Oliver Jones. Marthe Sansregret
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.”
***