CHAMBERS NOTES A

A NEW HAT: NOTES BY JACK CHAMBERS In the Information Age, news can come from unexpected sources. It was through Beethoven, for instance, that I found out Del Dako was truly back in the bebop business. Someone sent me e-mail that said, simply, "Cowabunga!!!" along with a web-link. Clicking on the link took me to a webpage in which CBC personalities were asked to ruminate on what Beethoven meant to them. I would have quit then but the first sound bite on the list happened to be by Paul Kennedy, the host of Ideas. I like that program, and so I clicked, and Kennedy's voice came on pondering the virtues of Beethoven's Seventh and Ninth symphonies. And then he talked about playing the Seventh for, as he put it, "a friend of mine, a jazz musician, a very good jazz musician." The musician was Del Dako, a Beethoven skeptic according to Kennedy. As the story unfolded, Dako was so taken by the Seventh when Kennedy played it for him that he went home and wrote a jazz arrangement of the theme of the second movement. That was good news, but it got better. Kennedy then played Dako's recording of it in its entirety. Cowabunga, indeed. Evidence that Del was making music again was not completely unexpected. More than a year before, I had seen him playing his vibraphone for a Sunday brunch-time crowd at The Pilot, an amicable Toronto club. He was cocky onstage, as always, but in his patter between tunes he let it slip that the gig was a kind of test for him. Before that, I had seen him play vibes in a private setting. I had enjoyed a bibulous meal with him and a few of his oldest friends that celebrated his return to cooking, teaching and partying. At some point in the evening he led us to his basement music room and played the vibes — "Summertime," as I recall. I knew then it was only a matter of time. His Beethoven arrangement showed that the time had come— that he had mastered the nuances of the vibraphone, unlocked its secrets, and found his style. I was tempted to call it a miracle, but Del scoffed. "The real miracle was six years ago, on October 13th, my birthday," he said. What happened? "I moved my finger about one, maybe two, centimetres." That was 2001, and it was the first time in a month he had been able to move any body part from the neck down. He was a resident at Lyndhurst Rehabilitation Centre at the time, and his medical chart said "quadriplegic." In September 2001, he had been mountain-biking in the woods when a downhill maneuver went awry. He flipped over the handlebars and landed chin-first several metres down the hill. When he got his breath back, he realized he was still alive. It took a few minutes longer for him to realize he could not move a muscle. He was strapped to a board and helicoptered to Sunnybrook Hospital. One of the few things he remembers about the rescue is telling the paramedics that he appreciated them carrying him up the hill because he didn't feel like pedaling up it. A five-hour operation fused his spinal cord. After that, he was inert in a wheelchair. Until he moved that index finger. His knack for conversation never left him. Neither did his competitive spirit. The same instinct that pushed him into mountain-biking and white-water canoeing would now inspire him to move those inert body-parts a little bit more day by day. His coming-out party was a benefit at the Rex Jazz and Blues Bar in November 2001. "Going to your own benefit is like attending your birthday and your funeral at the same time," he says. Four hundred friends stood and applauded as he was wheeled around the room. All of them had applauded him at one time or another in the 15 years before that, either onstage at the Rex or in some other jazz room. They knew him as the baritone saxophone player anchoring the reed section in Shox Johnson's Jive Bombers and Jim Galloway's Wee Big Band. Most knew him as leader of his own quartets that featured his biting alto saxophone as well as his baritone. He won three Jazz Report Awards as baritone sax man of the year. His prowess is on display in the CDs Balancing Act (Sackville 1995) and Vindaloo (Max Recordings 1998), and also in a cache of studio recordings made just before the accident and nearly forgotten in all the fuss. The Rex benefit put lots of fans in one small room. "Until you break your neck," he says, "you don't know how many friends you have." As he gathered strength, he had to make some changes. Some of them were good things. He turned in his wheelchair, for instance, with no regrets. (Del is supposed to use a cane, and he sometimes does.) He sold his saxophones, the whole closetful. The dexterity in his hands and fingers made it impossible for him to play at the highest level, and maybe harnessing a horn onto a torso that is surgically reconstructed is not really a good idea anyway. But quitting music was never an option. "Not for a second," Del says. "If I survived I would play music." He has a drum set and a piano in his basement, and he knows how to use them. But he hankered after a vibraphone, because he loved the sound. Besides, it involved technical skills that would partly transfer from drums and piano. He bought a set of vibes from the legendary Peter Appleyard and started woodshedding. The vibes require mobility, of course, most obviously in propelling the mallets to the right keys but also in covering a keyboard more than a metre long. And there is the foot-pedal as well, for sustaining and damping notes. How hard it might have been for a man with a cane (or, for that matter, without it) no one will ever know. When he felt he was making progress, Del asked Peter Appleyard and Don Thompson, Toronto's first-call vibes player, a few questions. Otherwise he is self-taught. "I always relied on my ears, with the saxophones and with everything else," he says. "It works for me, it always has." Now Del Dako is back full time, asking no quarter and giving none. He is wearing "a new hat," as he proclaims in the title of this CD. As for all the things he went through while he was being fitted for this