Here are two excerpts from an upcoming book I wrote on my father, Fraser MacPherson, called Fras: I Don’t Have To Go Anywhere – I’m Already Here. The first is from his days leading the bands at Isy’s Supper Club and the Cave in the 1960s. The second deals with the early release of his first jazz album, ‘Fraser: Live at the Planetarium’ in the 1970s.

22. “Help!”

Multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson arrived in Vancouver from Powell River, BC, in 1960. Prior to this, he had heard my dad, among others, on the radio.

“When I moved to Vancouver there were three musicians that I knew enough about that they were my heroes,” he says. “Fraser and Dave Robbins and Chris Gage. Those were the three people. And when I moved there, it was just like some kind of a fantasy that I’d ever get to hear them play live.”

At this stage of his career, the 20-year-old, who’d go on to become a world-class musician on piano, bass, vibes, and drums, describes himself as just “an absolute beginning amateur.” But there was only one other player in town who played vibes – Ray Lowden – so Thompson managed to land a job.

“Word just sort of got out and Dave heard about me,” he says. “And I could play some. I was not terrible. He called to see if I’d play one tune on one of the Jazz Radio-Canada shows he was doing. Like a jerk, I said, yeah, of course. I was all excited. I didn’t realize what I was actually getting into.”

He played Ghost of a Chance with the rhythm section of Chris Gage, Paul Ruhland and Al Johnson. “It went well and Dave liked me,” he says.

Then Doug Parker asked him to do a 26-episode half-hour radio series. Each week, the band rehearsed from 4 pm to 5:30, there would be a one-hour break, and then they’d go live to air from 6:30 to 7 o’clock.

“All the arrangements were written out with three-part harmony featuring flute, vibes and guitar,” he says.

My dad played the flute part and Ernie Blunt was on guitar. There was only one problem: “I couldn’t read any music at all,” Thompson says. “So I was just a big mess. There were about half a dozen, six or seven, tunes. But I couldn’t play any of them. None of them at all! I couldn’t play the first bar of any of them.”

Fras to the rescue.

During the break, he went over to the new kid in town and played Don’s vibes part on his flute so Thompson could get a sense of what he was to do.

“He spent the whole break, right up until almost the minute that we went back on the air live,” Don remembers. “He played over every single arrangement on my parts, reading them off my music, and taught me how to play them. I had a good enough memory that I could learn them pretty fast. So we did the show and it was perfect. I didn’t make any mistakes.”

This wasn’t a one-off, either.

“The next week we had another show and Fraser did the same thing again. He never took a break for about the first dozen shows. He spent all the breaks just teaching me my parts. He went out of his way so much to help me like that. He was absolutely amazing. If he hadn’t done that, I would have just had to tell Doug, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do it,’ and I would have quit.”

It’s a what-if moment for Thompson that has stayed with him. What if Fraser hadn’t been so generous with his time?

“If it wasn’t for what he’d done, I might well have gone back to Powell River and work in the paper mill.”

Thompson eventually moved to San Francisco to play with American saxophonist John Handy in 1965 and then on to Toronto in 1969, where he’s lived ever since and had an amazing career. He would occasionally get to play with my dad here and there, sitting in when Fras played Toronto, and together at a couple of jazz parties in Toronto and Oregon, so they kept in touch over the years.

“I actually did tell him that if it wasn’t for him, I probably never would have been a musician,” Thompson says. “What he did for me, the way he helped me, I mean, he just went way above and beyond for me and I couldn’t believe anybody would do that. He didn’t know me. We’d only just met. It was his own time but he just went out of his way to help me learn how to be a musician. I’ll never forget that. He was just one of the most important people in my life. When I think back, I can’t imagine if he hadn’t done that, my whole life would have been different.”

When fellow bassist Steve Wallace hears that story, it rings true.

“That is Fras all over,” he says. “If he believes in you, he’d do a lot to help you. If he saw some kind of ability, it didn’t matter what wasn’t there, he’d help you develop what was there or help you improve. It is amazing, but I’m not surprised.”

