelly Roll

DICK McMANUS ~ 205

Blues.

The ‘Night of Bands’ starts, we are this little thirty or forty piece band amidst these gigantic bands of over one hundred pieces.They are all playing heavy overtures. The place is packed. Our turn comes and we play, ‘Standard Pop Favorites.’ I taught this kid to stand up and play the ‘Jelly Roll Blues.’ We stopped! There was a pregnant silence and then this roar of approval. It was amazing!

The fact that we had played something that was at their level that they enjoyed, instead of having to listen to overture after overture, trying to impress, it brought the house down. Some of the old band teachers were annoyed that we hadn’t played something serious.

In 1969, I was at Burnaby Central High School. We won the Provincial band finals and we were awarded a little totem pole by the Queen. The next year the provincial government archives wanted the totem pole. I said, “No, we will never see it again and we never did.”

‘Kerry Turner’ won a totem pole as well for his New Westminster band. They still have it” “It was just politics and bureaucracy!”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Much of the music I chose was based on what I learned from Delamont and they were pieces the audience wanted to hear.”

“When was the last year you taught?”

“My last year of teaching was in 1986. Talking about bureaucracy, the superintendent of schools came to me and said, “You have been at this school too long. It is time for you

206 ~ Davenport and Kirkby

to make a change.”

I was teaching band and counseling at the time. He said, “You can either teach band or counseling but you cannot do both any more.” I said, “Why are you doing this?” He said, “You have been here too long.” So, I said, “Yes, but the kids change every two years, there is nothing static.”

I was also teaching Drama. We would get eight hundred or nine hundred people out to a performance and take kids on tour. It wasn’t as though we were not putting out quality performances. My band was asked to fill in for the Ontario band here at Expo ‘86 because they couldn’t make it. Anyway, I stuck with the counseling. I had done everything I wanted to do with the band anyway.”

“When you were teaching at Burnaby Central, I was going to John Oliver and my band director was Ron Pajala.”

“Oh really, he got on the train with us in 1955 and then he got off and didn’t go on the 1955 trip.”

“Really, I will have to ask him about that.”

“The standing joke was his mother was always in the front row of the concert to assure the applause was thunderous.

She was at every concert.”

“Good for her! She should have been given a medal.”

“True. I guess she should have.”

“Anything else you can add?”

“I remember in Harrogate, at an outdoor concert, someone had blown up a condom and put it in one of the basses. It popped out during the concert. Some of the boys tried to step on it and break it but of course it wouldn’t break.

DICK McMANUS ~ 207

Kids stuff! That’s about the worst it got.”

“Do you have any Ted Lazenby stories?”

“Ted was a great musician. He was much like Delamont.

His people skills were not too great. He was somewhat arrogant but still an amazing musician. He went on to play with the ‘Berlin Philharmonic’ under ‘Herbert von Karajan.’”

“Any thoughts on Art Tusvik?’

“He was a character, one of life’s characters. He will have a million stories for you. As a horn player, I wasn’t one of the in-crowd. Davenport and Kirkby were the two boys I hung out with on the trip.

The Davenport family was a major supporter of Delamont and the band. Both John and Bill were good players. Bill became a professor of mechanical engineering at McGill University. He was a very bright individual.

Bill Trussell was a very fine musician and a very gentle man. His father died early and so did his mother. Bill was basically brought up by his sister and older brother. His older brother had to get out and work on the tug boats. He got his Masters papers as a tug boat Captain and then went to university and into mechanical engineering. He got offers all over the place because he had the practical experience. But it was Bud, in the early days, who said to me, “If you get terrified of Delamont just laugh at him; inside.”

That was Bud Trussell, another character!”

“The three big influences on your life were Arthur, Doug Kent and?”

“Yes, Doug was a horn player with the symphony. His teaching style was exactly the opposite of Delamont. It was

208 ~ My Granddad!

encouraging, take risks and take chances. Everything you tried was greeted positively and appreciated. His wife was a cellist and she was also involved. Attendance was not taken at school in those days until eleven in the morning. I arranged my horn lessons for nine am. My dad used to ask, “How are you able to do that?”

It lasted about five months until the school caught on.

The third person who was an influence on my life was my grandfather, again, the opposite of Delamont in terms of how he approached people. He was a master musician - yet no ego! I asked him how all this happened to him and he said, “I was lucky enough when I was in England to get into one of the top dance bands and I had to keep up with the guys. If I didn’t, I was out.” I said, “Where did you learn your theory and harmony?” He said, “In the early days, in Vancouver, I played in one of the big churches and I studied the hymn books.”

He would wait until the last minute to do a job. He would be up all night writing parts for the VSO. I would go in with him and hand out the parts. We would wait for about five minutes and hear them start and then he would say, “Okay Dick, let’s go.” I would say, “But Granddad, they just started.” He would say, “No, it’s okay.”

“And it always was!”

They would hand him a piano score and say, “Orchestrate this!” And he would do it.

It was all out there and he could improvise. On the vaudeville circuit, he often cursed the conductors because they

DICK McMANUS ~ 209

ABOVE: 2007 Dick playing a solo at the Reunion Concert at the Kits Showboat

210 ~ One Big Vaudeville Act

would lose their place. He had to fill in eight or sixteen bars until they found their place. He was a kind and gentle soul, not like Delamont.”

“I always think of the Kits Band as being one big vaudeville act that ran for fifty years.”

“That’s true! Maybe that’s what Delamont envisioned.”

“Maybe he did!”

CHAPTER 16

Brian Parkinson “In 1975, I raced on a small course, here in Vancouver and I won! I thought I had only won my class but it turned out that I was the overall winner.

I was sent back to Quebec City that Winter where I stood up and I received an award for the ‘National Slalom Male Champion.’ Standing on the stage, along side of me, was ‘Gilles Villeneuve.” He had won the Formulae I that year. I don’t even have a picture.”

“How did you meet Arthur Delamont?”

“My parents heard of the band. We lived about three blocks from the West Van Community Centre. I remember them taking me down to meet Arthur. He showed me a selection of instruments. I made a sound on the trumpet and that was it.

That was about 1950 or 1951.”

“Do you remember your first interaction with Arthur?’

“There was a lot of terror! A lot of types of discipline that I had not yet encountered in high school because I had never gotten very far out of line but it didn’t take much discipline

by Arthur. In the short term, it could be rather terrifying and did tend to drive a few people home in tears.”

212 ~ Bill Haley and the Comets

“How old were you when you joined the band?’

“I was born in 1942, so I would have been eight or nine years years old.”

“Do you have any stories from the early days?”

“I didn’t work at it. I didn’t do much practicing, which became evident. I was almost tossed out or left but I just kept at it. I seemed to have a natural aptitude for playing the trumpet. I kind of got better at it. I began to find it more interesting. I found a few things I liked about it.”

“Did you start in his junior band?”

“Yes.” “Anything you want to say about any of the guys in those days?”

“Just in general, we all started to play. We got our capes.

We played at the cenotaph. There was a natural progression of maturity.”

“This would have been in his West Van band?”

“Yes, I cannot remember exactly when I joined the Kitsilano Boys’ Band, at General Gordon School. Why we don’t all have major hearing problems from playing in that concrete basement, I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the 1950 and 1953 trips coming along?”

“No, I was too young to even know what it meant. I do remember there were a lot of competent musicians who came out of his West Van band, guys like Bill Trussell, Ken Sotvedt and Ted Lazenby.

Gradually I began playing more and more at school, in pep bands. Elvis Presley hadn’t come along yet. I remember Bill Haley and the Comets were big in 1958. I learned to

BRIAN PARKINSON ~ 213

play the ‘Last Post’ and got good at that. I think there were some cancellations for the 1958 trip and I was asked to go. It was beyond my comprehension. I remember selling chocolate bars in Shaughnessy, then we left.

We took the train across Canada. We got on one of the Cunard liners. The train ride was great. We played at all the ‘whistle’ stops.

“Gordon went along on that trip, with his wife Vina and their daughter’s Susan and Debra?”

“Yes, we were rather rambunctious on the boat. On the way back we hit a typhoon. Arthur was sick and stayed in his cabin. I was only fifteen on the trip, just one of the little guys. We came from a pretty sheltered environment. It took us awhile to get used to all the freedom we had on those trips.

Some of the older kids were out and out terrorists. The way they treated us at times was really bad. They had this power over us, guys like Ted Lazenby but he was a good musician. I remember years later, down at the 15th Field Regiment band, I gave Ted Lazenby a ride and I realized for the first time, this guy that we thought was a god, was really just another guy. I skid my car around a few corners and scared the hell out of him to get back at him.

After a while I became a little negative towards music because of some of the guys it attracted, too much drinking.

You know the negative side of the music business.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

“I always wondered why Arthur didn’t do something about some of the guy’s behavior but he never did. It was a hierarchy that I guess he felt kept the band in line, so he didn’t have to worry about the younger boys. God help you if you

214 ~ John Rands

ever questioned the way things were run. Now that I am older, I can speak for myself and I am not afraid to say what I felt in those days. Another thing that I will mention is, when Art Tusvik got injured on the bus and I became lead trumpet, the older guys left me alone. They couldn’t afford to injure me or have me hurt.”

“You guys had it much tougher than we did in the 1960s.”

“He was losing his wife in those days, so he had his hands full.”

“Anything more about the trip, Ted Heath, did you go to see him?”

“I sure did! Music beyond anything I had ever heard. It was pretty exciting. We rode back in a cab one night with ‘Bobby Pratt,’ his lead trumpet player.”

“Tell me about Susan Delamont?’

“We kind of dated on the trip. I wrote her a couple of letters when we got back. We knew that we wouldn’t be seeing each other again, so that was the end of it. She was a nice girl. Her dad was a good musician and good musicians were ‘gods’ to us, in those days.

In 1962 or 1963, I joined the 15th Field Regiment band. I graduated from high school in 1962. I started working on the docks. I didn’t really have any direction, anyway I got sick. I came down with mononucleosis. My job was designed to get me on the 1962 band trip but I couldn’t go. I had no money, I was sick and that was the end of my playing. I worked in a sulfur pit, terrible job.

But I did join the 15th Field Regiment band under ‘Al Sweet.’ Canada didn’t have to go to war to suffer casualties, the reserves just drank and smoked themselves to death. I

BRIAN PARKINSON ~ 215

would go through a mickey a night. Eventually my physician sat me down and said, “You’re drinking and smoking yourself to death.”

That was back in 1978. I was thirty-six. I listened to him, put my cigarettes down and never had one again. That was May 28,1978. My friend John Rands kept on smoking. I am climbing mountains at sixty-five and John, at age sixty-two, is dead. That is the average age for smokers to die.”

