Leading up to the launch of the Burgundy
Jazz interactive documentary in June, this series of interviews aims to
explore the project creators’ vision, as well as reach out to key members of
Montreal’s jazz and interactive communities. We sat down with friends Antoine
Maloney and Dave Turner. While Antoine wears many hats as an IT Strategist
& Developer, film buff, and lover of jazz and community history; Dave
Turner is an accomplished Saxophonist, composer, and professor at Concordia’s
Jazz Studies program.
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| Antoine Maloney and Dave Turner |
Antoine, what was your experience of the jazz scene in
Montreal in the 60s and early 70s?
I grew up in Brooklyn, listening to records and going
to big shows, like the Newport jazz festival in ‘65. When I moved back to
Montreal in ‘67, I bought a place in Little Burgundy, and discovered all these great
clubs within a couple blocks of my place. Black Bottom was a regular hangout of
mine at the time, where I got to hear great musicians like Charlie Biddle and
Nelson Symonds. It was my first experience of a small club, where the musicians
were right there, so much more exciting and intimate than the big festivals.
Dave, how did you first get into jazz music?
I’ve loved jazz since I was 5 years old, I’d listen to
Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller on the radio, and just got hooked, bit by bit.
With the saxophone, I’m essentially self-taught, I only started playing when I
was 20. There weren’t any jazz programs in universities yet, Concordia was the
first program established in Canada in 1976. My experience of sneaking underage
into clubs like La Bohème to see musicians like Nelson Symonds, Norm Villeneuve
or Charlie Biddle was also a huge influence. I would bring my friends who were
into Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. They would initially complain about going to
a “boring jazz” show, but by the end of the night they were always hooked.
We've heard a lot about Nelson Symonds, who led the
band at the Black Bottom. What was he like, as a performer and fellow musician?
Antoine: If you sat with Nelson with any length of
time, he would start talking about sports or jazz. His mind was like a sealed
trap, he remembered everything in detail. He had an incredible talent for
recounting stories, like one of the times Miles Davis was playing in Montreal.
Musicians playing at the uptown clubs would often go the Black Bottom at the
end of their shows. According to Nelson, Miles Davis showed up one night at the
Black Bottom just as the musicians had gone on a break. He said, “Come on, I
just showed up! I want to sit in with
you guys!” But Nelson and the other musicians stuck to their break schedule. So
they headed around the corner to Whitey's Hideaway. Miles very grumpy at this
point, as he usually was. They walk in, and Miles had a look at the juke box,
which the owner Bob White always had stocked with the latest jazz 45s from New
York. Miles noticed that many of his recordings were in the juke box, finally
lifting his mood, and he bought a bottle of booze for everyone to share, so the
night ended well.
Dave: I first got to know Nelson by just going to see his
shows, I wasn’t even playing music yet. Once I was more established as a
saxophone player I had the chance to play and record with him. Although he was a
very accomplished guitarist, recording made him nervous. When we did the “Thank
You For Your Hospitality” album together in 1995, we recorded over the course
of an entire weekend. Nelson eventually forgot that we were recording and was
able to play naturally, so we had a lot of material to choose from in the end.
I also got the chance to know his family in the Maritimes, they are all musical
in some way, playing banjos and ukuleles and fairs and travelling shows. His
entire life he was always saying “I’m not ready yet”, when in reality he was an
incredibly talented musician, and a great group player.
Dave, how would you say the landscape for a young
musician today compares to when you were starting out?
It’s completely changed. You used to be able to get
steady gigs at restaurants, clubs and hotels, playing four or five nights a
week. It wasn’t always jazz, but you could make a living with it. When I was
getting started, all the hotels had live bands, the Queen Elizabeth for example,
used to have a 12-piece band playing six nights a week. Today students need to
have a different kind of steady job to get started, or busk; you can’t get by
on only music at the beginning. On the other hand, students have so many
programs to choose from today, whether at Concordia, McGill, Université de
Montréal, UQAM, Université de Sherbroke, or Université Laval. So jazz is far
from dead, you just have to be more creative to make a living at it.