Fraser’s time as leader at Isy’s came to an end in November 1961. I don’t know if it was a friendly departure or not, but the item in the paper said relations between Isy Walters and my dad “developed some sour notes after three years.” Regardless, Fras was instrumental in hiring his successor.

Bobby Hales, who moved to Vancouver four years earlier in 1957, would occasionally sub for trumpeter Carse Sneddon at Isy’s while my dad was leader there. Hales was also getting work with Dave Robbins at the Cave so was becoming known in the city’s music circles.

One night, he went down on a night off to hear the band at Isy’s, and my dad took him aside and asked, “Do you want to be a leader, kid?”

Hales was naturally surprised. As he explained, Fras said: “Well, I’m taking the band into the Cave. Isy is looking for a band. So go down and talk to him.’ So on Fraser’s advice, I went down and talked to Isy.”

And Hales was promptly hired.

“I’m taking the band into the Cave.” Was this Hales’ memory playing tricks? Chris Gage would have been named leader there in January 1962, taking over from Dave Robbins.

Any biographical information you might find on Fraser MacPherson says he was bandleader at the Cave from 1964 to 1970 (neglecting to mention his two previous stints, in 1955 and 1958). These later dates are even the ones he himself provided. Since Chris Gage preceded him, and since Gage died in December of 1964, it’s assumed my father took over after Gage’s death. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Gage came in the year Cave owners Ken Stauffer and Bob Mitten started bringing in the “really big stars.” The pianist had previously been at the Arctic Club, also owned by Stauffer and Mitten, but a fire gutted the place. With the Arctic Club almost literally toast, Stauffer and Mitten wanted a place for Gage to hang his hat so they brought his trio over to the Cave and fired then-leader Dave Robbins who was also on the board of the musicians association at the time. The owners didn’t exactly like haggling over contracts with the union (as everyone called it), and took it out on Robbins, replacing him with Gage. Fras and Carse Sneddon were brought over from Isy’s to make Chris’ trio a quintet. All the musicians were members of the association, of course, but not on the board like Robbins was.

Stauffer’s distaste for the union continued, though. In 1971, when he was looking back at his time as the owner of the Cave, Stauffer called out the Musicians’ Association.

“I’m pretty bitter about it because they have given us a bad time,” he said. “Their prices have risen tremendously in the last two or three years.”

He cited the latest Mitzi Gaynor show as an example. For her eleven-day run, the 17 musicians were paid $10,000 (about $72,500 today).

“Five years ago, that would probably cost half that,” he said.

Don Clark remembers Fraser starting his leadership after Gage died just after Christmas 1964. My dad himself said, “My memories of the Cave date back to 1953 when I worked for six months as a sideman with Carl DeSantis’ band. I returned to work for Isy Walters [at the Cave] as bandleader in 1955-56 and again in 1958. Later I worked for [owner] Ken Stauffer with Chris Gage’s band in 1962 and as bandleader from 1964 to 1970.”[1]

But Gage was working nightly at the Quadra Club on Seymour when he died. Fraser actually took over from him at the Cave ten months earlier, in February 1964, reportedly to allow Gage “a chance to catch up on his busy radio and TV schedule.”

There are clues, however, leading to the fact Fraser was the leader, possibly only in a de facto sense, prior to that time, too:

• When Vic Damone played the club in December of 1962, Bob Smith wrote of how well his touring musicians meshed with the locals. “Their intuitive rapport with the Fraser MacPherson Orchestra was as delightful to listen to as Damone’s impressive pipes.”

• There’s a Kim Sisters promo head shot from 1962 and signed by the three sisters. They were a singing group – K-Pop before K-Pop – that came to America in 1959 and made it on to the Ed Sullivan Show that same year, and 20 more times after that. The message one of them wrote on the headshot to my dad was, “To one of the greatest orchestra leaders we ever known [sic]. It’s been wonderful working with you. God bless.”