new hat, he doesn't dwell on them. If you press him, he might shrug and quote the line from the existentialist Albert Camus that got him through the toughest times: On s'y habitué (one gets used to it). For me, Beethoven looms large in the story of Del Dako's return. He is here on this CD, of course, in all his glory, in the 7-minute Theme from the Seventh Symphony. Dako's arrangement introduces the melody in a rubato statement by guitarist Nathan Hiltz, a frequent sidemen since Dako's return. A rolling rhythm is then set by drummer Jeff Halischuk, and vibes and guitar embroider the theme. The decorum of the piece is relieved when the band breaks into swinging 4/4 with lively solos, before returning to the rubato statement, this time played on vibes. It is an ingenious arrangement with three distinctive movements unified by Beethoven's gorgeous melody. Two of the other tracks feature Del's confreres from his Vindaloo band, pianist Bernie Senensky and bassist Duncan Hopkins. They are joined on Miles Davis's So What and Willard Robison's Old Folks by another veteran, guitarist Reg Schwager, along with Jeff Halischuk. So What exploits Hopkins's deft bass work by setting the tempo slightly faster than most versions. Hopkins's ostinato gives way to solos by Dako and Schwager and Senensky. The prolonged ensemble at the end gives full value to the hypnotic minor melody of this classic jazz standard. Old Folks provides a showcase for Del's vibes as he states the ballad melody with lush overtones, using all the sonic resources of his instrument. It is a highly textured performance by Dako and also by Senensky, who lays down rich organ chords for the bridge by Schwager and a solo by Hopkins as well as Dako's contributions. The other tracks bring back the young quartet that recorded Beethoven— Nathan Hiltz, Tyler Emond and Jeff Halischuk— with an estimable guest star, Alex Dean. Dako and Dean have a long history together going back to their student days. Chelsea Bridge was originally written by Billy Strayhorn for Johnny Hodges's alto but tenor saxophonists can't keep their hands off it, starting with Hodges's bandmates Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves and spreading outward to Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and dozens of others. Dako and Hiltz establish the mood with a long colourful duet that allows Dean on tenor to enter playing handsome variations on the theme. Both in his accompaniment and his solo, Hiltz is especially effective here. Dean plays the straightest rendition of Strayhorn's melody when he returns at the end and then he closes with an ear-popping cadenza. Wave, the Jobim confection, gets an appropriately undulating treatment with Dako stating the A sections and Dean the bridge. Solos are by Dean on tenor and bassist Emond, with Dean returning for a lively reprise that creates an undercurrent and draws all the players into deeper water. For this CD, Dako prepared arrangements for one of his Dean's less common horns, the bass clarinet. Its deep resonances make a perfect foil for Dako's shimmering vibes. On Invitation and Big Alice, Dako uses the tonal contrast to liven the ensembles. His vibes are a constant presence that is felt as much as heard. Invitation opens with the ostinato from So What, inviting listeners to wonder if they inadvertently pushed the wrong button. Dean resolves the mystery when he steps in and states the melody. This arrangement is freer than anything else on the CD, with long passages that have the spirit of simultaneous improvisation by bass clarinet, guitar and vibes. Halischuk takes a solo and Dako takes one of his own before Dean returns to the melody. Big Alice holds a special place in Del Dako's affections because of a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with it in his formative years. Charles Mingus came to Toronto in the 1970s to play in an obscure room on Jarvis St. called Mackenzie Corner House, in what might have been the only jazz offering ever staged there. Mingus was in a fractious mood in those days, so much so that he had worn out his welcome in New York clubs. He felt he needed to be great in Toronto, and his young band was wary of what might happen if they let him down. They played with extraordinary intensity. One of the tunes they played was written by his then-unknown piano player, Don Pullen, and it lifted the young wannabe jazzer Del Dako right out of his seat. Big Alice made such an impression on him that he decided to play it twice on his CD. The full version, more than 9 minutes, starts off by stating the soul-gospel theme in unison by all three front-line instruments over a crisp backbeat. The theme is not a melody really but more like rhythm that you can hum. Dean gets the first solo on bass clarinet and he sounds like he can hardly wait. Dako provides a brightly coloured arpeggio all through. When Dako solos Hiltz complements him with a backdrop of sturdy strummed chords. Hiltz's first solo chorus finds Dean chortling along with the backbeat, and then the backbeat comes to the fore while Emond and Halischuk take their turn. After a false ending that will cause many a radio announcer to jump in early, the band returns with the rousing re-statement of the unison theme. It is a theme that lingers long after the track ends. When Big Alice Remix comes on at the end, it has the illusion of never having gone away. The theme emerges this time in parts, starting with Emond (on electric bass this time) and Hiltz, eventually gathering in Dean low in the mix, and finally bringing on Halischuk and Dako. There is the false ending again, guaranteed to annoy radio announcers because this version, at less than three minutes, is sure to be the one they play. And the theme gets repeated with the whole band rocking. When we listened to the CD master together, Del responded to an accolade from me with characteristic flippancy. "Well, it's a start," he said. No, it's way more than that, and I think he knows it.

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