Читать книгу Oliver Jones - Marthe Sansregret - Страница 12

CHAPTER IV Life as a Working Musician 1946–1964

Oliver may have played as if he were on fire, but his parents remained down to earth. They worried about his progress at school, especially when they compared him to Shirley, whose marks were in the 90s, making Oliver envious yet proud of his little sister. Nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Jones had to admit that their son got up very early every morning, always willingly. After breakfast, he practised piano, then ran to school. Rigorously punctual, Oliver never missed a single day unless he had the flu or one of the common childhood maladies.

He hated mathematics, in spite of the fact that numbers were important in music. In class, when Oliver felt pressured, for instance when he was unexpectedly called on to answer the teacher, a slight lisp would interfere with his speech. On the other hand, he succeeded very well in every area where his manual dexterity could be put to use. He loved drawing in general and mechanical drawing in particular, as well as painting in watercolours. As for the handwriting that teachers used to fuss about so much, Oliver’s was beautiful.

After school, he carried out his other daily duty, to the amazement of Bruce Parent. “Oliver was terrific! His father pushed him to practise every day. I would ask him to come and play ball and he would answer 'No, I have to practise.’” Bruce would sit on the doorstep until his friend was finished.

As Oliver grew older, Mr. and Mrs. Jones allowed him to fulfil an increasing number of musical engagements – under certain conditions. One day, he had failed to meet one of the conditions that concerned his homework or one of his household chores. His father was inflexible: “No, no, you are not playing in this concert tonight!” Oliver was justifiably distressed. He was scheduled to accompany the dancers and singers in a show put on by Charles Griffith, the well-known tap dance teacher, at Union United Church. “We’d been rehearsing for weeks, probably for months. I was the piano player. But I knew that when my father said 'you are not going out of this house,’ I was not going out of the house. A call from home told the organizers that I was not going to play, but the tickets had been sold. Then a lady called to say that they were waiting for me down there at the church. I was upstairs trying to put on my pants, hoping my father was going to change his mind. The wonderful Mrs. Mitchell, who boarded at our house with her daughter Carmen, knew that I was dying to go to the concert. Somehow, she talked my father into letting me go, saying something that must have been important to get my father to agree. My mother came up and said 'Okay, you can go’ and I took off!”

Apart from this episode, Oliver considered his parents fair and generous. “Even though we were not very demonstrative at home – there was not a lot of hugging and kissing – we were still a very close family.” Oliver viewed his sisters as quiet and submissive, perhaps a little too shy, like he was. However, when he played with his friends on the street, he was caught up in their joie de vivre, and in that mood, he made all sorts of plans for the future.

That was how Oliver, Richard, and Bruce – whose father was French Canadian and whose mother was Mohawk – decided that they would play in Caughnawaga on weekends. Bruce’s older sister had married a chief of this First Nation reserve situated on the south shore of the St. Lawrence across from Lachine. The Mohawks of Caughnawaga (now called Kahnawake) were known throughout North America as “sky-walkers” for the uncanny skill and courage they showed erecting steel structures hundreds of metres above the ground. They were recruited for the construction of wide-span bridges crossing the St. Lawrence River, and skyscrapers like the Empire State Building. Unaffected by heights, the Mohawks loved walking on air as much as they loved dancing on the ground.

To reach the reserve, Oliver and his friends would take the express tramline to Lachine, then transfer to a bus to cross the Mercier Bridge. At the Joe Délisle Hall, they would play almost non-stop the whole evening, enjoying themselves tremendously. Then they would pass the hat to collect money to pay their fare back home.

Oliver continued to entertain people in the neighbourhood. When Richard’s parents held parties at home for family and friends, they always invited him to play, especially boogie-woogie. The Parrises owned a player piano, which could be switched from the automatic mode, with popular music rolls powered by foot, to manual. They also had an old pump organ; these pedals too had to be continually worked to produce the sound. Most of the time, it was Oliver who played that instrument. Richard Parris remembered his friend’s astonishing performances at their informal gatherings. “He had a talent, as natural as drinking a glass of milk! From what source did he gain this knowledge? It had to be from above.”

Richard, who, along with his brother Kenny, listened assiduously to the American radio stations, said: “I can see if Oliver had been in New York City, he would have been considered a child prodigy, because it was just impossible to see a boy so small sitting at the piano, for which we had to put something on a chair to make it high enough. A person has to practise and practise to get to that point. But not Oliver! Sometimes we would say 'Oh, he’ll make a mistake.’ But, no!”

Bruce’s parents and his sisters who lived nearby also loved to have Oliver come over. At one of their parties, Bruce boasted that Oliver could play the piano even if the keys were hidden. His parents took their son at his word and covered the keyboard with a towel. To their astonishment, Oliver executed “Bumble Boogie” perfectly.