And then more evidence from February to the end of 1964:

• Eleanor Powell, Hollywood actress and dancer, finished at the Cave in February of ’64 and moved on to a gig in the States. The band down south apparently didn’t quite cut it. “Miss Powell’s music was difficult to play while Mr. [Gerry] Dolin [Powell’s musical director] was a hard taskmaster,” wrote Bob Smith. “Well, after opening night in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the biggest spa in North America, which was Miss Powell’s next date, Dolin airmailed Fraser MacPherson one word – ‘Help!’”

She also signed a promo shot of herself to him that suggested he was the leader: “To ‘Frazer,’ A wonderful person who has a terrific orchestra. It has been such a pleasure working with you and knowing you. Good luck from your dancing friend. Hope we work together soon again. Fondly, Eleanor Powell.”

• In May of that year, former wunderkind Anna Maria Alberghetti, who had by this point already been on the cover of Life magazine twice, was having difficulty introducing the band. The Sun said she “speaks five languages but when it comes time to thank bandleader Fraser MacPherson each night she stumbles over the name. ‘It’s German, isn’t it?’ the Italian-born star complained.”

• In June, the Province reported that Rosemary Clooney “delivers the songs her listeners expect with strong backing from Fraser MacPherson’s group.”

• Also before Gage’s death, my dad got a handwritten “fan letter” from Sergio Franchi’s musical director, Neil Warner, written on Sahara Hotel letterhead. Franchi had finished his 11-day run at the Cave[2] on November 7. This letter was dated November 17:

Dear Fraser,

I want to thank you again for the superlative way you and your orchestra played our music. We’ve been all over the United States for almost two years and never has the act been played better or by a more cooperative group of musicians. It’s a pity that you don’t make a tour – you might bring playing in tune back in style.

Best regards,

Neil Warner

In November of 1964, Sneddon became the bandleader at Marco Polo, the third of the Big Three nightclubs in town. Being the dean of the bandleaders by this point, Fras welcomed Carse to the ranks by sending over a gift on Carse’s opening night, which “consisted of a bottle for the boys and a horsewhip for me to use on them if necessary,” said Sneddon.

The job of bandleader in a club like the Cave was an important position to fill, especially with Stauffer and Mitten going all-in on bringing in the big names. In recapping the Cave’s history after its closing in 1981, Bob Smith wrote: “And for the toughest job in the trenches – or maybe it is better depicted as walking the tightrope between visitors and residents – [the owners] chose Fraser MacPherson. Every seven, 10 or 14 days his musical and diplomatic qualities were tested and always came through. Most of the visiting ‘names’ and their musicians came here as non-believers but after rehearsal with Fraser and his capable sidemen they were converts.”

[1] The verified end date is August 1971, as we’ll show later.

[2] with a young Vancouver comedian opening for him by the name of Dave Broadfoot.

 50. “A minor miracle”

Next it was time for Fraser to take a financial risk. He knew the product was good, but who knew if anyone would take notice? Like Germann’s promotion sideline, my dad was a one-man show in getting the music out there to the world (“against all advice,” he said). He took out a bank loan of $5000[1] and, as Marke Andrews itemized in the Sun, “paid the required fees, remixed the sound at Little Mountain Studios, ordered the album jackets from Evergreen Press, had a master pressed, with some difficulty, at IRC in Marpole, and took an initial order of 1000 which he issued under his own company label, West End, as in where he lives.”

“I got lucky,” he told Andrews. “I dealt with competent people who did a competent job.”

He’d call the record Fraser: Live at the Planetarium. Simple and to the point. It was pragmatism over presumption that anyone would know who Fraser is.

“I just used my first name because we didn’t have room for ‘MacPherson,’” he said. “Besides, look what it did for Liberace and Hildegarde, to say nothing of Rasputin and Casanova.”

I remember my dad being excited about the project. I had bugged him about getting his own band and now he had one. On a visit to Vancouver, he took me around on his record-producing errands. I remember looking into a microscope-type device at the grooves on the master vinyl. I masked my disappointment that the band had no trumpets or drums. How can you have a band without trumpets and drums, fourteen-year-old me thought?

But over time, the trio grew on me to the point where this album is my absolute favourite of all his recordings. The sparse sound of tenor sax, guitar and bass stood out in the electric seventies, yet was nothing new in the grand scheme of things. It’s simple and uncompromising jazz – timeless.