“Any more thoughts about the 1958 trip?’

“I stayed with a friend of our family in one place. I got into a scrap and knocked some blue dye all over, it was just a nightmare. Scotland Yard was after us for stealing some plaques but we didn’t do it! The ‘Teddy Boys’ were after us in Jersey because we were dating their girl friends. We were bigger and healthier and the girls were tired of these scruffy little ‘Teddy Boys,’ all running around with straight razors. They disassembled a few of our guy’s bicycles. We had all rented bicycles to get to our concerts. I still have a German army helmet that I bought on Jersey. It has the guys name inside. We got into some huge concrete tunnels that the German’s built. They still had barbed wire inside. It was only thirteen years since the end of the war. Churchill only gave the Germans two or three days to get off the island, so they left many things behind.”

“Do you remember Kerkrade, Holland?”

“Not a lot, we were only there a few days. I remember staying in a nice place. It was kind of a whirlwind.”

“Do you remember when Arthur left the West Van band?”

“I remember some kind of commotion. I don’t think the parents realized that they had a tiger by the tail. The boys

216 ~ ‘Big Brother’

knew how to put up with him but the parents were another matter. He invited some of us over to Kits practices after 1958 because I think he wanted us to go on the 1962 trip.

Then he moved down to White Rock, which at that time was like another planet. I moved down to the US in 1964 and lost contact.”

“What did you do in 1964?’

“I just wanted to get away. I was a music major for about a year. I realized that I didn’t have the right tools (piano), so I got out of it and went down to the US. I became a bell boy.

Then I worked in a Chevron station. Finally, the Vietnam War came along and I returned to Canada. I almost killed myself one night, when some high tension wires fell down on my vehicle. My ‘Smithrite’ truck got caught in the wires.

I left that job and got a job with an insurance company.

I met a remarkable man in Langley who has guided many of my business principles; my work in the industry. He introduced me to enough people, who became my clients, that I was able to open my own insurance company. Now people put business through me because they trust me. I do most of my business with just a handshake. I do a lot of work with charities. I believe in putting back into the community. I have been a ‘Big Brother’ for eleven years. I am in a mentoring program, where I spend an hour a week with an inner city child. My wife does the same thing. I have been a member of the Rotary Club for twenty-seven years. I am on the board of directors for Langley Lodge, which is a senior’s home. I give instructional talks to clinics and people who I want to share my knowledge of triathlons and fitness.

I started walking a dog when I was forty-two. Too save

BRIAN PARKINSON ~ 217

time, I quit smoking and went from a blue collar job to a white collar job. When I was forty-four, I started running.

I began to hurt myself when I ran marathons. I kept getting continually injured. No one had shown me how to run. I just went out and did it but my body held together. Then I read about an ex-marathoner who had gone into multi-sports because there were less injuries involved. I sold all my aquariums, I had raised tropical fish. I raced a Corvette successfully at the amateur level; I sold my corvette. Then in 1988, I bought a bicycle and started doing biathlons, a run, a bike and a run. Races draw about five hundred people. I ran about two races a week. Usually the downtown core is blocked off.

Then I read about Premier Campbell doing a triathlon. So I thought, If he can learn to swim then so can I.” I taught myself to swim. But I was so far behind in the swim, that everyone was always finishing the race before me.

Eventually, I learned to swim better and worked my way up.

Consequently, I won a few races. I won my age category in Phoenix in 1990, in the Cours Light Race. I raced alongside ‘Peter Cours’ but I won by a substantial margin. I always wanted to win.

In 1998, I went into the World Master Games. I was the only non-American to win an age category. That was the first year that triathlons had been allowed in an international event. The year 2000 was the first time that triathlons were allowed into the Olympics. Also that year, I won my age category at ‘Alcatraz,’ in an international race.

In 2000, I went to Maui and did the’ Yahoo XTERRA Mountain Bike Championships.’ They had had a race up

218 ~ Alcatraz

in Whistler and I was the oldest guy in the race. I finished the race. They told me that I qualified for a spot in Maui. My wife said, “Sure, let’s go to Maui!”

Subsequently, I finished the race in Maui. A friend of mine told me that I finished about eighth. I said, “Fine, I’m not a mountain biker. I am just happy that I finished.”

When we went to the awards ceremony they gave us all a certificate to show that we had finished, then they called the fifty-five to fifty-nine age category winners. First place was a guy from Atlanta, Georgia, second place was a guy from Kihei, Maui and for the third place the guy says, “Another one of them darn Canucks,’ and they called my name. I had passed a guy on the run, it wasn’t for eighth, it was for the lead. I had done my homework. I passed five Hawaiians in my category. Out of eleven Canadians, ten of them placed.The next year, my wife Kate said, “Let’s go to Maui and you can try that race again.”

The next year, I remember looking up in the morning and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I said, “Now we are in trouble.”

Not one Canadian placed in any category except me and I got a third and I out walked other guys, which I don’t do. It was too hot! The race was four hours and fifteen minutes.

The bike part was two hours and fifteen minutes alone, heavy duty! These are not ‘iron man,’ they are at a medium level.

I’m a grinder!

I did Alcatraz every five years. I did it in 1998 and in 2003. In 2003, there were four foot wide waves and white-

BRIAN PARKINSON ~ 219

c2007 RIGHT Brian finishing the Yahoo XTERRA race in Maui.

BELOW Brian and his wife Kate

220 ~ National Slalom Male Champion’

caps. When I jumped off the boat I hyperventilated. I was in the water for fifty-five minutes. When I got out of the water, I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. I did the fastest bike split and the fastest run for my age but I missed first place by three minutes. I just ran out of enough real estate to catch those guys.

Anyway, going back, I came back from the US in a 1964 Corvette. A drunk ran into me in downtown Vancouver and almost killed me. I never saw him. It just happened! I rebuilt the Corvette, raced it and won a few races. In 1975, I raced on a small course here in Vancouver. It was the same size as a track back in St. Johns, Newfoundland and I won. I thought I had won my class but it turned out that I was the overall winner. I was sent back to Quebec City that winter, where I stood up and I received an award for the ‘National Slalom Male Champion.’ Standing on the stage, alongside of me, was ‘Gilles Villeneuve.’ He had won the Formulae I that year and I don’t even have a picture. The next year, I won again, then they changed the regulations.

I also won the ‘BC Hill Climb Championship’ three years in a row. Two of the races were in Victoria, up the ‘Observatory Hill ‘and the third race was in Ioco. I did everything that I wanted to do with cars, so I got out of car racing about six years ago and into what I do now, sold the car. I could see my friends sitting around getting fat and smoking.”

“Not much exercise driving cars.”

“True. I could have muchmore money but I have got my fitness. I live in a nice place and have a great and healthy lifestyle.”

“Who are the three people who have been the biggest

BRIAN PARKINSON ~ 221

influence on your life over the years?”

“Arthur Delamont was a big influence. He taught us all sorts of traits regarding being a better human being. All his methods were towards an end or a goal. My dad was a big influence for the ethics he instilled in me and the guy that I met a few years ago and went into business with, ‘George Graham’ he was an influence. He was an author, as well. He wrote a book called ‘Wing Commanders.’ A very influential man, medal collector, he did many things. He was a very motivated person. He died from a rare form of Cancer. Motivation is very important!”

“No Arthur Delamont anymore to motivate the kids.”

“No, he was focused. He got us there in his way. I doubt that there was anybody else in the world that could have taken a bunch of mismatched kids off the street, as he did and created such a world class band. Arthur found a way to motivate people and to win championships. I have won a few and it has mostly been through hard work. I know how difficult it is to win championships at that level and he found a way.

He made something of himself. He became a good musician, a good investor and a good businessman. He was a smart man. He put himself into a position that allowed him the time to work with all of us and the world is a ‘sorrier’ place now that he is gone, albeit his methods might not have been accepted in today’s world. A lot of people are against excellence these days. They say, “Oh we just want to be in the race. We don’t care if we win.”

He wanted to win.”

“Another interesting point about Arthur was that he didn’t

222 ~ Jack Palance

care who you were rich or poor.”

“That’s right. He could make allstars out of everybody. If you couldn’t afford the trips, he found a way to subsidize you. He was sure one of a kind!”

BELOW: Gordon, Susan, Vina and Debra Delamont with some of the boys on the 1958 tour.

CHAPTER 17

Major Peter Erwin “We played on the ‘David Whitfield Show’ in England twice.

He was the English equivalent to Ed Sullivan. Jack Palance was on the show. Afterwards, we were down at a pub with Jack Palance. There was this beautiful girl there. She wound up leaving with Jack Palance. Ted Lazenby was upset because he liked her too. Imagine and he was only a nineteen year old kid.”

“How did you meet Arthur Delamont?’

“I was eight years old. My parents took me down to General Gordon School for a Kits band rehearsal. They said, “You can have a saxophone or new soccer boots.” I saw all these neat instruments, saxophone! It was simple. Everybody seemed to be so cool. They had absolute respect for this man with the white hair who was beating everybody up.

It was an absolute wall of sound. It made a big impression on me. Delamont didn’t think I had the lips for a brass instrument.

224 ~ ‘Sorbonne’

Last Saturday night, Bill Ingledew asked me, “Peter, what was the most outstanding first impression you had of England?” I said, “Sherlock Holmes!”

We got on this grungy bus. We were taken into London from Southampton where we went to a Salvation Army hostel. I went up two or three floors, looked out the window and there was fog and lamplights and I thought, “Sherlock Holmes, I’m living it!”

“What year did you join the band?’

“It would have been about 1950 or 1951. I was fifteen on the trip.”

“Do you have any early stories?’

“You have to remember in those years there wasn’t any television. My uncle, who worked for BCTV, had a round black and white in his home, that was TV. It was an absolute miracle, no video games and no diversions. You played sport or you did something like ‘play music.’ If you were lucky enough or worked hard enough or were smart enough, you could be in a band that went on a tour.

My first big tour was to Victoria. That was really exciting.

I lived in fear for a couple of years. We learned to do things his way and joined the group. I first went into the junior band.

It was very structured. There was a junior, intermediate and a senior band. You worked your way up.

My parents were a crucial part of it. They wanted me in the band. Dad came from Holland and knew of the band locally of course, from the bands trips to Holland. Their passion was possibly more than mine, as I was just a kid. Dad never saw the band in Holland but all our relatives saw it. The

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 225

Kitsilano Boys’ Band was the ultimate.”