Making music with his two best friends and the pleasure and fulfilment it gave him meant that Oliver had no reasons to get involved with gangs. Half a century later, after his children had grown up, Bruce Parent reflected: “If people today would do what we did, they wouldn’t be out there on these drugs, because we didn’t have that on our mind in those days, even if there were drugs around.”

Of course, Oliver wasn’t an angel. When he was twelve or thirteen, he got in trouble by throwing rocks or ringing people’s doorbells and running away, but not from committing petty crimes, stealing, or hurting someone on purpose. “That was never part of who I was. I never had any of those thoughts.” Nor did he have many quarrels with his friends. Richard Parris said of his lifelong relationship with Oliver: “We never had any serious conflicts aside from our baseball spats. Oliver is my treasured friend, the closest male to me.”

***

Every time he could afford it, Oliver would go to hear famous American musicians like Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole play at the Forum. At the Seville Theatre, he had a revelation watching the famous Lionel Hampton playing the vibes and doing so with such tremendous energy. From that point onward, his motivation to play and even to practise sharply increased. Oliver, Richard, and Bruce now formed a strong musical group, which they didn’t yet dare call a band, that word being associated with making money. After a while, he and the others understood that the money would come in handy, especially since Richard and Bruce’s instruments needed upgrading.

Richard was now playing a clarinet his father had picked up in a pawnshop on Saint-Laurent Boulevard. The instrument in question was not even a regular B-flat clarinet; it was an E-flat alto clarinet in four pieces, and Richard had to carry part of it in a brown paper bag. He had a “hell of a hard time with it.” The pads stuck, and he’d replaced the broken springs for the keys by elastic bands. He finally got it to work properly even if he hadn’t really wanted to learn the clarinet. This was due to the condition that his father had imposed: “I’ll get you an instrument. Then, when you learn to play this instrument, I’ll buy you a saxophone.”

Bruce was luckier. His uncle, Frank Stacey, was a drummer who played in a twelve-piece band at the Old Dominion Club. Bruce, who admired his uncle and his drum set, took a chance and asked for one for Christmas. His mother replied that they couldn’t afford it, and Bruce was left wondering how he was going to keep playing a washtub and other household wares at the very time the group was starting to be in demand. But on the night of Christmas Eve, Bruce heard a noise downstairs and asked his mother: “Is that drums I hear?” “No, no,” his mother replied, “that’s only your uncle beating on a pot. You go to sleep!” The next morning, Bruce discovered that there was indeed a set of drums in the living room. He got dressed and ran to tell Oliver the news. The two boys rushed back to Bruce’s house. Even if the Parents’ piano was missing a few keys, Oliver was delighted to give Bruce some help breaking in his new drum set.

Oliver was happy for Bruce. He himself had to be content with the pianos that were available when he played outside his home, even when they were out of tune, had pieces of ivory missing from the keys, had broken strings or pedals, or were scratched and dusty. Yet this never diminished his passion for music. Any opportunity to hear it was welcome. Oliver used to go to the Sgrol Music Store, where the store owner and his son were friendly and easygoing. He was allowed to listen to many of the jazz records he heard on the American programs, which he liked to do at the home of one of Bruce’s sisters, who owned a new floor-model Fleetwood radio.

Oliver was so enthusiastic that listening and playing music with his friends became part of his daily life. People around them began to notice that he and his friends were not only good musicians but real showmen. During the summer, Bruce, who lived above the Lapostelle tavern on the corner of St. James and Fulford, would open the living room window to watch for the tram bringing people home from work. When the passengers disembarked, they would be treated to a free concert by the trio. Sometimes Bruce’s father, stopping at the tavern after his day at Windsor Station, would telephone upstairs and ask his wife: “Would you please tell Bruce to stop banging on those drums? The ceiling is falling in my beer!” Every time Oliver heard this, he would crack up.

If only the music could have gone on and on! But on Saturday mornings in the summer, Oliver was responsible for delivering his father’s garden produce to people in the neighbourhood. Although he would rather have been doing something else, he would rush to get the job done to have the afternoons and evenings free for meeting friends and having fun, sometimes until late at night.

***

On December 9, 1947, Don Cameron, a CJAD radio host and a friend of Oscar Peterson’s, reported that a man by the name of Norman Granz had been sitting in a taxi on his way to Montreal’s Dorval Airport when he heard a live radio program broadcast from the Alberta Lounge, where Oscar was playing. After listening for a while, Mr. Granz abruptly told the driver to turn around and take him back to town, to the Lounge.

When Oliver heard this anecdote, he told himself that even if Oscar Peterson could earn a living by playing the piano, it was definitely not the case for him. Getting paid would be nice and the money was needed, but Oliver was not ready to accept conditions imposed by strangers. He was content to play for the pure joy of it. For additional pleasure, when he did not perform at night, Oliver liked to indulge in escapism by going to the movies. Mr. Jones regularly went to see films at the Corona and Lido theatres on Notre-Dame Street. But the movies at the Corona that interested Oliver were restricted to people sixteen years of age and older. The fourteen-year-old Oliver decided to try his luck anyway. Approaching the movie theatre, he tried to make himself look older, and straightening his back, he hoped the doorman would let him in. Unfortunately, he was turned away. Humiliated almost to the point of tears, he walked back home.