If the minutiae of the process was daunting, it paled in comparison to what came next: Trying to attract the attention of the world press. He had been getting regular attention from newspapers in the city for decades, so attracting their attention wouldn’t be an issue. But he set his sights farther afield.

Without so much as a typewriter or official letterhead, Fraser sent off his newly pressed records to jazz critics down south and in England along with a hand-written note.

Maclean’s magazine wrote, “Soliciting reviews from internationally recognized authorities struck his friends as audacious but futile – roughly equivalent to offering a vanity-press novel to The New York Review of Books.”

That’s an apt analogy. Self-produced albums weren’t as common as they are today.

“I could feel eyebrows being raised over the phone,” he said.

But the decision to go it alone was a carefully considered one. He could have attempted to sell the recording to any number of small jazz labels in Canada or the US.

“I thought about all of them and I decided that if they take it, sure, the album’s out – but out where? Back east it’ll go once around the block and then disappear,” he said. “I want it to be available to people so I said to myself, you might as well jump in there and see what you can do. And anyway, I can still sell it to a major label later if I want to.”[2]

He had nothing to lose in shipping records off to highfalutin publications – well, apart from time and the cost of postage and albums. He explained, “It was crazy. But I figured I couldn’t get a bad review. Who’d bother giving a bad review to a nobody?”

He knew what he was getting into. This was a jazz album. He wasn’t expecting fame or fortune.

“I didn’t even think about it,” he said. His crazy plan paid off in other ways, though. Several major American magazines bit. And as my dad predicted, if they were going to write anything, it would be positive.

 “I got a call at 9:20 one morning,” he said, “and this voice said, ‘Fraser MacPherson? Chris Albertson from Stereo Review likes your record and is considering a feature review. Could you send us some glossies?”

None of these American reviewers were familiar with Fraser MacPherson prior to this, making their decision to write about the album all the more surprising.

The reviewer for New York’s Cadence: The American Review of Jazz and Blues wrote, “One of the rewards of Cadence is the awareness of music, musicians and records which otherwise might go completely unknown. I’m always humbled when I am sent a record along with a note which, in this case, reads, ‘I am sending you this album in the hope that you might find it worthy of a review in your magazine…’ [3] And then you put on ‘this’ album and reaching out at you from the speakers flow the most glorious, inspiring sounds. My god, I am flattered that an artist thinks enough of the magazine to honor us with, not only the privilege of listening to the musical outpouring of his soul, along with the distinct honor of letting us try to convey the essence of that beauty in Cadence.”

Albertson at Stereo Review wrote, “At this point I should confess that I had never heard of MacPherson, Gannon, and Ruther until I received for review an album on the West End label, so I really don’t know if they play together regularly. Judging from the rapport in evidence on the record, however, I’m quite willing right now to lay a little money on it.”

New York Times’ John Wilson wrote in High Fidelity magazine, “From out of left field (if that’s the proper location reference for Vancouver, British Columbia) comes this surprising record by the Canadian tenor saxophonist Fraser MacPherson.”

Britain’s Jazz Journal said, “If the jazz of Canada’s west is all of this calibre, lead me to it.”

It was a heady time. Stereo Review named Live at the Planetarium its top album of the month. Said Jack Wasserman, “The fact that Stereo News [sic] even bothered to play it, let alone label it best of the month ­– in any field – is a minor miracle.”

Cadence named it one of its ten best albums for 1976, joining such luminaries as Count Basie, Zoot Sims, Charles Tolliver, Leroy Jenkins, Sonny Stitt, Red Holloway, and Doc Cheatham beating out the honorable mentions that included Sonny Greenwich, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Dave McKenna, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

That initial Cadence review couldn’t have glowed any more than it did: “There just isn’t a wrong note and the music rings with emotion and dedication. Perhaps Fraser is strongest on ballads, where he demonstrates an astute, feather-like tension, laying out a line you could sit on with suspended tension that occasionally releases with an inverted line in the upper register turning a tingle to a cry. Django is a beautiful tune and has been played by many with great success, but the version here by this trio has to be one of the definitive. There is little more I can say about this record except that it is one of those records that if put in relationship to other recordings, raises the medium of good on a sliding curve that much higher.”