“Leading up to the 1958 trip was there lots of competition?”

“Huge! There were bands from Victoria, West Vancouver, North Vancouver and Grandview from which to choose players. Here, I’ll show you something interesting (Pulls out a 33 rpm record). This was just given to me by a fellow at work who collects old records. He found it in a Salvation Army store in the Fraser Valley. He knew I was in the Kits band and thought I would enjoy it.”

“What is it?”

“It is a two record recording of the 1958 homecoming concert at the Georgia Auditorium at Georgia and Denman.

The auditorium is gone now. I used to have these records but lost them somewhere but the irony is that I had just got them before last weekend and I was at Brian’s 65th birthday last weekend and Brian Parkinson, Bill Ingledew, Ken Fowler and Barry Brown were all attending - and we are all on the records.”

“Wasn’t that amazing? What a coincidence. So, tell me about the 1958 trip?”

“We went to the Brussels Worlds’ Fair. We spent two weeks in Dunfermline, Scotland where we rehearsed in the basement of a church our presentations for the upcoming Kerkrade, Holland World Music Competition. Our big competition was a French band made up of professors from the ‘Sorbonne’ in Paris.

You think Arthur was tough, his son Gordon was tougher.

Gordon was all musician. Arthur was a showman and a disciplinarian. Gordon’s discipline musically was very tough.

226 ~ Kerkrade, Holland

1958 Kerkrade, Holland International Band Festival

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 227

228 ~ Climax Jazz band

He had all our respect. We played the Magic Flute Overture, Victorious Overture and others. We had them memorized, absolutely perfect!

We played for tens of thousands of people all over Europe.

We played on the BBC. People there totally appreciated us and turned out to see us in massive numbers. We came back to the homecoming concert at the Georgia Auditorium, it was like a big barn. I heard Louis Armstrong there and Stan Kenton. We arrived home around noon or two o’clock to Vancouver. We saw our parents. We were all pretty excited before we played the concert until they opened the curtains.

They had white curtains blocking off a quarter of the hall on both sides. They could have had three thousand people but because of the curtains, there were only about one thousand people. We played anyway.

My cousin was in Kerkrade for the festival. He later fronted the Climax Jazz band. He could not believe when all these big bands came out to march around the oval, these thirty-nine kids from Canada, were louder than all of them.

We weren’t louder, we just played better, we had a fatter sound. We were just a bunch of kids with a fat sound.

Our success in the concert part was largely due to Gordon. I played many dances with Gordon on the trip and got paid. I needed the money. There would be Gordon, Ted Lazenby, Sandy Cameron, a tuba player and a drummer and myself. They could make good money and they needed an alto sax so, it was me. We played fairly often. Gordon hung out mostly with Ted Lazenby. They were far better than everyone else. Brian Parkinson became our lead trumpet after Art Tusvik was injured and went to the hospital. I think that

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 229

is when he met Jimmy Coombes’ daughter (Jimmy was the bass trombone player in Ted Heath’s Band - later immigrated here to Vancouver and was active in our music scene). You should interview Art Tusvik.”

“Yes, I want to.”

“Our trip was pretty well organized. We stayed in hotels and hostels, private billets and under a roller rink in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. There, the guys got a lot of German helmets. It was only a few years after the war when the Germans had occupied the island.

“Tell me about Ted Heath?”

“I was absolutely in awe. To hear their lead trumpet player (Bobby Pratt) popping out high Cs was amazing. I remember Gordon getting up and sitting in and also Ted Lazenby. We saw Ted Heath several times. After we met them, we had an invitation to see them whenever we wanted. It was pretty awe-inspiring. Gordon played a couple of solos. Ted Heath was the biggest thing in Europe. We were all introduced to him. I remember a group of us having a drink in a pub with him one time. Going back to grade eleven after that summer was very strange.”

“What did YOU do last summer?”

“I was drinking with Ted Heath in a pub in England. It was surreal!”

“Was there any friction between Arthur and Gordon?

“No, no noticeable friction.

I have to say though, that Mr D’s discipline was long lasting. I can remember years later outside a reunion concert rehearsal at the downtown YMCA, Stu Ross (who had become the Grand Potentate of the Shriners and was one of the

230 ~ ‘14 different concert programs’

original members of the band) along with a couple of other fellows from that era, were standing outside having a smoke break during an intermission and Mr D comes out. The three of them did a double take. It was as though they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. I said, “What’s the matter with you guys? You’re not kids anymore.”

“What were you going to tell me about the West Vancouver band?”

“I sensed from early on that that was awkward. I remember he said to me, “You’re going on the trip. The other two saxophone player’s parents are from West Van and are sponsoring the trip.

So you have to integrate with them. I want you to attend one rehearsal a week in West Vancouver, as well as Kits. You can stay at their house and they can stay overnight at yours.” I said, “You’re sure I’m going?” He said, “Yes, you’re going.”

He used to take three or four of us over to West Vancouver. He was always in a rush, “Hurry up! Get in! Put your horn on your lap. No I’m not putting it in the trunk!”

He was probably harder on us Kits guys than he was on the West Vancouver guys because they were paying for the trip. There were three chaperones, Mrs. Hawes, Mrs. Brown and someone else. The discipline between the guys was far greater than any from the chaperones. As soon as we got on the train, off came the ‘West’ from our crests and back to

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 231

the renowned “Vancouver Boys’ Band” as we were known as throughout Europe.

We had two train cars, rehearsing the reeds at one end of one car with the high brass at the other. The other car was low brass and percussion. Our first big concert was in Calgary. We had section rehearsals all across Canada. Once we started rehearsing, we found out we had some fourteen different concert programs to learn. We played at concerts all across Canada.

It wasn’t until we got on the boat (and had a somewhat “rocky” Atlantic crossing) that we really found out how hard we had to work. We rehearsed in the ship’s movie theatre, lots more music! Those were six very concentrated days on the boat. When we got to England, we were ready for whatever came along.

We played in places where there were maybe one hundred people and then in another place, we would play to ten thousand people, so it evened itself out.”

“Anything else you want to add?”

“I remember one time here at home, Delamont was told he couldn’t compete in a competition because he wasn’t a high school band. He had the ‘creme de la creme’ of all the high schools and that wasn’t fair they said. He was very upset.

Another time, I played a solo in a competition at Abbotsford. I played it and won. They said, “Well that’s because you went to Europe with the Kitsilano Boys’ Band.”

As if, that wasn’t allowed, strange rules at times. Everything he did turned to gold and the others didn’t like it, and he

232 ~ Charlie Bowman

wasn’t shy. He would tell everyone, “We couldn’t play in the competition because we were too good.”

“Do you want to say anything about any of the other guys?”

“Charlie Bowman became a television director. He died in a small plane accident in Chilliwack.”

“Tell me about your association with the 15th Field Regiment Band?”

“An ex-kits guy, great trombone player and musician, Mike Lawson, who ended up becoming the director of music for the Ontario Army bands was also an avid admirer of Ted Lazenby but couldn’t handle Delamont’s style of discipline, so he had quit the band. Anyway, he and I were good buddies and we were in a legion at Broadway and Alma talking music. The guy next to us says, “There is an ad here in the paper for the Air Force band.

They are looking for musicians.”

We knew guys who had played in the Air Force Band, Ozzie McCoomb, Lance Harrison, Ken Sotvedt and so on.

We thought RCA meant Air Force. Didn’t know it meant ‘Artillery.’ So, we got into my car and went down to 2025 West 11th Avenue and said, “This doesn’t look like the Air Force. This is the army!”

The band was loud and rough and in a hall with terrible acoustics. It was an armory but we decided to play. They had a bar that stayed open all night, so we stayed. That would be around 1962/63. We joined up and ended up being gun sergeants as well - got to fire howitzers. It was the reserve. We excelled because we could play and the band needed

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 233

musical help.

In 1969, I became the bandmaster (later Director of Music for both this band and the six BC area Army bands). We made a couple of records. Lots of good players went through that band. I had gone into the car business by then. I made a lot of money in l985 in the car business and felt I couldn’t continue with the Army as well anymore, so I left. Up ‘til then, we had probably the only all-male band in the military.

The band’s chief warrant officer, Richard van Slyke (also ex-Kits) took over the band and it reached incredible new heights. Amongst other things, he was awarded an OMM (Order of Military Merit, the military equivalant of the Order of Canada) so we are all very proud of him. Undoubtedly, you’ll be interviewing him as well. The Army discipline was similar to Delamont’s structure. That discipline made the band better.

“Anything you want to add about Ted Lazenby?”

“He was a wonderful man, charmer and gourmet. He had many girl friends. He was a dominant kind of guy. We got along because we knew each other. If he was your friend, he would do anything for you. He used to come down and give lessons to our trombone section. We had one trombonist who transferred in from Toronto and he knew everything because he was from Toronto. He always had to fly back to Toronto to do a ‘coke’ commercial. So, I said to Ted, “I’ve got this guy who knows everything and he’s disrupting our trombone section. He’s got some of them going around in circles because he is telling them the wrong things.

I want you to come down and I’ll introduce you as the trombone player from the symphony.” Ted says,

234 ~ John Avison

“No problem but it’s going to cost you.”

Ted comes out and we break off into sectionals. I said, “This is Mr. Ted Lazenby. He is from the symphony and I want you to listen to the guy.”

Ted did the rehearsal on alternate positions. Mike went home. It humbled him. He realized that he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. Ted had the ability to put anyone down. He had the ability and no fear.”

“Anything else you want to add?”

“It’s half a century ago, so it’s a bit of a blur!”

Oh, we almost got arrested in Jersey. Scotland Yard came to Jersey. They closed up the curtain on the bandstand and told us we were under arrest because we had been in Tunbridge Wells and all these big signs around the city hall had been stolen (heritage shields). They figured we were the only organization big enough, in town at the time that could have done it but it wasn’t us. It was probably the ‘Teddy Boys.’

They were local, organized young hoodlums that even had razor blades sewn into their jacket lapels. They couldn’t find any shields.”

“What did the whole experience mean to you?’

“Arthur shaped my life. He was such a disciplinarian. You wouldn’t think of being late for anything. You wouldn’t be undressed. You wouldn’t miss a note. And you sure didn’t want him to hit you over the head with the music.

It was a little intimidating at times. For instance, being from the eastside, a West Vancouver member came to my house at Second and Commercial and then I went to his much larger and elegant home in West Vancouver, but music equalized things. Delamont treated us all the same, rich or

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 235

poor, it didn’t matter.”

In those days, the 1950’s, we didn’t have the technology of today. You could pick up the telephone and somebody would be talking on it, so you had to wait. We had partylines!”