***

During the summer of 1948, Oliver made his first visit to Toronto. This was quite an opportunity; very few boys and girls he knew had travelled. He had been chosen to compete in track and field for the Olympic Athletic Club, under coach Joey Richmond. The team ended up in second place, and Oliver came home with the satisfaction of having played in a major competition and of having met young people from all over Canada.

After this one-week trip, he returned to his regular routine: piano practices early in the morning, school, homework, piano practices after school, then playing with friends. Once in a while, there were performances on weekday evenings, in addition to those on weekends. When he compared his life with that of other young people, Oliver found that it was rather busy.

In June 1949, wanting to make a little money, he got a summer job at a suit factory in the Belgo Building on Sainte-Catherine and Bleury Streets, thanks to his friend Luigi Vani who already had a job there. Oliver did not enjoy the reality of working from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon at heavy, monotonous tasks. Fortunately for him, at night he could return to his preferred reality: playing the piano with friends and for people in his neighbourhood.

When it happened that he had a little spare time, Oliver listened faithfully to the handful of American radio stations that could be picked up in Montreal. One evening, he heard excerpts from Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. Transported by the beauty of the music, Oliver immediately reproduced parts of what he just heard on the piano.

He also liked going to Scouts with Bruce. They were surprised to learn at one of the meetings that their pack had been invited to meet Governor General Georges Vanier and Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was visiting Canada. Not only that, but it had been requested that Oliver and Bruce perform on this occasion. When the day arrived, Oliver helped Bruce carry the drums to the Mount Royal Hotel. Nervous at the idea of playing for the distinguished guests, who were already seated, they sought out the other Scouts. To add to their stress, the organizers had arranged the drum stand for a left-handed percussionist, and Bruce was right-handed. After a switchover, the talented duo played their best and received a standing ovation. Oliver was encouraged by this experience and excitedly told Richard Parris about it. However, the future for their trio was threatened when Bruce came down with a severe case of rheumatic fever. He was in hospital for the entire summer. Oliver visited him whenever he could. “Oliver was always there and ready to help. When I was sick, he would visit me at the hospital and he would bring baskets of fruits, chocolate bars, and things like that.” When he was released, Bruce left town to convalesce at his uncle’s house in Virginia. In spite of Bruce’s absence, Oliver continued to perform on evenings and weekends, either solo or with Richard Parris. During this period, Mr. Jones boosted his son’s self-confidence by showing him a greater measure of trust.

***

Oliver also accompanied tap dance lessons for boys and girls of his age, held in the basement of Union United Church. Among them was Norman Griffith, four years younger than Oliver and the brother of the tap teacher, Charles. Norman, who would later be known as Norman Marshall Villeneuve, was an excellent dancer, but his first love was for the drums. He began hanging around with Oliver, who soon witnessed the transformation of another butter crate. Norman described making his first drum set: “I took a little wooden butter box, I turned it upside-down, put on four little legs about six inches long that I cut from a piece of wood, and I had a little platform. To make the drum set right, I took an old metal tray like the 14-inch Black Horse trays for serving beer, took a piece of thick brown paper, soaked it in hot water for ten minutes, put the paper over the tray and wired it down around the rim to make it sound like a drum. For my high hat on the left side, and for a cymbal stand, I took an old music stand – a tripod to hold music sheets – took the top off and put my cymbal on it. Then I got a small piece of metal that I used to knock on the butter box.”

Oliver didn’t have a chance to appreciate the merits of Norman’s set because Bruce Parent returned from Virginia to rejoin the trio. But Oliver and Norman promised each other they would play together as professionals some day.

***

Oliver lived not too far away from Sir George Williams College, an institution that grew out of a branch of the Montreal Young Men’s Christian Association, or “Y.” On Saturday afternoons, jam sessions were held there. In 1949, in one of these sessions, Oliver met Vic Vogel. Born to Austro-Hungarian parents, Vic was a year younger than Oliver. His father played gypsy violin music and his mother constantly sang at home and belonged to a choir. They lived on De Bullion Street, where Vic learned about life young. There were days that medical students at the Université de Montréal would decide to empty the brothels of the neighbourhood – particularly the one at 312 Ontario Street – not with the idea of cleaning it up, but to shock the policemen whose workplace was on the other side of the street.

