REMEMBERING HERBIE SPANIER 1928-2001

Len Dobbin
(Copyright © 2001 Len Dobbin)

HERBIE SPANIER died in a Toronto hospital on Thursday, December 13, with his son, Crayne at his side. He was born Herbert Anthony Charles Spanier, in the small farm town of Cupar, Sask., on Christmas Day, December 25, 1928. Herbie was an innovator who happened to play the trumpet, I'm sure if he had picked another instrument that he would still have been an innovator.

I still remember the first time I heard Spanier, that was in the summer of 1953, I was 18 and Herbie was 24. The Montreal Jazz Workshop had been formed under the aegis of Paul Bley and Keith White and it had been presenting American musicians at both its nightclub [above the Video Cafe] on Dorchester Blvd., just west of Mountain, and in afternoon concerts at the Chez Paree on Stanley Street. Those concerts would usually present a number of Montreal jazz groups and singers with a visiting U.S. player as a headliner and they included Charlie Parker, Brew Moore, Dick Garcia and Chuck Wayne. So when Bley enlisted members of the Emanon Jazz Society to help promote an upcoming concert featuring Herbie Spanier - we said great, who's he? We found the answer to the question when we heard this inventive music live - I don't remember who played with him, I remember a conga drummer and I think Bley played piano. But, from that day on, no one in the audience that afternoon ever had to ask that question again!

Herbie grew up in Regina and played the bugle in a Sea Cadet band. His first instrument, while still on the farm, was the harmonica. His dad, who settled in Canada from his native Austria, wanted him to play the fiddle and he did give that instrument a try before discovering the bugle. While in high school he played cymbals in the band, but at a jam session borrowed someone's trumpet and suitably impressed. That summer he got play more jazz when the high school band got a gig at Regina Beach. He was then heard by, P.J.'s dad, bandleader Paul Perry and ended up in his band at the Trianon Ballroom which also booked U.S. touring orchestras and Herbie remembered hearing Ray McKinley, Hal McIntyre and a Gene Krupa band that had Red Rodney on trumpet. It was around this time that he fell across some 78s by the Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie combination and was bitten by the bebop bug. He was about 19 at the time and was soon leading his own "Boptet" in Regina, a sextet made up of Bob Moyer, tenor, Teddy Franklin, alto, Geoff Hall, piano, Harold Grills, bass and Jimmy Wightman, drums. He traveled to LA for the first time with Geoff Hall, and Harry James and Howard McGhee were among the trumpeters he remembered hearing during that trip. Sometime after seeing him in 1953, I discovered a picture on page 15 of the January 27, 1950 edition of Down Beat. Under the heading "Ready", it depicted Herbie replete with trumpet, beret and bebop bow tie. Below it read [in part]: Regina, Sask. - Hope he's kidding , but in any case, this Herbert Charles Anthony Spanier [no relation to Muggsy] above. Herbie and some other boys from Regina and Winnipeg put on a jazz concert here not too long ago, a traditional affair that opened with "Perdido" and closed with "How High The Moon"..." Spanier's next stop was Chicago, Illinois [on his way to Toronto]. He ended up staying in the Windy City from the Fall of 1949 through March 1950 when he finally hit Toronto and impressed the local music community with his large repertoire of tunes, most of which he had learned during the stay in Chicago. In Toronto he hooked up with the city's leading bebop exponents including tenorman Bill Goddard, pianist Norm Amadio and another trumpeter, Jack Long. By 1951 Spanier was co-leading the band at the Horseshoe Tavern with the marvellous BENNY WINESTONE, Glasgow born and a superb tenorman, who had played in the U.S. with Benny Goodman and hung out with Charlie Christian in those days when bebop was being codified at spots like Minton's and Monroe's Uptown House in NYC. There was in Toronto at this time one Clem Hambourg, a classical pianist who fell in love with jazz, and Spanier and the other modernists of the time would fall by, the second of his after hours spots affectionately called, "The House of Hambourg". This one located on Bloor Street, west of Bay. It was here that Herbie got to play with visitors like guitarist Herb Ellis and the melodious tenor saxophonist, Wardell Gray. This was at the same time that Spanier and many other musicians were living at the "Melody Mill" on Jarvis Street, south of Carlton, a 55 room boarding house run by Lucille Henderson. A time when Herbie found himself working with the dance bands of Trump Davidson at the Palace Pier and Benny Louis at the Casa Loma.