“I had forgotten about that.”

“In those days, at dinnertime, everyone went home for dinner and we all sat together. The girls went to dance lessons. The boys played sports or music. Then we went out to play. It just blows my mind today. I lived recently in a family housing area of Richmond for fourteen years and could go for a walk and not see one kid outside playing.

When I grew up, you were outside playing until it got dark. We put skates on our running shoes. Now days, kids get up at three in the morning to go to the hockey rink to practice with all the gear, different times!

We had no fax machines or computers and used typewriters and something called address-o-graphs. In the car business, we used to telephone in credit apps. Now-a-days you put the information into a computer, push a button, instant, incredible!”

“Who are the three people who have influenced your life?”

“Musically, Mr D of course, and probably John Avison (The broadcaster and long time conductor of the CBC Orchestra). He was a retired colonel in the army as well - and he kind of adopted me and Ted Lazenby. I remember him telling me many things. Him and Ted were good friends.”

When Mr D died, his daughter Vera, called me up and said,

236 ~ ‘Gastown Merchants Association’

“We need somebody to co-ordinate the television stations.”

“So, I did it. I ran the ‘Gastown Wax Museum’ at the time.

I was also the head of the ‘Gastown Merchants Association.’

I cried at the funeral. How ‘Brian Bolam’ picked up the old mans’ horn and played the ‘Lost Chord,’ I’ll never know. I couldn’t believe how anyone could do that. We had TV cameras there. Delamont would have liked it. Ken Sotvedt went up and conducted the music.”

“Anything you can tell me about Gordon?”

“We were told that he came along on the 1958 trip so that Arthur could spend more time looking after Lillie. She wasn’t well. We were never told what was wrong with her.

Gordon did most of the conducting and rehearsing on the trip. It was because of him that we won in Kerkrade. He used to drive us nuts (push, push, push).”

“Can you imagine what might have been possible if Gordon had taken over the band from Arthur?”

“Musically speaking, he would have been great but he didn’t have his dad’s discipline. I loved him because he was so good but he wasn’t his dad. He knew that I’m sure. Besides, he was making a fortune in Toronto. He was a great musician.We had much respect for him.”

“Anything else?”

“Arthur used to like to hide behind trees. I’m sure he came to every public concert our Army band played.”

“He liked to go to band concerts.”

“True! I remember once I gave the baton to Richard van Slyke at the English Bay bandstand and went out behind the audience and came up behind him. I said,

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 237

2007 BELOW Peter at Brian Parkinson’s 65th birthday party

1985 ABOVE Major Peter Erwin Director of the 15th Field Regiment Band

238 ~ Dave McKenzie

“Mr. Delamont! It’s nice to see you!” He says, “You should be on the bandstand.”

It shocked the hell out of him!

I was in Gotenburg, Sweden last July for a four day business convention. I took another three days and went over to Stockholm. They have lots of museums. I went to seventeen museums in three days. I called the tourist bureau to find out when any bands might be playing and subsequently saw and heard the Swedish Royal Palace Guards Band on parade and in stand-up concert formation. Their lines weren’t too good but then they were marching on slanted, cobblestone streets. There was this big, arrogant, blond officer/director about six foot five. I walked up to him after the performance and said “That was very good but why did you play something by Mozart when all your other numbers were so upbeat?” He says, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Major Peter Erwin, Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery Band.” He says, “Major? Sir!” It was the power of perception.

He changed immediately from being an arrogant you know what to a pussycat and I was wearing blue jeans. He never did answer my question.”

“Anything else you want to end with?”

“We played on the ‘David Whitfield Show’ in England twice. He was the English equivalent to Ed Sullivan. Jack Palance was on the show. Afterwards, we were down at a pub with Jack Palance. There was this beautiful girl there.

She wound up leaving with Jack Palance. Ted Lazenby was

MAJOR PETER ERWIN ~ 239

upset because he liked her too. Imagine and he was only a nineteen year old kid. Ted and Jack had the same facial features, the big mug!”

“No manager on the 1958 trip?”

“No, Ted Lazenby, Ken Sotvedt and Gordon, kind of looked after things. We were given the schedule for the next five days, as we went along. Bill Ingledew said, “That trip was so well organized in 1958 and so unorganized in 1962.”

Bill told me, in 1962, that Arthur sent him and Dave McKenzie down to Dartmouth to organize billets and performances before the band arrived. They would have both been about nineteen. Dave wound up in Florida bringing yachts up to New York. He got into another lifestyle. He used to drive a Nash Metropolitan. He was a very talented guy.

I heard he ended up as, least this what I was told, the Food and Beverage Manager for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and later he was the manager of the Metropolitan Opera Club in New York.”

240 ~ Kim Campbell

CHAPTER 18

Ken Fowler “When I was in grade eleven or twelve, I started going out and playing in the UBC pep band under Arthur. I probably did it for about seven or more years. He kind of left it for me to organize and to work with the athletic and booster clubs. That is where I became friends with Kim Campbell. She ran the booster club.”

“How did you first meet Arthur Delamont?”

“I was going to Bayview School. I was already taking trumpet lessons at Ward Music, downtown. My parents had been long time residents of the westside and knew about Delamont. My dad came from a musical background. His father was a bandmaster and a cornet player. I was introduced to Mr. Delamont about grade five, at age ten. I started taking semi-private lessons from Mr Delamont. At that time, he lived at 13th Avenue and Dunbar Street. The lessons were after school, two times a week, at his house. I joined the Kits band as well.”

“What year would that have been?”

242 ~ 15th Field Regiment band

“About 1955, I was sixteen on the 1958 band trip. I also went over and played in the West Vancouver schools band.

They rehearsed Saturday mornings. Delamont would pick me up and a couple of others and head over to West Vancouver.

In 1958, we knew that there was a trip in the offing.

Delamont said to me, “If you want to go on this trip, you will have to play the bar-i-tone!”

He always called it the bar-i-tone. He had too many trumpets and that is how I got started playing the baritone.”

“Do you remember any stories from the early days?”

“Just about everybody was afraid of his tactics such as hitting you on the head with his pencil. You either adjusted or you fell by the wayside. Many people couldn’t take his discipline.

It wasn’t only the kids that were subjected to his tirades.

Quite often mothers would go running out of General Gordon School after a run-in with him. He was a master manipulator. One example of that was at UBC. I spent much time with Delamont, several years in his Kits band and then again out at UBC. He had contracted with the athletic department to supply bands for the various games; hockey, basketball, rugby, soccer. Soccer was his great love. I can remember sometimes when he couldn’t get a band together he would call me up and say, “Let’s go out to the soccer game.”

“Tell me about the 1958 trip?”

“It was unique! It wasn’t supposed to be a Kits band trip. It was sponsored by the West Van Parents Association.

KEN FOWLER ~ 243

He was of course the director of the West Van band, as well as the Kits band.”

“He was the director only until the end of the trip and then he departed.”

“My recollection of that was, on the train, we were told to cut the “West” off the crests on our sweaters. That did not sit well with the parents back home in West Vancouver.

POLITICS! All the boys played in both bands. The West Van capes had a green lining and the Kits lining was red.”

“Tell me about the 1958 trip?”

“I remember going across Canada by train. We stopped at most whistle stops and got out and played on the platform.

When we got to Toronto, we marched down one of the main streets to an old castle.

In Montreal, we got on the Cunard liner ‘Sylvania.’ It was a rather small ship, not huge. We landed in Southampton.

The crossing was relatively rough. We played a few times on board the ship. Some of the guys might have some stories.

Many of us played together in the 15th Field Regiment band. Peter Erwin was our conductor for about fifteen years and then Richard van Slyke took over. Ron Pajala played in the 15th Field for awhile. He was Delamont’s golden boy.

He went on the 1953 trip. He played the accordion as well and would come out and relieve the band for a while between numbers. I got to know Ron through the 15th Field band. Did you know the Surges boys?”

“One of them played the clarinet. He was out at UBC when I was at UBC.” “In later years, he would call me up to play in his

244 ~ Gail Elder

alumni band but I was always playing with the 15th Field Regiment Band and it always conflicted.

I went to Kitsilano high school. I graduated in 1960. At that particular time, there were a few of us, Bill Storey, Barry Brown and I, we all went to Kits high school. We had a string section at Kits high school that was probably the best in the province; Garth Wilson, David Y Lui. We went into the music festival and we got top marks. The Kits band didn’t reach the same heights that year and he was annoyed that his boys had been the nucleus of Kitsilano High schools success.

When I was in grade eleven or twelve, I started going out and playing in the UBC Pep band under Arthur. I probably did it for about seven or more years. For at least the last two years, I was co-running the band with Delamont. I graduated from UBC in 1970. He kind of left it for me to organize and to work with the athletic and booster Clubs. That is where I became friends with Kim Campbell. She ran the booster club.”

“I remember coming out to UBC and playing in the pep band in the late 1960s. It was great fun for a high school kid.”

“I remember one time we were in the ‘War Memorial Gym.’ The place was packed. We were down on the floor, beside the stage. We had about a twenty piece band. I was sitting next to Gail Elder. We were fooling around. Arthur comes up and grabs my horn from me in front of five thousand people. Elder owned his horn. The horn that I was playing belonged to Delamont. He was just showing what he could do if he didn’t like something. He was just establishing boundaries.”

“He would do those sorts of things.”

KEN FOWLER ~245

“Yes he sure would.”

“Any more you can recall about the trip?”

“In 1958, I remember going to the Brussels Worlds’ Fair and the World Music Festival in Kerkrade. The Channel Islands were interesting. The German presence was still all over the islands. We went to Dunfermline where we played in Pittencrieff Park. Then we went to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was a long trip.”

“Did you hear any bands?”

“Back in those days, big bands were in vogue. The biggest band in England was ‘The Ted Heath Band.” We saw them in Blackpool. Both Art Tusvik and Ted Lazenby sat in with the Ted Heath Band. Art connected with Jimmy Coombes’ daughter and they eventually married. Jimmy played bass trombone in Ted’s band.”

“Did you ever meet Roy Bull?”

“No.” “He played in one of the later Oscar Rabin bands in London and then he immigrated to Vancouver. He taught at Douglas College in New Westminster in the 1970s, when I was in the music program at Douglas College.”

Art Tusvik went to Bayview School with me. Jimmy Coombes was a social member of the ‘Jericho Tennis Club.’

I have been a member for quite awhile. I used to run into him at the bar.”

“On the 1960s trips, we used to listen to the Ted Heath Band, piped into our bus on BBC. We never imagined that our predeccessors had heard them play or met them for that matter.”