Vic remembered the day, when he was four years old, that a piano for his brother Frank was delivered. Frank was only one year older than Vic, but when Vic touched the keyboard, his father slapped him on the face and shouted: “Don’t touch the piano, it’s for your brother!” “It was a tradition in European countries to give the best suit and all the best things to the oldest one in the family and call it the law of primogeniture,” commented Vic. Hurt by this unfair treatment, he decided he would teach his father a lesson. The day came when he followed his brother to his music lesson at the home of Madame Rachel Martineau on Laval Street. Vic noticed a bronze plaque marked “Piano, Cello, and Cigars,” and understood that if you wanted something, you had to make it graphically clear. He went home, drew a big keyboard on a huge piece of wrapping paper and stuck it on the left side of the living-room doorframe. This appeal produced results: Vic was allowed to learn to play the instrument – but on his own. His parents soon learned a second lesson: their younger son had a special talent for music.

That was just one of Vic’s many exploits; he never ceased to amaze Oliver. “He’s a character. Once you meet him you’ll never forget him.” Vic was a forthright person, a self-taught young man who made his way through life by quickly grasping the dos and don’ts and adapting them to create his own rules. He spoke English, French, and Hungarian with an accent, mixing up the three languages and inventing words; this colourful way of talking was a great part of his charm. Rapidly, the shy Oliver and the extraverted Vic became close friends. They shared their passion for music and took turns accompanying each other – Oliver would play the accordion when Vic was on the piano, and Vic would play the vibraphone while Oliver played the piano.

As far as meeting girls was concerned, Oliver at fourteen was not introverted, but shy. “I was never able to say what I wanted to girls back then, and the only time or place I felt comfortable was at the piano. It always seemed to be my security blanket.” Vic made out that discussing the subject of girls wasn’t worth his while.

But he and Oliver still had a lot to talk about. Oscar Peterson once said to Eddie Higgins: “Pianists are the worst old women in the world. When they meet each other, they gossip. There’s a lot to gossip about. Because of the very set-up of the instrument.”

Soon after Oliver met Vic, Richard Parris was introduced, through mutual acquaintances, to a youth from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce named Len Dobbin. Discovering that Len had been crazy about music, especially jazz, from the time he was eleven years old, Richard asked: “Did you ever hear Oliver Jones play?” Len had not, and the two boys jumped into someone’s car and were driven to the Jones’s house. When Oliver ripped into his famous boogie-woogie, a new friendship sprang up around the piano.

***

At the beginning of fall 1950, Oliver hesitated between returning to school and trying his luck on the job market. He finally decided on a full-time job in a dress factory on Peel Street near De Maisonneuve, owned by the Taub brothers.

In the Jones family, a child who left school was expected to support himself or herself right away – it was the sign of becoming an adult, and Oliver found it natural to contribute a portion of his salary to Mrs. Jones to help cover the cost of his room and board. With the money left over, he went to the movies; even though he looked younger than his age, he could now prove that he was sixteen. He saw Rhapsody in Blue, in which the title piece was performed in its entirety by pianist and actor Oscar Levant, a member of George Gershwin’s circle of friends. Deeply moved, Oliver was convinced that no other music would have the same power over him, and vowed that some day he too would play it.

During this period, Len Dobbin, who indulged his love for accounting in the daytime and his love for music at night, followed the trio’s progress, taking notes as he observed them. Oliver, age 16, Richard, 15, and Bruce, 14, started to believe they were accomplished musicians.

The three of them went often to the Universal Negro Improvement Association on Dominion Street on the corner of St. James, an important venue for community activities such as weddings, dances, and sports events, all administered by Mr. Tucker. Bruce remembered: “We were wrestling, Oliver always on top!” At the back of the centre was Mable’s Pastry Shop, whose owner, Willie Daigneault, was a music lover. Willie had brought in a piano so that his daughter Aline could take lessons there. For Oliver, Mable’s was another place where he could play the piano and at the same time eat some of Willie’s delicious pastries.

Oliver had a lot of fun playing with Bruce for Charlie Griffith’s dance classes in the basement of Union United Church. Oliver’s buddy Luigi Vani was involved in this activity too. The other boys called Luigi “Skin.” He didn’t mind the nickname, since it came from the hip expression “give me some skin,” used by American Black men when they slapped their palms together in greeting – later called a 'high five.” Skin and Charlie were rehearsing a number in which one would do the splits and the other would leap over him. On the night of the performance, Oliver and Bruce began to play, but during the crucial leap, Charlie and Skin hit each other in mid-air and fell down on their rear ends. Everyone laughed like crazy; Oliver’s eyes were full of tears and he was sliding under the piano, without missing a note.

Although Skin had never learned to play an instrument, he enjoyed going with the trio when they played, especially for popular celebrations like Halloween, which was also his birthday. Because Skin loved to sing, Oliver agreed to let him perform in one of their shows. Preparing for this debut, he told Skin: “I’ll play some chords for you and you sing.” Skin imitated his idol, Frankie Laine, and belted out some songs from the American star’s repertoire, including “Jezebel” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” At the last minute on the night of the show, Skin admitted that he didn’t have a proper outfit and Oliver had to save the day by borrowing a suit from another musician. Skin appeared in this suit for a number of concerts at the Atwater Church Hall and at the Iverley Community Centre. One of these nights at the Iverley Centre, the eager audience got more than they had bargained for: while Skin was singing “Blues Skies,” the ceiling started crumbling, sending plaster down on the trio. Skin changed the lyrics to “Blue skies falling on me” for the occasion, while Oliver, doubled up with laughter, slid halfway under the piano while he continued playing.