For a little self-produced album, Fraser: Live at the Planetarium was influential, not just a critical success. CBC’s Margaret Pacsu called it “one of the legends of the Canadian recording industry.” Years later, Tom Harrison wrote that “Fraser MacPherson revolutionized independent recording.” It got lots of airplay, which you might expect on the CBC, but I also heard it on my hometown commercial non-jazz radio station. The announcer gushed, “Fraser MacPherson, thank you for being.” Even I thought that was a little much.

All the attention spurred sales. By spring, according to Maclean’s magazine, he had sold “close to 1500 albums” and had received orders from “places as far afield as San Francisco, Ottawa, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” He was satisfied with his little project. If it had ended there, he would have considered it a success.

“I just wanted to play some honest music and have some fun,” he said. “Hell, I could quit now and be ahead of the game.”

The album rekindled a friendship with Terry Garner, who I knew as the BC host of CBC’s Reach For the Top, a Jeopardy!-like quiz show for Canadian high school students. The two had known each other at Victoria College and UBC.

On the original Live at the Planetarium, my dad included the West End Records label information, which was simply his apartment address and phone number. So Garner called him up.

“Fraser answered the phone and I said, ‘I had to do this. It’s the first time I ever had the chance to phone both the artist and the record company and say how much I enjoyed the album,’” Garner told CBC TV’s Take 30 at the time. “So we laughed over that. It was a funny thing to relate to this cottage industry that way and get Fraser, who was probably at that moment wrapping a record to mail out to Des Moines, Iowa, or something like that.”

Tenor saxophonist Phil Dwyer was eleven years old when his father, a logger and “huge jazz aficionado,” brought home a copy of the album.

“I’m not exaggerating,” says Phil, “that record probably got played 500 times in my house. Several times a week for quite a few years.”

Even in those pre-teen years, Dwyer was already listening to Lester Young, Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges, so you can imagine he would have dug the unpretentious playing he heard on the album. The repeated listening burned Fraser: Live at the Planetarium into his young head.

“I could sing the solos. I could almost write out the comping and the bass lines from Live at the Planetarium, let alone the solos. That thing is memorized. It’s indelibly marked in my brain.”

He still digs it out from time to time.

“Even listening to it today, I go, yeah, that’s just good music. It’s right in the pocket, the stuff he plays is harmonically bang-on but it’s not slave to the harmony, it’s always melody first and great sense of time and a good sound and all that stuff. It sounds as good to me today as it did when I was twelve.”

Future Shuffle Demons sax man Richard Underhill was given the album for his fourteenth birthday. He wrote, “I played Live at the Planetarium hundreds of times and marveled at the elegant beauty of every note on the album. Fraser MacPherson’s warm and inviting tone, his effortless driving swing and lyrical lines soared over Oliver Gannon’s intricate yet hard-swinging guitar accompaniment. Live at the Planetarium enticed me into the world of jazz with grace and groove and to this day remains one of my favourite albums.”

The album’s success – and just the fact my dad was getting to do what he really loved for a living – buoyed him.

Blaine Tringham, who had experienced the standoffish MacPherson while playing under him at the Cave, noticed his new spirit at a jingle recording at Little Mountain Sound.

He was sitting around with Fras and Don Clark while the rhythm section was putting their parts down.

“I think that album rejuvenated him. I remember that day vividly when he came in before a jingle and he had just done the album and he had some copies with him and he gave me a copy. He was much more animated than I’d ever seen him before,” Tringham remembers. “He was so chatty and so friendly and so warm. That’s what he needed to do, that’s what he wanted to do, and he did it. That was when I first really took notice of the fact he was just now one of the guys. He didn’t have to be a bandleader; he didn’t have to be on a different level.”

[1] Adjusted for inflation, it works out to about $25,000.

[2] Foreshadowing alert.