“Yes, it was a pretty special time.”

246 ~ UBC pep band

“I remember in Southend-on-Sea, going on long marches and the people throwing pennies into the sousaphones.”

“Do you want to say anything about any of the guys?”

“I remember when Art Tusvik was cut be a piece of falling glass which injured his foot quite badly.”

“Anything you want to say about Gordon Delamont?”

“He was a bit of a contrast to Arthur, kind of a beatnik.

He would explain things in a kind of a hip manner, be-bop and so on. He came across as a really nice person. His wife and two daughters came along on the trip.

Arthur told me the story about going down to Disneyland and trying to open the door for the band to come down and play. When they heard that Gordon was his son, he could have asked them for anything. They were familiar with the text books on harmony that Gordon had written because they were used in the schools and in the military bands in the USA.” “He never did take the band to Disneyland, just his White Rock band to LA.” “I guess it was too expensive to take the Kits band down for such a short trip.”

“True, he preferred the longer trips to Europe. Who managed the 1958 trip?”

“I think that was what Gordon came along to do.”

“Anything more you recall about the UBC pep band?”

“Many good players came through that band. I remember doing many half time shows, football games, soccer and rugby. We always had a hard time gathering people to play.

We never knew how many would show up. My later wife to be Maryann, often hit the bass drum until someone came

KEN FOWLER ~ 247

ABOVE: Ken playing the bar-i-tone at Brian Parkinson’s 65th birthday party.

BELOW: The UBC Pep Band with Ken on baritone.

248 ~ Al Lehtonen

along who really knew what they were doing.

Ted Lazenby learned much from Dave Robbins at UBC. Ted graduated from the UBC Music Department in 1962. He was their very first instrumental music graduate.”

“Did you know Al Lehtonen?’

“Yes, he was a good baritone player.”

“He passed away not too long ago.”

“Al was a character!”

“Yes, he sure was.

I remember Ted Lazenby used to come down to rehearsals of the 15th Field band. He wasn’t in the best of shape by then. It was too bad. He was such an athletic guy when he was young. I think he became such a good trombone player because of his early experience on the baritone. He played the baritone on the 1955 trip. It just added another dimension to his abilities. He expected to be able to play on his trombone, everything he could play on his baritone. Under Delamont, baritone parts were one of the most heavily scored instruments in the band.”

“What did the whole experience mean to you?”

“It taught me to get along in a group, the discipline of course. I have had two other experiences that were important to me as well. One was working on the trains in the dining cars, in such close quarters, kind of quasi-military. I worked the route between Vancouver and Winnipeg during the summer time and during the Christmas holidays. The second was my involvement with military bands.

After the 1958 trip, I was contacted by Al Sweet, the conductor of the 15th Field Regiment Band. I went down but it wasn’t that great at the time. I also went out to the Air

KEN FOWLER ~ 249

Force Reserve Band. I was just about to join and it was disbanded. The players went in all sorts of different directions.

Several of them went down to the Jericho hangers and tried to start a band. They tried for several years but they were never able to make it happen. That was probably about 1966.

In 1965-66, I went down to Australia. I had been in the Reserves from 1962 through 1965. When I came back, I ran into Bill Ingledew and he said, “You should come down to the 15th Field Band. Peter Erwin has just taken it over.”

“I did and I played with them for quite awhile.”

“Anything more that you want to say about Arthur?”

“I would have to say that he was definitely a positive influence on me. There were certain things that I didn’t like about what he did but I can understand that it was his style. It went back to his days in the Salvation Army, when discipline was never questioned. You certainly cannot argue with the results that he was able to achieve.”

“Sounds like you had a pretty good relationship with him!”

“Oh yes, I think so. I spent a long time with him, over ten years.”

Would you say that he was one of the three people who influenced your life the most?”

“Oh yes, I am not sure who the other two might be. I will have to think on that awhile.’

“You went on to be a lawyer for twenty-five years?”

“That’s right, I am retired now. Today, I just play squash and my music.”

“Tell me about your grandfather and his cornet (Ken

250 ~ Don Lusher

picks up his grandfather’s cornet, which is lying on the sofa beside him).”

“This was his horn. He played in community bands in Markham, Ontario. He was probably the conductor of the band as well. About 1908, his family emigrated to Robson in the Kootneys of BC, across from Castlegar.

My dad played trombone. The Fowler family was quite musical, so I came by it naturally!”

1958 Young trombone players in the West Van Band

CHAPTER 19

Barry Brown “I will never forget seeing the Ted Heath Orchestra in 1958. I had all of his recordings. The curtain opened just as the first note was played. Their timing was something that I will never forget!

I haven’t seen a band open like that since.

Don Lusher was his lead trombone player and Ted Lazenby took trombone lessons from Don Lusher.”

“How did you first meet Arthur Delamont?”

“My two older brothers Richie and Gordy were in the band before me. I took a year of clarinet at Wards Music when I was about ten years old. I wanted to play the trombone but I had to wait until my arm was long enough for the slide. When I was old enough, I took a few lessons from Mr D and then joined the band about 1956.”

“Did you play in any of his other bands?”

“I played in his West Vancouver band a couple of times once I was in the Kits band. In later years I played in his Park band and in his band that played the P&O Liners out

252 ~ Dick Todd

of port.”

“Do you have any stories from the early days?”

“Mr. D used to hit me on the top of the head with the eraser end of a lead pencil if I made a mistake. I asked him not to do that as it might do damage to my lip (cause me to bite my lip). My dad had a personality like Arthur’s in that he respected people who stood up to him, in a respectful manner.

One of the funniest things that happened during band practice at General Gordon School was Delamont telling Dick Todd to break the bass drum, in other words, play louder.

Dick drove the drum stick right through the bass drum. You have to strike a glancing blow not straight on.

I remember learning a lot from other trombone players in the band, especially Ted Lazenby.”

“Do you have any stories about Ted Lazenby?”

“I was just overwhelmed by his playing ability. He was like a great big brother to me. I practiced an extra two hours a day by myself on the trip, just trying to get better. I could have been in New Westminster as far as seeing the sites were concerned.”

“Do you recall anything else about Ted Lazenby?”

“No, anytime I talked to him, it was always about music. He kind of took me under his wing. Ted and I did go to a concert together in London. We were late, so we rented a bicycle. Here we were, wearing our uniforms and carrying trombones while riding double on the bike. The London bobbies stopped us at every block and told us to walk the bicycle. John Capon was in the band but he did not go on the 1958 or 1962 trips. He is now a professional trombone player in Toronto.”

BARRY BROWN ~ 253

“Do you remember seeing the Ted Heath Orchestra in 1958?

“Yes, that was an experience that I will never forget. I had all of his recordings. At the concert, the curtain opened just as the first note was played. Their timing was something that I will never forget. I haven’t seen a band open like that since. Don Lusher was his lead trombone player and Ted took trombone lessons from Don Lusher.

I do remember when we were in Nice in 1962 some of us took a side trip to Monaco to see the gambling mecca, Monte Carlo. Some of the others made side trips to Switzerland and so on.

When we were in England, I’m not sure what town but we stayed at an army camp. The food was incredible like a smorgasbord. It was great for a group of teenage boys we could eat all we wanted.”

“Do you have any more stories about the 1958 trip?”

“When we were in London, we were on a double decker bus. We had all our instruments on board, just crammed in.

Art Tusvik was sitting in the stairwell when our bus and the one beside us caught mirrors. Art yelled, “Oh God, my foot is cut!”

His foot was caught between the two buses and was cut down the middle. Frank Millerd ripped his shirt off and wrapped it around Art’s foot. They told us at the hospital that if Frank hadn’t done that Art would have lost his foot. Frank was only sixteen.”

“Do you have any stories about the boat trip?”

“I made one trip with the band to Calgary before the long 1958 trip to Europe and everyone acted pretty immature.

254 ~ Bill Calderwood

But I remember, as we pulled out of the train station in 1958, somebody yelled, “See you in four and a half months.”

It was a pretty sobering reality check. We weren’t kids anymore!

In 1962, we just hit the tail end of a hurricane half way across the Atlantic Ocean. We were playing a concert for the crew in the bow of the boat. There were forty foot waves so we grabbed our music and went upstairs. A lot of us got sea sick. A crew member told us to always keep something solid in our stomachs. I ate pancakes and threw them all up over the side of the ship. To this day, I cannot eat pancakes. I was so sick that I missed three days of the trip as I had to be put out with a needle.

Also, in 1962, we were staying in Southend-on-Sea. We were staying in a dorm and a couple of the guys started a pillow fight. It escalated until all of us were participating. The feather pillows broke open and we couldn’t see the doors or window for feathers. We had to feel our way around the walls to find our way out. Needless to say, we got evicted and Mr. D told us, “You’ve done it now! You’ll have to sleep on the beach.”

And we did. Could you imagine that happening now days?”

“Do you remember Kerkrade?”

“Yes, I do. We sight read our competition piece. Don’t remember if it was 1958 or 1962. I remember Delamont saying, “Do you hear that band warming up? That’s the band we have to beat!”

I thought that was pretty observant of him. Even today, I

BARRY BROWN ~ 255

don’t regard bands that warm up in public as being very professional. It doesn’t set a tone. I even tell the kids I teach the same thing. Was George Bouwman on any of your trips?”

“Yes, he was on the 1966 trip. Do you recall anything more about the 1962 trip?”

“I remember going by lifeboat from the ship into Kingston, Jamaica. Bill Calderwood and I both bought teak statues. Bill bought a six foot one and when we got to London, he wrapped it up and mailed it home. He eventually got a letter from his parents asking, “What is this pile of sawdust you sent us?”

Must have been full of termites! I bought a smaller statue and I still have it in my home today.

At the end of the 1962 trip, we were playing a concert in Southend-on-Sea for hundreds of people. They had a small stage so the trombones and baritones sat in the front row with the percussion in the back. The clarinets, saxophones and trumpets were on ground level. Charlie Bowman and I were sharing first trombone and as it was very windy, I agreed to turn the pages and adjust the clothes pegs, while Charlie kept playing. Bill Ingledew was playing a trumpet solo standing on the ground level below us. All of a sudden our music blew off the stand and landed on Bill’s head.

He kept playing! Then the music stand started to sway and as Charlie went to grab it, he let go of his slide and hit Bill in the back of the head, knocking his hat over his eyes. By this time, the whole band was laughing. Mr D was furious but Charlie was more concerned about his slide. Delamont kicked Charlie out of the concert and fined him fifty dollars

256 ~ George Ralph

for swearing. Charlie passed away quite a few years ago in a flying accident.