As the boys gained experience and poise, they were given the chance to go on the road in Charlie Griffith’s big 1939 Oldsmobile. They drove to Montreal North, Terrebonne Heights, and other places where the piano had not been tuned in years. Oliver never let that hold him back. And if they were not paid, dallying with the local girls was a good compensation for one or two of them.

Between shows – the expression “gig” would only be used later on – Oliver would tell one his friends: “Sit down, I’ll draw your picture.” And he was good at it.

***

Oliver felt that he was lucky to live in the community of Little Burgundy and the district of Saint-Henri. It was a small world, modest in material goods, but rich in music and sports.

Once in a while, he played music with his friend Chuck Peterson. Chuck had studied piano like his brothers and sisters, but took up the trumpet after a tragic accident: at the aluminum company where he worked, a press had fallen onto his left arm, leading to the amputation of his forearm.

Oliver never missed a chance to chat with Daisy Peterson during his lessons with her. He remembered her explaining why most of her students should not count on a future in music. “Real talent is given to only a few, the sacrifices needed to develop that talent are huge, many young musicians invade the stages trying their luck, and even if the market to support a musician might be large, the money is scarce.” For the reasons enumerated by Daisy, Oscar Peterson, looking on from a distance, wondered how the talented and disciplined young Oliver would make his way. “I felt he was caught in a very difficult time, because at the time he started, there were a lot of jazz pianists, I being one of them. I admired him because he was able to find a pathway in between us, all on his own.” While Oliver continued forging that path, Skin couldn’t sing anymore, since the young man who had lent him his suit wanted it back. Nevertheless, Skin still followed the trio everywhere they went.

Prospects were improving for them. Richard Parris, who now had a decent saxophone, found them a regular engagement in a Chinese restaurant, the Lantern Café, on Masson Street in the east part of the city. With weekly earnings of $43.00 each for this one job, Oliver wondered if perhaps he might be able to make a living from music after all. It was good money for 1950. For the time being, he decided to keep his day job at the dress factory and to play both on weekends and on weekday evenings – except on Monday, the trio’s day off.

Oliver realized before too long that they were working in a rough milieu. Coming in to the Lantern Café on a Tuesday evening, he understood that during a party the night before, someone had put a foot through the top of Brace’s bass drum. After a discussion with the café owner, Oliver and Richard got him to pay for the damage to their friend’s instrument.

It was not only rough, it was downright dangerous. The price of a quart of beer at the Café was very low, encouraging men to get drunk and aggressive. Whenever there was a fight, the club owner, who also owned the building, would run outside and yell at the police station right across the street: “Police! Police! They’re breaking up my place!” Oliver and his two friends seemed to have a lucky charm, since nothing ever happened to them. Besides that, Richard said: “We were not that conscious about the fights because they didn’t concern us, and we liked to see a good fight anyway. Oh boy – the doorman, Mario, also the manager and bouncer, not a very big guy, but he knew how to handle any fight that went on. He would physically throw the guy out!”

From time to time, a bass player would be hired. It was such a wonderful feeling, especially for Oliver. The trio asked to have one all the time, but to no avail. The majority of club owners, knowing almost nothing about music, would say: “We don’t need a bass player who just stands there and doesn’t seem to be doing anything!” They didn’t understand that all piano players love to have a bass player because harmonization on the double bass is the equivalent of left-hand fingering on the piano: it can either reinforce the pianist’s left-hand playing or it can free the left hand from its strictly rhythmic role, letting the pianist expand into more elaborate harmonics or melodic variations. But to the club owners, it just seemed a needless expense.

***

The money Oliver was making at the Café, added to his salary from the factory, came to quite a respectable total. Still, it was difficult working at both jobs. His days were long and he was sleep-deprived. Early in the morning, he ran to the factory. At the end of the day, it was home for supper, after which he would run out of the house again, this time to his evening job. He thought about quitting his day job, for he calculated that playing music on weekday evenings as well as on the weekends would bring in enough to cover his expenses. But his father was adamant: “No, this music is fine for enjoying yourself, but you aren’t going to make a living and be able to support a family from it.”

Oliver hadn’t been looking that far ahead, but to please his father, he struggled on, burning the candle at both ends. He soon knew, however, that he wouldn’t be able to cope much longer, in spite of his youth, enthusiasm, and energy. He reevaluated the pros and cons of working as a shipping clerk, packing and hauling dresses to Morgan’s, Eaton’s, or Dobridge’s for $17.00 a week, compared to playing the piano for $25.00 on a week night and $75.00 on weekends. This was a lot of money for an adolescent to be making; not many heads of families got that much for a whole week of labour.

