Oliver Jones. Marthe Sansregret
During their last meal together, Oliver’s cousins spoke about the loss of their beloved father. The two families realized that Mr. Pyle and Mr. Jones had been similar in that they were family-oriented men who treated their wives with respect. The cousins wondered when they would see each other again: Quebec seemed so far away from Cape Breton – two days and two nights of train travel. Since the Joneses would never want to leave the city, the only solution would be for the Pyles to move to Montreal.
***
On the way back home, Oliver thought of the stories he would tell his mother and sisters. He would tell them that Aunt Elisa made the best lemon pies in the world, and that she kept her children very natty and well dressed. He’d say how impressed he was with Charlie, a terrific tap dancer and a real showman. Although Joe was just the opposite, being quiet and conservative, he was making his way in the boxing world. Oliver didn’t mention his escapade with Peter. As for the girls, he brought home the memory of a shy and tender Lisa, and of a beautiful and lively Marguerite whom he wanted to see more often.
During the trip, Mr. Jones expounded more of his views on life to his son, including one that Oliver would always remember: “Make sure you always appreciate our women. I don’t ever want to hear that you haven’t respected them, because they’ve suffered enough like that!”
At home, once he’d told the rest of the family about his experiences in Nova Scotia, Oliver felt a strong urge to play boogie-woogie, blues, and jazz on the piano. He had made everyone in Cape Breton so happy when he did it. But Shirley was back on duty. “Oliver, go practise your classical piano!”
***
The war was still raging in Europe. Oliver realized that young men he knew would soon be leaving Montreal to fight overseas. One of these was Bud Jones. When he completed a six-month farming apprenticeship – sponsored by the Montreal Boys Association – at the top of his class, Bud was refused a job due to his dark skin. Far from being discouraged, he proceeded to lie about his age and enlisted in the army. Not too many questions were asked of Bud, since he played both the bugle and the drums, two essential instruments for military marches. Oliver found out that his “big brother,” Wrenfred Bryant, was about to go off to war too.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones announced that they were going on a trip with their CPR pass. This time, it was to New York City. Carmen Mitchell, who roomed with her mother at the Jones’s, took charge of the household with the understanding that she would supervise Oliver’s piano practices. Oliver took advantage of the situation to play a little jazz, but his babysitter, a jazz lover, never told on him.
When his parents came back from New York, Oliver was all ears as his mother talked about their trip. The lady in whose house the Joneses had stayed kept saying that “Father Levine” was coming over. She got out her best china and silverware, her best lace tablecloth and other special linen for the occasion. Observing this woman’s almost hysterical behaviour with a suspicious eye, Mrs. Jones stood near the front window to watch for the preacher’s arrival. She wasn’t at all surprised when she saw him emerge from a Cadillac and look the house over with a haughty air. Oliver commented: “Of course, people have a lot of faith in that kind of minister – most of them charlatans who are just in it for money.” After Mrs. Jones had related all the details of this episode, she stated loudly and with conviction, “People can be so gullible!” Oliver was proud that his mother was not one of those people. “She was no fool when it came to that.”
Mr. Jones had taken advantage of the trip to go shopping, an activity he enjoyed much more than his wife did. But this time, instead of the usual necktie, Mr. Jones had treated himself to a real Bulova watch, bought near Times Square.
His mother’s tale and his father’s watch made Oliver long to be grown up. Since he had gone to Nova Scotia, he had also developed a desire to see the world.
***
Oliver ran to catch the ball Bruce Parent had just thrown into the air, and the two of them charged into each other. Oliver, who was afraid of the dentist, now had a broken tooth to show him. He remembered this red-letter incident as occurring at about the same time that he and Bruce decided to join the Boy Scouts, as Cubs, mainly to have the opportunity to play the piano and the drums at the Iverley Community Centre where the Scouts’ meetings were held. Since Bruce didn’t have a drum set, he decided to make one out of a wooden butter crate, on which, Violet, a talented artist, painted a Mexican with a guitar sitting on a fence. The two boys already saw themselves in a groove. Bruce proudly carried his drum around in a potato bag, and he and Oliver offered to perform their show in all the homes where there was a piano. Since there were quite a few pianos in the neighbourhood, the duo became quite active and began to feel that they were in business.
Bruce fixed a rod of stiffened rope onto the drum crate and installed a cymbal – an aluminum pie plate – at the top of it. Later on, he used a metal washtub as a bass drum, pots and pans for the other drums, and another pie plate for the “high hat.” Richard Parris was inspired by their success to join them. He found an old banjo without a neck and positioned it on top of another butter crate so he could play it horizontally. The boys continued with their improvised combo while dreaming of more sophisticated instruments like those they had glimpsed at Rockhead Paradise.
Besides making music with his two buddies, Oliver played basketball and competed in track and field with Ralph Whims, who was two years younger than he was. When they ran races together, Ralph couldn’t get over the fact that Oliver ran “as fast as lightning. He was thin and very quick. He would run short distances, like one hundred yards, seventy-five yards, very fast, and he was so skinny, just skin and bones, small, and thin as a rake.”
Ralph’s mother was the well-known singer and chorus line dancer, Bernice Whims. Bernice used to say she had begun her show business career at age eight when the minister at Sunday school complained that she sang too loudly. For that reason, she started singing in theatres and moved on to clubs a few years later. “[Another] reason I ended up in nightclubs is because I was determined that, as a little girl, if I could not do arithmetic – it just bothered me and I could not memorize the times tables – I had to make sure I would use my memory for something I liked, because I could recite and memorize just about anything without looking in the book.”
As Bernice got to know Oliver, she came to appreciate the fact that he came from a good Black family and had the respectful manners to prove it. She introduced him to the young Sammy Davis Jr., who was performing with her; Oliver, of course, had no idea he was meeting a future big star. Watching Oliver develop, Bernice was convinced of his tremendous talent. She got him his first professional gig, when he was eleven years old.
***
At the traditional family Christmas dinner in 1943, Oliver missed Wrenfred, who had sailed on the Île de France. He was to be stationed in Italy, and, for a short period, in Holland.
While his cousin was crossing the Atlantic, Oliver played Christmas and New Year’s songs on the piano for the family and the neighbours. After the holidays, he returned to a typical routine for a boy his age, except for his daily piano practices. If no one in the family was picking on him, he played all kinds of new pieces he heard on the radio. Along with his favourite boogie-woogie repertoire, he picked up romantic melodies like “Blue Moon” and “Star Dust.” He amazed people when he played the blues songs. Although Oliver was far removed from the days of slavery or from the cotton fields of the American South, he threw his whole heart into this moving, sensual music that expressed what Black American sharecroppers and migrants had lived through. Then, with no one to stop him, he would move on to jazz, pop, and swing.
With the arrival of spring, Oliver noticed the presence of the zoot-suiters – young men dressed provocatively in baggy pants with tight cuffs and oversized jackets, who would stroll nonchalantly through the streets. They did not want to serve in the army and did not care to work either, preferring to stay at home and wait for the girls to show up when sailors came to town.
One night, Oliver, while playing in a club, saw another side of the zoot-suiter phenomenon. “I saw a fight break out between a group of them and one of the sailors. I was too young to understand what the fight was about. I