In Paris, we stayed in an empty dorm at a girl’s private school. There was a wine cellar in the basement which, of course, the boys found. As they were chug-a-lugging, I read the label which said, “Encre!” I asked, “Doesn’t that mean ink?”

All drinking came to a halt! There were a lot of blue lips and I think some of them thought their days on earth were numbered.

When we were on board the boat heading for Southampton in 1962, we had a ‘head purser’ who was miserable and didn’t like kids. He kicked us out of the swimming pool so we decided to get even. Some of the boys switched the men’s and women’s washroom signs around and exchanged the ship’s flags at the stern for a women’s brassiere and panties.

On the last day of the voyage, we made the purser walk the plank (in the pool) to a drum roll by a snare drummer in the band.

I had three great trombone teachers over the years George Ralph, first chair with the Vancouver Symphony, Ted Lazenby and Jimmy Coombes who played with the Ted Heath Orchestra. Jimmy told me that he had lived out of a suitcase for fifteen years. When he came from England, he went right into the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing bass trombone. I was playing a symphony tenor with a trigger then. To this day, I still warm up by playing pedal notes.

After high school, I spent three years as a CGA student at CP Air. I wasn’t enjoying my job anymore so, being that I

BARRY BROWN ~ 257 2007 RIGHT Barry playing at Brian Parkinson’s 65th birthday party.

2008 BELOW Barry playing in the Delta Concert Band.

258 ~ Stu Carpenter

enjoyed music and working with kids, I went to UBC for five years and received my Bachelor of Music and my Education degree. I began my teaching career in 1973 in Langley as a junior high school music teacher. After five years, I moved on to teaching the elementary school band program sharing the program with Stu Carpenter who was Dal Richard’s lead trumpet player. We started kids out in grade six. They started in September with them not even knowing how to hold an instrument. By January, they were playing a concert together.

It was amazing to see! After ten years of teaching elementary school band, I went back into the classroom as an elementary teacher (plus music). I retired in 2003 after having taught for thirty years in the Langley School district and I am now teaching private music lessons from my home.

The Kitsilano Boys’ band and Mr D were important fixtures in my life and led me to pursue a music teaching career.

I put myself through university by playing in different bands HMCS Discovery, BC Lions band, Mr D’s Park band, bands at the PNE and many others when they needed a trombone player. I am still playing - now with the Delta Concert Band and other small groups. I also sing in our church choir and accompany - on trombone - the church youth as they participate musically in the church services.

My son and two daughters were all involved in music through school and I am now teaching the eldest of my four grandchildren, who is seven years old, on the piano.

Music will always be a part of my life.

“Who would you say were the three most important people, who influenced your life?”

“Arthur Delamont for instilling in me a love for music,

BARRY BROWN ~ 259

discipline and a feeling of a job well done, he was very influential. My friend Nels Hindle who was a retired staff sergeant for the RCMP and sang in the church choir with me, he was a bright guy. He worked for the government after the RCMP, fast on the up-take! He was a musician (euphonium player) and extraordinary friend and mentor - someone you could always depend on. The third would be Jimmy Coombes as he imparted so much of his musical knowledge and love of the trombone on me.”

“Do you have any last thoughts?”

“I’m just really glad it was a part of my life. I have no regrets. My children were in very good music groups growing up but they never had what we had. I don’t think that any group of young musicians now days will have that special bond that the Kits Band boys had.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that my parents were a huge influence because they were both heavily involved with the band. Dad was the band President and Mom went overseas twice as a chaperone. I remember she even had to fly to London from France to pick up my eyedrops, now that’s devotion. Thanks Mom and Dad! The Kitsilano Boys’ Band and Arthur Delamont helped shape my whole life and I will always be thankful for that unique experience.

260 ~ Johnny Dankworth Band

1958 Kerkrade,Holland. The boys lined up to go in to play. Ted Lazenby in the front.

CHAPTER 20

Sandy Cameron “The best place for food was in Scotland.

They fed us really well!

We went to the Highland Games in Perth.

Edinburgh was nice.

We played at Princes Street Gardens. We saw the Johnny Dankworth Band. His band was great! He looked just like Frank Sinatra.”

“How did you come to join the Kits Band?”

“In 1949, I was given a clarinet by my father and I started playing in Arthur Delamont’s North Vancouver Schools Band. We rehearsed in the old gymnasium at North Van High. He used to call me ‘fats.’ I was rather portly. Our first overture was called ‘Dreadnot.’ I only played with him for about six months before my father took a job out of town in Port Alice. We were away for five years. There were some musicians in Port Alice, so I was able to continue taking lessons. We moved back to Vancouver in 1955.

Most of my musician friends played with Mr D’s band, so I rejoined him and his West Vancouver Boys’ and Girls’ band. Eventually, I was recruited for his Kitsilano Band. I

26 ~ Cedric Ryan

started driving when I was sixteen and used to drive some of the guys over to band practice. I played in a little dance band with Ted Lazenby and Brian Todd. Brian Bolam and I first met when I was playing at the Hotel Vancouver. My father, in the 1940s, used to call him ‘Tarzan’ because he would hang from the bars on the bus. I started playing sax when I was in Port Alice.”

“Where did your dance band play in Vancouver?”

“Oh we played school dances. We also played for fraternity parties at UBC. We made a record.”

“Do you still have the record?”

“I sure do!”

“Was there anybody from Port Alice that you remember who was important to you musically?”

“My father and I played in a dance band. I was about 13.

Cedric Ryan taught me sax and clarinet. Percy Kellaway was a saxophone player that I learned from, both those guys worked in the mill during the daytime. Les Martin was our town band conductor. He was also the secretary-treasurer of the school district. We didn’t have a superintendent. He was very supportive in my musical development. One year after we left Port Alice, Les Martin invited me back to guest solo with his school band. He wanted another soloist and I asked Brian Todd if he would come but Brian was unable to do it.

We were both at North Van High School. Brian was a year ahead of me.

“Hopefully I will get up to visit Brian Todd sometime. I hear his school bands were really terrific?”

“Oh yes, Brian is just tops. I remember one time coming from Grand Forks to visit Brian it was about four in the

SANDY CAMERON ~ 263

afternoon, Brian was in his band room with four of his jazz band trumpet players. They were all playing high Cs, in tune.”

“I also want to visit Eric Wood in Penticton.” ”I was fortunate enough to play with Eric at the Pentastic Jazz Festival. He plays in a band called the Cactus Jazz Band. It is a nice little Dixieland/Jazz Band.”

“Anything you want to say about Ted Lazenby from the early days?”

“Ted was a year or two ahead of me at North Van High. He was already a wonderful trombone player. Our dance band practiced at his place in North Lonsdale.”

“Then the1958 trip came along.”

“That’s right, there were some trips with the West Van Band to Calgary for the Stampede and so on but they were nothing like the1958 trip to Europe.”

“Was there much competition for you in order to go on the 1958 trip?”

“Not that I recall. I just seemed to be one of those that were chosen to be in the clarinet section.”

“Do you remember the train ride across Canada?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Hawes and Mrs. Brown were our chaperones. They took care of us very well. We had a good time on the train. It was lots of fun.”

“Did you play in the dance band that Gordon put together on the trip?’

“I only played once that I can recall.

“Anything you want to say about Gordon Delamont?”

“He was very laid back. I do not remember him playing much, as he was starting to have heart problems.”

264 ~ Spike Jones Band

“So you arrived in England....”

“Yes, we heard the Ted Heath Band in London at the Hammersmith Palais and then again in Cheltenham. I remember getting a ride home one time with Bobby Pratt, Ted’s lead trumpet player. We saw David Whitfield. We played on his show. We saw an antique car parade in Tunbridge Wells.

London, I didn’t like too much. We loved Scotland.”

“Do you remember when Art Tusvik cut his foot?”

“Oh yes, we were on the bus in Scotland. His foot was in the wrong place. Our bus driver got too close to another vehicle. I remember going to see Art in the hospital. He got involved with Jimmy Coombes’ daughter. Jimmy was Ted Heath’s bass trombone player. After he came out of the hospital, he left the band for awhile. We were told that he had run off and gotten married.”

“Actually what happened was his foot had gotten infected, so he stayed at Jimmy Coombes’ house and Jimmy’s wife Audrey, drove him back to the hospital each day to have his wound dressed.The doctors told Audrey that if she had not brought him in everyday, he probably would have lost his foot. I do not think that Arthur knew how bad his foot really was because Arthur told all you guys not to talk to Art on the boat ride home. Art was very upset about the way he was treated.”

“That’s really too bad, though I can see how that could have happened.”

“So can I, when it came to the music, Arthur was sometimes short on the personal side.”

“Do you have any more thoughts about Ted Lazenby?”

“He used to do an imitation of a sound on a Spike

SANDY CAMERON ~ 265

Jones’ record. There was a wonderful trombone player in the Spike Jones Band and I think Ted copied him perfectly.”

“Tell me about the Ted Heath Band?”

“I was enraptured! We just stood there and watched. There was Henry Mackenzie and Don Lusher, seeing all those guys live was really amazing!”

“Do you have a favorite Ted Lazenby story?”

“He was such a great player. I remember hearing him once with the VSO and his sound was so rich and beautiful. Ken Sotvedt transcribed a baritone solo with band accompaniment for Ted, “Scenes That Are Brightest.” It was virtuosi and Ted just sailed through it.”

“Do you have any thoughts on any of the other guys?”

“I chummed around with Pat Aldous on the trip. I met him a few years ago when I was playing in the Okanagan Symphony. He is doing really well. He is part owner of a helicopter company in the Okanagan.”

“Do you have anything more to say about the trip?”

“We were all in love with Gordon’s daughter Susan. Gordon’s wife, Vina, was very beautiful as well. Gordon was a very proper gentleman. In Jersey we stayed under a roller rink on cots. In Holland, I stayed above a pub. I had to go through the pub to get upstairs; that was really something.

The best place for food was in Scotland. They fed us really well. We went to the Highland Games in Perth. Edinburgh was nice. We played at Princes Street Gardens and got in trouble for pinching ice cream bars from a freezer back stage. We saw the Johnny Dankworth Band. His band was great! He looked just like Frank Sinatra.”

“After the 1958 trip, you came back and went to UBC?

266 ~ Ian MacDougall

“Yes, I spent a lot of time out there. I was in science first but then I switched to the music department. I graduated in 1966 with a Bachelor of Music Degree. I then applied for a teaching job with a letter of permission. I came back after a year and completed my teacher training. I already had a diploma in special education, so all I needed was a couple of summer courses.”