Oliver realized he was fortunate in this way. Even so, he still had not envisioned playing the piano as a serious career. At seventeen, he didn’t have the ambition that Oscar Peterson had had at an early age; he wanted to have a good time. Yet what his father had been repeating since his childhood rang in his ears: “No matter what you do, always be careful, because we are not the majority; it’s easier to spot a Black boy when the others around him are White.”

Oliver had to make up his mind one way or the other, although he didn’t want to be guided solely by money considerations. One day, when carrying boxes to Lindor’s, a women’s clothing store, he asked himself: “Am I going back to school or am I going to do what my father advised me not to do – earn my living with music?”

The answer came out of the blue. When the trio’s engagement at the Lantern Café was about to end, Johnny Mack, a saxophonist who had just finished a job at the Larocque Hotel in Valleyfield, let them know that there was a possible job for the three of them at the hotel.

***

Well-prepared with the repertoire they had developed at the Lantern Café, Oliver, Richard, and Bruce moved to Valleyfield for one year and plunged happily into the life of working musicians. Part of their enjoyment was due to the Saturday afternoon jam sessions, where musicians and amateurs met for the sheer pleasure of playing together. Jamming had become popular in the United States and in Canada since the 1930s, and offered a good opportunity to refine one’s technique and to indulge in a little gossip. When men said that women had big mouths, they were forgetting how many hours they could spend shooting the breeze over a glass of beer and a cigarette. Oliver did not drink or smoke, but he still loved to hear the latest news and meet new people. He discovered that his memory, which he had believed was too short to get good marks, proved the opposite outside school.

At one of these jam sessions, Oliver met Charles Biddle, whom he had heard playing with Al Cowans and the Tramp Band in Montreal. Charles was a Black musician from Philadelphia. After fighting for the United States during the Second World War in the CBI contingent (China, Burma, India), he had led the House Rocker Band, a rhythm & blues group. Charlie had come to Montreal with another band and had toured the province; when he returned to Philadelphia, he decided to move to Quebec. He mixed with French Canadians a lot more than most English-speaking immigrants did and earned his living by all sorts of different trades, apart from his music.

One of the things that impressed Oliver most about Charlie, his senior by eight years, was: “When everyone would wait around to get calls, contracts, Charlie would just go into a tavern or a hotel. He would say to the boss: Tm a musician, I have great musicians, I think you need some music in here!’ Charlie wasn’t cheeky, but he had guts! Before you knew it, he would bring in the band and start to play. The boss would say: 'For the first days, play free.’ But Charlie would find some way and he would eventually get the job.” Oliver found that Charlie had a strong personality and that he was aggressive: “If you met him, he would talk more about his fights than music.”

While Charlie Biddle was playing all over the province, Oliver was loving his experience in Valleyfield with Richard and Bruce. He was gratified that the trio’s fans were growing in number, and by the enduring friendships that he made there. At the end of the engagement, in 1951, Oliver was sad to leave some wonderful people behind.

***

Upon his return to Montreal, Oliver got various engagements while Richard and Bruce each went their own way, joining other groups. Oliver also played at the Mont Elephant in Pointe Calumet, a weekend contract that would last two summers. When he proudly told Vic Vogel about it, Vic looked down his nose at what he called a “civil servant’s job.”

During the rest of the year, Oliver took on a full routine, retaining Monday as his day off. On that day, he’d meet with Richard and Bruce, and together, they would follow Vic, who knew the places to go. They became regulars at Aldo’s, the Quartier Latin, and other clubs where they were admitted in spite of being under age. People knew that they were only interested in listening to music, and that they didn’t drink.

When he stayed overnight at home, Oliver was avid for every bit of news he could get, whether it was about the family or about his friends. He tried to draw out his parents about the past, including what they knew about his forebears. Like many descendents of African slaves, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were silent on this subject. However, if anyone mentioned Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, then Mr. Jones would willingly enter the discussion, saying loudly, with affirmative pride: “This is my king!” The Joneses favoured the hypothesis that they had Ethiopian ancestors, although no information emerged to confirm it.

***

Whenever he had a chance, Oliver met with friends who were not necessarily musicians but with whom he shared interests common to youngsters of their age: jobs, sports, and girls. Catching up with news about his acquaintances, he learned that one friend, Larry Douglas, had had his leg crushed when he was trying to cross the railroad tracks, and now had an artificial leg. But Larry never let it deter him. “A very positive and determined young man, he loved to sing like the lead singer in the Ink Spots, a very popular American group during the forties and the fifties.”