[3] For the local press, the notes were more personal. Jack Wasserman’s “handwritten press release” included “aids to listening enjoyment”: “a) shoes off, b) feet up, c) a tumbler full of strong drink.”

References

22. “Help!”

“When I moved to Vancouver…” Don Thompson, interview with the author, Tuesday, May 18, 2021

“That is Fras all over…” Steve Wallace, interview with the author, Tuesday, May 18, 2021

“developed some sour notes…” Vancouver Sun, Jack Wasserman, Wednesday, November 22, 1961

“Do you want to be a leader…” Bobby Hales, interview with the author, October 23, 2006

“really big stars” The Province, Ray Chatelin, Friday, October 22, 1971

Arctic Club, also owned… The Province, Jack Moore, Saturday, December 5, 1964

…a fire gutted the place. The Province, Friday, January 5, 1962

.... fired then-leader Dave Robbins… Don Clark, interview with the author, Tuesday, October 13, 2020

“I’m pretty bitter about it…” The Province, Ray Chatelin, Friday, October 22, 1971

“My memories of the Cave…” Remember the Cave: 1937 to 1981, Claire Hurley

“a chance to catch up on…”  The Province, Barney Potts, Saturday, February 22, 1964

“Their intuitive rapport…” Vancouver Sun, Bob Smith, Friday, December 14, 1962

… came to America in 1959 and made it… Wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kim_Sisters

“Miss Powell’s music was difficult…” Vancouver Sun, Bob Smith, Friday, March 20, 1964

Anna Maria Alberghetti, who had by point… Wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Maria_Alberghetti

“speaks five languages but…” Vancouver Sun, Jack Wasserman, Saturday, May 2, 1964

“delivers her songs her listeners expect…” The Province, Friday, June 26, 1964

“consisted of a bottle for the boys…” The Province, Jack Moore, Saturday, March 13, 1965

“And for the toughest job in the trenches…” Vancouver Sun, Bob Smith, Friday, May 22, 1981

50. “A minor miracle”

“against all advice” Marc Vasey interview, Edmonton, 1986.

“paid the required fees…” Vancouver Sun, Marke Andrews, Thursday, December 30, 1976

“I just used my first name…”  The Courier, Bob Ness, November 4, 1976

“Soliciting reviews…” Maclean’s magazine, Jeani Read, April 18, 1977

“I could feel eyebrows…” Vancouver Sun, Marke Andrews, Thursday, December 30, 1976

“I thought about all of them…” The Courier, Bob Ness, November 4, 1976

“It was crazy…” Maclean’s magazine, Jeani Read, April 18, 1977

“I didn’t even think…” Seattle Times, Paul de Barros, Thursday, February 20, 1986

“I got a call at 9:20…” Vancouver Sun, Marke Andrews, Thursday, December 30, 1976

“One of the rewards of…” Cadence, the American Review of Jazz & Blues, October 1976

“At this point I should confess…” Stereo Review, Chris Albertson, January 1977

“From out of left field…” High Fidelity, John Wilson, January 1977

“if the jazz of Canada’s west…” Jazz Journal, M.G., December 1976

“The fact that Stereo News…” Vancouver Sun, Jack Wasserman, Thursday, December 16, 1976

Cadence named it one of its ten best… Cadence, the American Review of Jazz & Blues, Bob Rusch, January 1977

“There isn’t a wrong note…” Cadence, the American Review of Jazz & Blues, October 1976

“one of the legends of…” Easy Street, CBC radio, Margaret Pacsu, 1987

“Fraser MacPherson revolutionalized…” The Province, Tom Harrison, Tuesday, June 16, 2009

“close to 1500 albums” … Maclean’s magazine, Jeani Read, April 18, 1977

“Fraser answered the phone…” Take 30, CBC TV, Terry Garner, circa 1978

“huge jazz aficionado”… Phil Dwyer, interview with the author, Thursday, May 20, 2021

“I played Live at the Planetarium…” Richard Underhill, January 20, 2015

“I think that album rejuvenated…” Blaine Tringham, interview with the author, Saturday, October 10, 2020