“Did you play in Arthur’s pep band?”

“Oh yes, I did some college playing with him.”

“Fort St. John was your first teaching assignment?”

“Yes, I was there twice, once in 1966 /67 and then again in 1972, for three years. In between, I went back to university to work on a master’s degree. I decided that I didn’t really want to work that hard so I didn’t finish my masters. It was in Music Education. In the 1980s I took a couple of summer courses at the University of Victoria, in jazz education with Ian McDougall. That was very good! I was able to get a pay raise almost equal to that of a masters, based on the grad work that I had completed. However, when I got my income tax, I asked myself, “Was that really worth it?”

In 1958, I told Arthur that I was going to join the Musicians Union. He said, “You’ll starve to death!”

He didn’t want me to join. I played with him in the PNE band. Mr D used to march in the PNE parade. He was just another musician in the band. We played concerts together quite often. We played in Dal’s Lion’s football band. Ken Sotvedt played bass drum with authority.”

“Did you know Bill Stonier?”

SANDY CAMERON ~ 267

1958 ABOVE: Kerkrade, Holland Sandy third from right marching into stadium 2004 BELOW: Sandy with cape at the Ken Sotvedt Memorial concert

268 ~ Clif Binion

“Yes, when I was teaching in Fort St. John, Bill brought up Clif Binion and Bobby Herriot to demonstrate instruments and basically to sell the program. I have known Bill since university days.”

“Where did you teach after Fort St. John?”

“I first went to Nanaimo and then to Grand Forks. My wife taught at Grand Forks for a while as well. Then after Grand Forks, Malikwa and Sicamous, I went to Salmon Arm, where I remained for twenty years. In all I taught for twenty-five years. I got out easy, some guys wind up teaching for thirty years or more.”

“What did the whole Kits experience mean to you?”

I had a lot of fun. I met a lot of people who I still know and who are still active in the business. It has also done me well over these last six or seven years as a cancer survivor. I have been supported down here by a lot of the guys.

“Anything you want to say about Arthur?’

“He was just a legendary figure. I remember hearing stories about how strict he was, banging people over the head with his trumpet. I do not recall ever seeing him do that sort of thing. George Ross and I played together in the West Van Band. We often used to improvise in the band. Arthur must have heard us but he never said anything. We would change some of the notes in the pieces when we were playing them.”

“I would say if it sounded good he didn’t mind. But if it didn’t sound very good, you would never have heard the end of it.”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“I remember one time in England, Arthur was very

SANDY CAMERON ~ 269

angry at us. He stopped us in front of the crowd and balled us out. Some of the people in the audience yelled, “Oh come on, leave them alone.”

He was very irate! We were much deflated. We needed to work harder to get back on track.”

“Do you remember Kerkrade?’

“I remember the marching. We won four medals in all. We were the best sounding band that could march.”

“Who were the three people who influenced your life the most?”

“I have to say Arthur Delamont. He was a great influence. My experience with Arthur allowed me to approach my teaching with a little bit of confidence. Confidence that I would not have had, had I not been in his band. Les Martin would be one as well. When I was first learning music at twelve or thirteen and all the way up through high school in Port Alice, he was very supportive and the third person and the most important was my father. He was a big influence in getting me started in music. He played at the drums, banjo, trumpet, sax and even the violin. He had this need to be involved in music. He was the one that insisted that I do daily work on my music all the time that I was in Port Alice.”

“Do you miss teaching?”

“No, been there done that!”

“Did you ever think of going into a pro career?”

“I thought about it but I guess that I didn’t want to practice six hours a day. I also liked the security of a teaching career.”

“There are of course different levels of pro, like Arnie Chycoski!”

270 ~ Arnie Chycoski

“True, he was a superstar! I just like playing my horn well.”

INDEX Abbot & Costello 127 Abbotsford Music Festival 55 Air Cadet Band 111th Squadron 43, 44, 48, 51 Air Force Reserve Band 81, 88, 233, 248-49 Alcatraz 218 Aldous, Pat 265 Alsbury, Bruce 65 Ambrose Band 140, 157 Armstrong, Jackie 159 Ascania 192 Astoria Ballroom 165 Avison, John 235

Bennett, Tony 155 Benny, Jack 195, 196 Berklee School of Music 119 Berlin Philharmonic 17, 90 Bermuda 29 Bigsby, Harry 187, 189 Binion, Clif 268 Blackpool 17, 76, 118, 140, 150, 164, 172, 192 Bolam, Brian 16, 25, 69-82, 109, 148, 151, 236, 262 Boss Brass 73 Bournemouth 33, 98 Bowman, Charlie 232, 255 Britten, Bobby 159 Balganin 172 Brock House Big Band 39, 40, 41 Ball, Kenny 152 Brown, Barry 18, 177, 225, 244, Banff 22 251-59 Barney’s Music 167, 168 Brown, Gordy 17, 177-85 Basso, Guido 74 Brown, Richard 21, 177, 251 Bath 49 Brussels World’s Fair 18, 104, 225, Battistoni, Cy 16, 32, 39, 46, 245 55-68 Bryson, Clif 22 Bayview School 245 Buckingham Palace 24, 44, 64, 156 BBC 21, 50, 54, 77, 129, 130, Buckley, Glen 62 180-1. 228 Bugle, England 12 BC Band Ass. 81 BC Hill Climb Championship 220 Bull, Roy 245 Burnaby Central H.S. 205 BC Pen 115 Beacon Theatre 168 Calder Music 24 Beatles 165 Calderwood, Bill 255 Beatty, Clyde, Circus 147 Calgary 22, 48, 253 Bell Isle 111 Calgary Herald, The 120 Benge 60

272 ~ Index

Calgary Stampede 22, 32, 48 Cameron, Sandy 18, 69, 72, 73, 79, 88, 228, 261-70, Campbell, Bobby 93 Campbell, Kim 241 ‘Canadian, The’ 110 Capon, John 252 ‘Captain of the Clouds’ 43, 51 Carpenter, Paul 157 Carpinter, Stu 258 Castle Hotel 169 Cave, Bill 130, 147 Cave, Bob 32, 39 Cave Supper Club 109, 151 CBC 54, 109 CBC Symphony Orchestra 48, 235 CBLT 122 Chacksfield, Frank 141 Chadwick, Bruce 126 Chandler, Zoot 147 Channel Islands 116, 194, 229 Charles, Don 131, 145, 153 Chaudiere Golf Club 118 Cheltenham 163 Churchill’s Club 156 Chycoski, Arnie 17, 25, 59, 69, 72, 73, 74, 78, 109, 118, 129, 148, 153, 184, 269 Clark, Donny 17, 25, 57, 72, 88, 109, 118, 129, 146, 148, 153, 188, 197 Climax Jazz Band 228 Clooney, Rosemary 158 Coldstream Guards 172 Collier, Ron 65, 78 Cologne 104

Colograsso, Ron 16, 32, 33, 46, 50, 55, 56, 67, 69, 72 Commodore ballroom 119 Coombes, Jimmy 17, 78, 88, 139, 149, 155-66, 229, 259, 252, 264 Coombes, Kay 17, 139, 155, 229, 264 Community Music Hall 24 Cours Light Race 217 CPAir 133 CPR 32, 97, 110 Cranbrook 22 Crawford Mickey 191 Cromie, Don 88 Crystal Palace 16 CTV 121 Dankworth, Johnny 139, 146, 164, 194, 261, 265 Davis, Sammy, Jr. 109, 119 Dawson, Roy 46 ‘Dead on Arrival’ 49 Deagle, Eugene 109 Deagle, Gerry 109-124, 146, 152 Delamont, Arthur 40, 44, 221, 258, 269 Delamont, Debra 213 Delamont, Gordon 16, 154, 202, 213, 225, 236, 246, 265 Delamont, Lillie 22, 62, 130, 198 Delamont, Susan 212, 214, 265 Delamont, Vera 39, 235 Delamont, Vina 213, 265 Delamont, Walter 195, 201 Delta Concert Band 258 Delta Schools Band 81

INDEX ~ 273

Denike, Howard 187, 197 Denton Park 12 Dorsey, Gerry 168 Douglas College 245 Douglas, Dick 196, 208 Douglas, ian 46, 61 Douglas, Kenny 147 Dressler, Bob 168 Dublin 36, 49 Dunfermline 225 Ealing Studios 129 Elder Gail 244 Edinburgh 49, 50 Ellington, Duke 16, 67, 68, 72 Emery, Arnold 33, 84, 88, 104, 129, 146, 183 Emery, Jenny 185 Erwin, Peter (Major) 18, 223-39, 243, 249 Exeter 54 Ferguson, Maynard 144 Ferrer, Jose 151 Fiedler, Arthur 70 Fielding, Harold 190 15th Field Regiment Band 18, 213, 214, 237, 243, 248 Firefighter’s Band 19, 22, 39 Fisher, Ziba 35, 42, 103 Florida 29 Flying Scotsman 23 ‘Four Naturals’ 84 ‘Four Notes’ 21, 33 Fowler, Ken 18, 225, 241-50, Foxhole, Silver 12 Fulton, Jack 77

‘Gay Parade’ Gemeinhardt 86 Geraldo’s Band 156, 157 General Gordon School 30, 48, 60, 141, 167, 212, 223, 242 George, Stan 44 Georgia Auditorium 84, 225, 228 Georgia Straight 120 Germany 78 Gilbert, Les 157 Gillmore, Barrie, 16, 19-28, 33 Glasgow 23, 49, 50 Godfrey, Norm 31, 88 Golders Green 35 Gongaa Shan 17, 133 Good Bill 36, 69, 70, 147, 155 ‘Goon Show’ Goral, Walter 33, 34 Grandview Band 32, 43, 48, 60, 61 Grandview Band Parents Ass. 44 Grand. School of Commerce 45 Gregory, Ian 114 Grenadier Gurads 172 Griffiths, Roy 95, 129, 147 Hadley Michael 15, 93-108, 181 Haley, Bill & the Comets 212 Hammersmith Palais 140, 165 Hamper, Bob 151 Harrison Lance, 232 Hawkes Challenge Shhield 12 Heath, Ted 17, 24, 35, 76, 78, 88, 118, 132, 139, 140, 148, 149, 157, 158, 164, 165, 172, 194, 229, 245, 251, 253, 254, 264 Herriot, Bobby 72, 83, 84, 86, 268 Hindle, Nels 259