Once he felt that he was up-to-date with the news on the people around him, Oliver returned to his routine, by now made up almost exclusively of music. It became clear to his parents that their only son, now seventeen years old, wanted to leave school and learn through experience. Naturally, they were disappointed because they had always insisted on the value of a good education. However, Oliver had strong arguments to support his decision. “There was no legitimate reason why I should continue to go to school, college, and university, because I would end up being a porter on the railway. Not that there is anything degrading about that, but so is the extent of our dreams. All the other jobs were closed to Blacks and to other minorities. A lot of children were discouraged, and they would say to their parents that an education didn’t guarantee any of us a secure job.”

Despite his paying engagements and the fact that he had been a member of the American Federation of Musicians since he was fifteen, some of the members of Union United Church had offered him financial support to further his academic studies. “The older musicians in the community had always encouraged me. So did my parents.” While feeling a deep appreciation for these people, Oliver realized that the possibility of making a living from music was opening up for him. He had a sense of fulfilment when he saw that through his talent and his arduous practices he could touch the hearts of many people; he wondered if God did not expect him to go ahead and develop this talent. The answer to the most important question of his life so far was “yes.”

***

The year 1952 began badly for Oliver’s family. Violet was diagnosed with the dangerous disease of tuberculosis. She required a lengthy stay in the sanatorium at Sainte-Agathe, a town in the Laurentians known for its restorative air.

To visit his daughter there, Mr. Jones asked his son to buy a car. They chose a second-hand green 1951 DeSoto, and Oliver taught his father to drive it. Bruce Parent watched the first lesson. “You know when you drive the car and you turn, the steering wheel comes back by itself. Oliver’s father turns the corner and when the steering wheel comes back, Mr. Jones believes the car is going back that way, so he turns back the steering wheel and hits a brick wall. The two of them end up in the hospital, Oliver with a cut and his father with a broken nose!”

If Mr. Jones paid more attention to his son’s future than to his driving lessons, it was because he still had doubts about Oliver’s capacity to earn an adequate living from playing the piano. Oliver viewed his father’s attitude in a positive way. “My father was actually very proud of me and supportive. He used to come and hear us play and got a big thrill out of it. From there, I started to understand that it was not only playing, it was also a business. By the time I was 18, Oscar Peterson at 27 was playing all over the world. I finally decided, yes, I can make a living at this!”

Oliver was introduced to another young Black artist, Jimmy Moore. A wonderful comedian and entertainer, Jimmy had come to Montreal to work as an actor and, like several Black American musicians had, he fell in love with the city. Oliver was amazed by the sight of this six-foot-two comedian wearing a blond wig and singing excerpts from La Bohème with an extraordinary vocal range and imaginative theatrical expression. From watching Jimmy entertain, Oliver learned how to greet audiences to make them feel welcome and relaxed.

When Jimmy began working with Oliver and Richard, he stopped his performing act and started filling in for Bruce on the drums. “At first, Jimmy wasn’t a very good drummer, but he improved later on,” said Oliver; after a few years, he left the drums to pursue a career as an organist. Jimmy had his own ideas about what was needed to stage a good show. One day, he sent Vic, Richard, and Oliver to Eaton’s department store to get four identical ties so they would look like a real band. The fact they had no money to pay for them wasn’t Jimmy’s problem. Oliver immediately imagined himself back in his unwilling role in front of the toffee apple tray, whereas Vic had gone through the school of hard knocks – but when asked who took the initiative at Eaton’s that day, Vic just laughed. They also stopped at the International Music store, a shoplifter’s paradise where people could listen to records in narrow booths before making their choices. When the stores closed, the men’s department at Eaton’s was missing four ties, and the cashier at International came up short, since three records had been bought for the price of one.

Oliver, Richard, and Jimmy began to go on the road together. They played in various towns near Valleyfield: Coteau Landing, Ormstown, Huntington, Beauharnois, Châteaugay, Sainte-Barbe, and one Oliver always hesitated to name because every time he tried to say it, it came out wrong: Saint-Chrysostome. The boys also played in Ontario, mainly in the city of Cornwall. In between these far-flung engagements, Oliver worked in Montreal clubs accompanying local artists. Working with these professionals, he realized how much Daisy Peterson’s lessons had helped him become an accomplished musician.

The atmosphere in these clubs was not peaceful. “In those days, we didn’t have the motorcycle gangs. But most of the six hundreds clubs in Montreal were Mafia-owned, which didn’t bother us too much. Nevertheless, some of the clubs were very rough, including two places very close to my house, on Notre-Dame Street: the Pagoda and the Haleakala.”

Leroy Mason, a Black American saxophonist was playing at the Pagoda. One evening, great pianist Georges Tremblay asked Leroy to sit down and listen to Oliver. Right from the beginning, Leroy thought: “This guy is so good, he plays so well,” and wondered where Oliver was from. After the show, Georges made the introduction and the three of them talked for hours, as pianists – and saxophonists – like to do.

