Phil Sparling Reminisces
In the late 1940s, one of London's premier big band leaders was Jack Evans who played principally at the London Arena. Jack was diminutive voluble and very enthusiastic – and those characteristics applied equally to the second trumpet player Ab (well, maybe the first adjective is a bit of a stretch!). Ab was a good section men who had not had a lot of training in the sometimes obtuse directions which appeared in the arrangements we played. This minor shortcoming surfaced during one rehearsal when he suddenly started blasting out during the last few bars of “In The Mood”. Jack yelled out “Ab! What are you doing? Don’t you see it says ‘tacit’?” Ab replied, “Sorry Jack, I thought it said ‘take it’”!!
I remember another good trumpeter named Brock Hammond who booked a gig one night with Bobby Downs and arranged to be picked up by Bobby at the corner of Dundas and Richmond Streets for the date in Blenheim. Somehow Brock got into the car but left his trumpet on the curb. After the job (which he got through with an instrument he borrowed from someone in Blenheim), he was dropped off at Dundas and Richmond at 3 a.m. in the morning - and his trumpet was still there!! Hello, Mr Ripley!!
One of London's foremost musicians was Barney Venuta, son of the famous Professor Venuta who taught music to Guy, Liebert and Carman Lombardo. Barney taught, arranged music for, or played with, just about any organisation or musician in the London music scene from the 30s until the late 50s. In 1948 and 1949 Barney had the band at Hotel London, the famous hostelry situated at Dundas and Wellington. We played hotel style music every Friday and Saturday nights - three saxes (tenor sax lead), one trumpet, three rhythm. And every night, at precisely 11 p.m., the manager, Ken Squires and his wife Mary would appear at the entrance to the ballroom. We would immediately stop playing, wait until they advanced to the centre of the floor, and then break in to “Mary its a Grand Old Name”. Ken and Mary would finish the dance retreat to the exit, bow gracefully, and disappear. Charming! Incidentally, my gratefulness to Barney is unbounded – he paid me $15 a job, (imagine in 1948!) because he knew I was struggling financially to finish my third year at Western University. Rest easy, dear friend
Glenn Bricklin is a name that must appear at and near the top of any list of top-flight drummers who called the Forest City home (another is Tony Briglia who played with Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra). Glen B was famous for a wicked sense of humour that surfaced one night in 1953 on the way home from a gig with his band at the Port Dover Summer Gardens. We were discussing the high rate of car accidents involving alcohol, and Glen opined that you should never drink and drive because you might hit a bump and spill some! Glen was the brother-in-law of Bruce Sharpe, who conducted the London Civic Symphony Orchestra for many years in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He toured Canada with the Art Hallman band and was Neil Mckay's drummer at Grand Bend from 1948 until 1950.
Frank and Wally Ewanski - two guys whom everybody looked up to. Frank blew a swinging Dixieland trumpet, and when gigs in that line were scarce, could be found doing section work in a big band - Ted Putney and Lionel Thornton come to mind. Wally anchored the solid rhythm section of Bert Niosi’s band at the Palais Royale in Toronto for years. And that makes me think of Tony Furanna, a stalwart in Niosi’s brass section. Tony played the Cobblestone Inn, the Seven Dwarfs Restaurant and sat in with just about everybody including Alf Tibbs.
Alf Tibbs! Now there is a name. It makes me think of those charter bus rides to the Auditorium in Kitchener on Friday nights in the 1950s. Gayle Gordon (or Joe Maycock, if you prefer) singing, later to the supplanted by Earl Plunkett (or Don Harding). Earl, of course, became famous as the chief gynaecologist at University Hospital. There was also Archie Poulton on piano, Bill Beecroft and I waging tenor sax “battles”, Archie Cunningham and Johnny Mount on saxes. Sweet memories!
I don't know if the auditorium still exists, but nearly all of the other dance meccas of that golden era are gone, including the Lakeview Casino at Grand Bend, the Port Stanley Pavilion, the Goderich Pavilion, Port Elgin, the Summer Gardens at Port Dover and the Blue Room at Stratford to name just a few. Almost lost in the mists of time now but in the 30s the most famous of them all was Kippen that little hamlet just south of Clinton where Benny Palmer held forth during the Depression. Those guys made $35-$50 a week during that sad era, an unheard of wage at the time. He had a sweet little eight-piece band that got all the top jobs between Kippen and the Norton Palmer hotel in Windsor well into the 40s.Lead trumpet was Johnny Lombardi who later became famous as the Italian mayor of Toronto. Also in the band were Russ Lansing and Lionel Thornton, who later formed the band (with Russ on lead alto) that along with Johnny Downs dominated the dance scene in Western Ontario for so many years.
I remember Tony Caminiti, that fine tenor man who played with everybody and wrote marvelous arrangements for bands. They were on a par with those of Eddie Graf - and what band didn't rely on Eddie for a good solid up-to-date book. I would have to say though that Neil McKay was, and is, the best. He wrote for his own band and has come to occupy, via the Eastern School of Music in Rochester and the University of Hawaii, a position of world repute as a composer of symphonies and ballets, and an orchestrator of eclectic brilliance (check your Who’s Who!)
Johnny Noubarian and Phil Murphy – two brilliant musicians still active on the local scene, and whose fame has spread far beyond the bounderies of London. Johnny has done it all on piano, as has Phil on reed instruments and in putting together and conducting bands for theatres, shows, weddings, dances, concerts, and parades. I can think of no other musician who has performed a Clarinet Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, while at about the same time, turning down offers from big American bands who wanted him for his jazz prowess on the tenor sax.
Well I could go on for a long time, and I know I have unintentionally omitted names that belong in this rambling effort - but what a pleasure it has been! Thank you for the opportunity to shed some light on the people in the town that Guy Lombardo made famous.