274 ~ Index

HMCS Discovery 258 Hobson, Earl 18, 26, 149, 18794, 197 Holbrook, Doug 129, 146 Holland 35, 50, 52-3 Hollywood 31 Hope, Bob 127 Horne, Lena 164 Hughes, David 126 Humber College Jazz Band 16, 57, 68 Humperdinck, Englebert 165 Hurd, Al 30 Husband, Lorne 202 Hyde Park 160 Indian Queens Silver 12 Ingledew, Bill 224, 225, 239, 249, 255 ‘In Towne Tonight’ 21, 77 Isy’s Supper Club 90 Jacobs, Arnold 82 Jericho Hill School 157 Jersey 116, 240 John Oliver H.S. 167, 172 John Oliver Pops Band 175 Johnson, Chester 26 Johnson, JJ 77 Johnson, Pauline, Elem., School 125 Jones, Alan 49 Jones, Tom 158 Kanstul 74 Karajan, Herbert, von 17, 90 Kaslo 38

Keating, John 164 Keefer Street Band 94 Kellaway, Percy 262 Kelly, Eric 174 Kenny, Mart 57 Kent, Doug 196, 199, 207 Kent Meridian H.S. 58 Kenton, Stan 75, 150 Kerkrade 18, 225, 226-7, 236, 245, 269 Kettle Valley Railway 22 Killeen, Jim 176 King, Sharman 157 Kingsbridge Silver 12 Kirchen, Basil & Ivor 148 Kirchenside, JH 12 Kirk, Doug, Orchestra 119 Kirk, Harvey 121 Kirkby, Don 188 Kitsilano Boys’ band 44, 56, 59, 83, 106, 231 Kitsilano H.S. 83 Kitsilano Showboat 25, 209 Koningen Emma, 35 Kneller Hall 156 Krupa, Gene 31 ‘Kruschev’ 173 Lady Alexandra 170 Lady Cecilia 170 Laird, Gordon 16, 25, 29-42 Lancashire Fuseliers 156 Lane, Cleo 139, 146 Lansdell, John 28 LA Police Dept. Charity Show 49 Laura Secord School 44 Lawson, Mike 232

INDEX ~ 275

Lazenby, Ted 17, 57, 69, 78, 79, 80, 82, 90, 129, 145, 182, 207, 213, 223, 228, 233, 238, 248, 251, 252, 256, 260, 265 Lear, Howard 21, 33 Le Bourget 114 Legrand, Michel 145 Lehtonen, Al 175, 248 Leiterman, Doug 121 Lewis, Jerry 144 Lochheald, David 42 Logan, Claude 148 London 23, 35 London Embankment 98 London Palladium 127, 165 Long & McQuade 91 Lost Chord, The 14, 18 Lowland Broadcasting Co. 77 Lui, David, Y 244 Lusher, Don 76, 251 Lynn, Vera 113 MacIntosh, Ken 165 MacPhearson, Fraser 151 Madame Olga Petrovich 64 Malkin Bowl Orchestra 48 Manchester 49, 64 Mancini, henry 119 Martin, Les 262, 269 Maple Ridge 33, 34 Maple Ridge Concert Band 34, 59 Martin, Dean 144 Martin, Mary 102 May Day 19 McCauley, Doug 90

McConnell, Rob 144 McCoomb, Ozzie 86, 232 McCullough, Gord 69 McCullough, Dave 70 McDougall, Ian 83, 84, 146, 266 McKenzie, Dave 239 McKenzie, Henry 149 194 McKinnon, Evan 25 McLeod, Alex 36, 131 McManus, Dick 18, 192, 195-210 McPherson, Amy, Sempel 48 Medicine Hat 22 Metropolitan Opera Club 239 Millerd, Bill 88 Millerd, Frank 149, 253 Mills Bros. 151 Mitchell, Clyde 40 Mitchell, Pete, Merrick 37 Morse, Belle 34 Mortimer Bros. 44 Moss Empire Theatres 96 Mr Goof Oh! 132 Mullins, Norm 25, 30, 43-54, 96 Musicians Union 48 Newley, Anthony 158 Newquay Town 12 New West Concert Band 59 North Van Schools Band 70, 94, 261 Northwest Music 83, 86 Okalla 115 Okanagan Symphony 265 Olson, Gordon 61 Oosterbeek 15, 23, 50, 51, 69 Orpheum Theatre 43, 139, 168

276 ~ Index

O’Shea, Tessie 167, 172

Rabin, Oscar, Band 245 Radio Hilversum 50 Pajala, Ron 17, 147, 167-76, 181, Ralph, George 256 206, 243 Rand, Ronnie 165 Palance, Jack 223, 238 Rands, John 65, 215 Palomar Supper Club 109 RCAF Central Command Band Panorama Roof 88 118 Pantages Theatre 96 RCAF Reserve Band 86 Paris 114 RCMP 126 Parker, Charlie 125, 132 Red Cape Boys, The 14 Parker, Handel 12 Redruth Town 12 Parker, Phil 145 Reid, Jack 55 Parkinson, Brian 18, 211-22, 225, Revelstoke 22 228, 247 Reynolds, Jack 87, 146, 149 Parnell, Jack 102, 157 Reymolds, Roy 75, 150, 165 Pattison, Jimmy 25, 30, 48, 86 Rich, Buddy 55, 68 Pender Auditorium 188 Richards, Dal 20, 25, 88, 146, 184, Penticton 22 258 Petrie, Iain 79 Ringling Bros. Circus 75, 77 Pettie, Wayne 69, 78, 82 Robbins, Dave 75, 77, 109, 119 Pinza, Enzio 102 Robinson, Russ 114 PNE Band 89 Robinson, Sherwod 174 Point Grey Band 32, 94 Roderick, Stan 145 Point Grey Junior H.S. 29 Ross, Edmundo 165 Port Alice 72 Ross, George 268 Posy, Harry, Orchestra 119 Ross Stu 69, 74, 229 Pratt, Bobby 141, 144, 150, 162, Royal City band 187 177, 214 Royal Reg. Canadian Artillery Price, George 34 Band 238 Princes Street Gardens 50, 176, Royal Theatre 24 161, 265 Royal Winnipeg Ballet 57 Proctor & Gamble 85 Ryan, Cedric 262 Quarin, Dave 75 Quarrymen 165 Queen Elizabeth Theatre 38, 59, 109, 119

Safeway Stores 63 Salvation Army 48, 170 Samaria 23, 71, 97, 110, 172 Savoy 164

INDEX ~ 277

Schaefer, Jack 42 Schukey 60 Scotland Yard 215, 234 Scots Guards Band 156 Secombe, Harry 35 Severenson, Doc 60 Sherman, Hal 58 Sherrin, Robert 21, 54 Shorthouse, Tom 58 Shriners 229 Shriner’s Auditorium 31 Shriner’s Temple 75 Siva-White, Ed 17 Sinatra, Frank 140, 155, 158 Slyke, Richard, van 233, 236, 243 Smith, Ray 70 Sotvedt, Jim 88 Sotvedt, Ken 19, 25, 26, 27, 39, 69, 79, 88, 111, 133, 187, 232, 239 ‘South Pacific’ Southend-on-Sea 254 Spike Jones Band 265 Spitfire Band 73 Spithead Revue 113, 172 St Agnes 12 Starr, Kay 127 Startup, Glen 29, 35, 38 St Blazey 12 St Issey 12 St Just Silver 12 Stonier, Bill 83-92, 268 Storey, Bill 244 St Pinnock 12 Sullivan, Ed 119 Sunderland 126 Swanguard, Erwin 119

Swedish Royal Palace Guards Band 238 Sweet, Al 214, 248 Sylvania 243 Thames Embankment 115 ‘This Hour has Seven Days’ 121 Tip Top Tailors 97 Todd, Brian 110, 116, 134, 262 Tompkins, Dimitri 140 Torme, Mel 155 Triad Leasing Co. 86 Trussell, Bill 77, 79, 82, 126, 129, 131, 195 Trussell, Bud 207 Tupman, Dennis 188, 197 Tupper HS 117 Turner, Fred 199, 204, 205 Tusvik, Art 17, 88, 118, 139-54, 171, 172, 228, 245, 264, 253, 246 UBC Big Band 104 UBC Music 17, 24, 81, 82, 140, 198, 248, 258 UBC Pep Band 36, 48, 241, 244, 246 Uganda 105 Union College 37 Union Steamships 170 US Air Force Band 50 Valentine, Divkie 159 Vancouver Beefeater’s Band 61 Vancouver Museum 26 Vancouver, Sun, The 120 VCC 40

278~ Index

Victoria Boy’s Band 128 Victoria HS Band 188 Village Band’ 33 Villeneuve, Gilles 211 VSO 23. 70, 78, 140, 157, 196, 198 Waldorf Astoria Hotel 239 Walker, Tom 34 Ward Music 91, 241 Weisgarber, Elliot 198 Welsh Guards Band 156 Wembley Stadium 48 Western Mack Trucks 26 West Van Boys’ & Girls’ Band 19, 90, 94, 230, 261 White, Garfield 26, 64 White Rock 37 White Rock Band 246 Whitefield, David 144, 150, 223, 238 Whittemore, Fred 22 Williams, Andy 119 Willis, Cameron 92 Wilson, Tug 140 Winter Gardens 76, 141, 142-3, 148, 158, 164, 194 Wood, Eric 263 Wood, Ron 30, 88, 98, 129 Woodgreen Empire 6, 138 World Master Games 217 Yahoo XTERRA Mtn Bike Championshops 218, 219 Zig 74 Zirini, Tarzan 151

1953 Woodgreen Empire Theatre, London, England

Reminisce with the 1950s boys from the Vancouver Kitsilano Boys’ Band, as they talk about their days in the band and Arthur Delamont’s influence on their lives and on generations of Vancouver’s youth. The lessons they learned while in the band were far more than musical.

They had to do with management skills, deportment, discipline, team work, standing on your own two feet, representing others, performance skills, programming and showmanship. They learned what it meant to live a competitive lifestyle and to strive to be in the top one percent.

“Do the best you can each day and don’t settle for second,” he would say! “Nobody remembers the also ran!” You either win or you lose!

Some of the interviews are done posthumously, as one boy reflects on some of the others who have passed away! The interviews offer insight into what it was like to have been a member of “The Worlds Most Famous Boys Band.” A true Canadian success story!

The stories they tell run the range of emotions from the humorous, to the serious, to scary, to loving, to surprising but always from the heart!

The boys went on to become doctors, lawyers, accountants, civil servants, engineers, teachers, scientists, composers and writers and are today, thirty years after his death, ‘The Legacy of Arthur Delamont.’