We have now arrived back at the time of the Chez Paree concert, 1953. In 1954, back in Toronto, Herbie received offers from England from drummer Tony Crombie, who probably heard about him through Winestone, and, from Paul Bley, who was in NYC and knew Herbie's work first hand. He took up the latter's offer and with Art Phipps, bass and Al Levitt, drums, the quartet played Copa City and both Birdland and Carnegie Hall. I heard some tapes of this group and remember being favourably impressed - I remember them playing the blues that Bley later recorded with the Jimmy Giuffre Trio as "Carla". With Bley back in Montreal for an April through July 1954 engagement in the Black Magic Room of the Chez Paree with Al Cotton and Levitt, Spanier took gigs with the big bands of Hal McIntyre and Claude Thornhill stateside. While in the U.S., Herbie also hooked up with Roy Eldridge, Jackie McLean, the Adderley brothers, Cannonball and Nat and Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh as well as other members of the Lennie Tristano school.

When Spanier did come back to Canada in 1955, it was to settle in Montreal and become a major catalyst on the city's jazz scene. He was involved in the formation of the "International Jazz Scene", an organization that presented concerts in a large upstairs room in the Cafe Andre [nicknamed the "Shrine", by Brendan Behan], a restaurant and college hangout on Victoria Street, south of Sherbrooke, not far from the McGill and Sir George Williams campuses. There Herbie played with people like of drummer Billy Graham, tenorman [Benjamin] B.T. Lundy and his [B.T.'s] Brooklyn buddy, Cecil Payne - drummer Teagle Fleming also worked there. Spanier remained in Montreal until 1970, marrying former Emanon Jazz Society member Gina Spanier, a union that produced three sons, Raven, Crayne and Calder, the latter an altoman who recorded with his dad and toured with Charlie Hunter. [See the December 4th, "Len's Den" for more about Calder]. In 1961, when Colin C. Kerr's "Laurentien" records decided to do a 45 rpm, sextet version, of Galt MacDermot's popular, "African Waltz" [which Galt had earlier recorded, in a trio format, on that label's 1960 "Art Gallery Jazz"], Herbie was on trumpet with Bob Roby, tenor, Gilles Moisan [later with the MSO], baritone, Galt, piano, Stan Zadak, bass and Pierre Beluse, drums. I remember that day vividly, I worked for Colin and was at the session which took place in the home of famed Canadian painter Ann Savage, who happened to be both Galt's aunt and the possessor of a fine piano. There was only a heavy drape separating the room the musicians were playing in and the one housing the portable [?] recording equipment [things were a lot heavier in those days] manned by Mr. Kerr. Herbie, apparently assigned baby sitting chores that day, arrived with Raven, then a babe in arms, in tow and he immediately handed me [I was single at the time and by no mean an expert on small children] his offspring telling me to make sure he was quiet during the recording - I must have been successful as there don't seem to be any extraneous sounds on either, "Waltz" or the flip side, "Columbine". Herbie also did a couple of sessions for the CBC, in 1962 and 1966 with Gordie Fleming, the greatest bebop accordionist I have ever heard and, in 1970, he and Fleming with Michel Donato and drummer Eric MacDonald did the soundtrack for "Catuor", a four minute National Film Board movie. Spanier had earlier, 1962, done "Runner", a 10 minute film for the same people with Don Douglas, Armas [or Art] Maiste, John Lanza and Billy Graham. In the 60s I remember meeting a musician who had just left a big band rehearsal that Spanier had called that afternoon in the McGill Union building on Sherbrooke Street West, [ a building that now houses the McCord Museum]. He told me that musicians upon their arrival discovered t his was to be a big band with no charts - now that's freedom in a big way! No one apparently was up to the challenge. In the late 60s, Herbie did put together an excellent big band, one that I caught during rehearsal at the [new] Black Bottom, 22 St Paul East. I don't know that the band ever played a paying engagement though. Another night I remember was April 26, 1959, I was at the Little Vienna, on Stanley Street, north of Ste. Catherine, listening to a Spanier quartet when two musicians we had never seen before arrived ready to sit in, they turned out to be Herb Geller and Pepper Adams, in town to play a concert at the Montreal Forum with Benny Goodman [Scott LaFaro was the bassist in that edition of the band] and I remember Pepper [the humourist] telling Herbie that he had played with his brother Muggsy in Chicago.