Leroy was born in Buffalo and had served in the American army in the Philippines, where he was in charge of an entertainment battalion for the soldiers. After the war, having learned a little Tagalog, he returned to the U.S. He entered and won a music competition for best soloist in of all of Buffalo. After this success, a friend helped him take a train for New York City, where he heard about band leader Al Cowans and his success in Montreal. With the hope of making it big, Leroy decided to drop everything and move to Montreal. In the beginning, he found himself without a job and short of money. Now he was working as a saxophonist in various clubs, and after their meeting, he never missed a chance to hear Oliver play.

Things were going pretty well for Oliver. Still, when he played in clubs on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, he saw a lot of fights. “But I was too young and ignorant to be afraid back then. You knew how to get away from the trouble. At times you would hear a chair scraping the floor, bottles knocked on the tables. You knew then that a fight was going to start because of arguments, mostly over girls. You know how some men love to drink.”

The fancier clubs weren’t very different. “Places like Chez Paree and the Bellevue Casino – where I didn’t play – were richer clubs with bigger names and artists, and doormen. They were better run and had a better paying clientele, but the Mafia was still behind it. Anyhow, I think most of the musicians stayed out of trouble.”

Closing time in most of these clubs was five or even six in the morning, giving Montreal the reputation of a wide open city – the opposite of Toronto and Vancouver, where the bars closed at midnight. The staff had hardly enough time to clean the ashtrays and the tables, arrange the bentwood chairs, remove the empty beer and wine bottles lying all over the place, and wash the floor before opening time came around again. Turbulent incidents were considered minor inconveniences. “People came from all over the world, because in Montreal, there was a joie de vivre that you did not have anywhere else,” reflected Oliver on many occasions. It seemed that the toughs reserved a special courtesy towards those who did not follow their creed: “People who were in the Mafia and the crime syndicates fought among themselves. If you were going out for a good time, there could be a fight at the table next to you, but they would never bother you. We never had a lot of shootings, stabbings or things like that – maybe a broken arm or a broken nose. It was a much nicer atmosphere than today.”

***

To start off the year of 1953, Oliver officially formed a band with Richard Parris and Jimmy Moore. He accepted a five-year contract for them to play six nights a week at the Larocque Hotel in Valleyfield.

However, Oliver wasn’t playing jazz, his favourite music, because most people went to the hotel in the evenings to dance. The group played pop and swing and other tunes from the American hit parade. A major factor contributing to the popularity of this music was that young people could move on the dance floor with promiscuous abandon without anyone else being the wiser. Since it was all happening in a crowd, neither the Church nor their parents thought to oppose this innocent pastime. And when a proclamation of excommunication was finally directed by the Catholic Church against the parents of young people who turned away from the traditional kind of dancing, most parents didn’t pay attention to it. They too had been seduced by this lively music.

In Valleyfield, if Oliver had a couple of hours to kill during the day, he went to “the” place where he no longer had to give proof of his age: the cinema. “The one thing I always loved the most is probably movies. They have always been able to transport me to another time period. I love westerns, mysteries, and pirate movies. Those areas are fascinating for me and have no links with the fact that my parents came from a country with true stories of pirates. My least favourite are musicals.”

Besides movies, Oliver’s other favourite pastime was reading. He read nearly everything he could find, especially mysteries, action books, and anything to do with history. He would buy piles of books, and after reading them, he would stack them in the trunk of his car to exchange with his father, late on Sunday night when he went home for his day off. During those drives back to Montreal, he and Richard Parris would listen to American radio stations broadcasting recordings and shows by great artists like the saxophonist and band leader Illinois Jacquet, the big bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, and pianist Fats Waller.

And as the weeks in Valleyfield went by, Oliver felt that he was beginning to be very professional at what he was doing. “I never made a fortune but I started to be well known in the business and people had a lot of respect for my playing. It was then that I really started to enjoy myself.” With new confidence, he decided to spend his days off at McGill University to learn more about musical theory and composition. He got a thrill from walking through the university that he had looked at so many times when he was a student at Montreal High School, and where Daisy Peterson, now Mrs. Sweeney, had received her degree in music. Because he had friends there, Oliver could sneak into the classes. He benefitted from this situation for a year and a half, picking up a lot of important knowledge and applying it to his playing. He also had a chance to meet other young musicians. All of this started to come together and gave new meaning to his work. “I began a much more active role at what I was doing, something you do when you have direction.”

***

One day when Oliver was talking with Richard Parris and Jimmy Moore outside the Larocque Hotel, he noticed a young girl going by on a bicycle. “She keeps looking at us and runs into the back of a car, falls down, picks up her bike, doesn’t bother about the car, but she doesn’t stop looking at us.” It seemed that it was the first time the girl had seen someone with dark skin. Another day, two girls and a man in his mid-twenties asked him: “If White women have white milk in their breasts, do Black women have chocolate milk?” Oliver was astonished, but it certainly confirmed his opinion that racism was mainly due to ignorance. “They were serious! They didn’t mean to insult me or poke fun.” The next time he went home, he asked his mother: “What happened in the West Indies when children saw White people?” She answered: “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal!”