Spanier came into Montreal from Toronto in 1972 to do another 4 minute film soundtrack for the NFB, "Modulations" again featured Douglas, Maiste, Lanza and Graham. In October of that year he recorded his "Forensic Perturbations" for Radio Canada International's Ted Farant. The session took place on the 26 and 27 at the RCA studios on Guy Street just below Ste. Catherine and I attended. It was the first time I was to hear the excellent piano of Bernie Senensky. Alvin Pall, who Emanon Jazz Society member Pat Sorrentino and I thought sounded a lot like Warne Marsh, was on tenor [he said he had never heard of Warne Marsh], Michel Donato was on bass and Claude Ranger was the drummer. In Toronto, Herbie hooked up with Phil Nimmons and recorded a 1970 session with singer Salome Bey for the CBC. He led his own bands up to 1997, but was inactive after that. The last time I saw him was in 1993 when he recorded "Know Time" [Justin Time] at Studio Tempo here with Paul Bley and percussionist Geordie McDonald. He won't be soon forgotten by anyone who heard or knew him.

Herbie Spanier's recorded output certainly doesn't match that of his talents. He can also be heard on the Phil Nimmons [Sackville] CD that includes the Juno Award winning."Atlantic Suite" and "Transformation / Invocation"; a 1976 David Amram session "Summer Nights, White Rain" [RCA] done in Toronto at Minkler Auditorium with people like Ray Mantilla, Beaver Harris and Shirley Eikhard and a two volume "Anthology" [Justin Time], the second of which has a cover photo of him that I took in the early 60s at the Tete de l'Art, one that he quite liked. Those two CDs contain sessions recorded between 1962 and 1994, with son Calder, Brian Dickinson, Dave Field and Michel Lambert heard on one done in Toronto in 1993; a 1965 session was recorded at the Hermitage on Cote Des Neiges in Montreal, co-produced by Spanier and Ed Assaly, it has Joe Christie Jr. on flute and alto, Neil Chotem, piano and Yvan Landry , vibes plus strings and harp; in 1962, Spanier is joined by Michel Donato and drummer Ron Page; there's material from the 1972 RCI session plus another with the same personnel done in Toronto in 1985; another Montreal session has Ranger, Brian Barley, Pierre Leduc and Charlie Biddle from 1963 - these are on Volume one which has notes by Anthony Charles [aka Herbie Spanier]. Volume two has my [not too accurate] notes, and three sessions, two from 1969, one from Montreal with Barley, Biddle, Ranger and Sadik Hakim. the other is from a session at Laval University with Hakim, Roland Haynes and Spike McKendry, and there is a 1994 Toronto session with Alex Dean, Bob Erland, Dave Field and Michel Lambert.

My condolences to Raven and Crayne.

Copyright © 2001 Len Dobbin All rights are reserved by the author Len Dobbin lendobbin@sympatico.ca

Len Dobbin is a well known Montreal jazz writer and radio host. You can find his regular column on the Upstairs web site www.upstairsjazz.com (Click on "Music" then "Len Dobbin" then "Len's Den") and he hosts "Dobbin's Den" on CKUT 90.3 FM each Sunday from 11 AM through 1 PM.