Island Jazz

“Josh’s cymbal beat made you want to smile and dance. Don’t need much more than that.” – Nicholas Payton

Josh Dixon was only 41 when he died of heart failure in his sleep, but judging from the response to his passing so far, he has several lifetimes worth of accolades to send him on his way, all of them earned through his masterful drumming and positive personality.

Pianist Karel Roessingh, who has known Dixon since he was four years old and has been a major figure on the Victoria jazz scene for years, says Dixon was not only “a really, really great drummer” but also a terrifically positive person with a wonderful sense of humour who took delight in everything he did, whether it was playing music, whacking a ball around a golf course, or painting a house.

“He had an almost boyish wonder about him,” says Roessingh, adding that Dixon was always friendly, humble and respectful and “clearly had a hugely deep love for his family.” Roessingh recalls him talking about his family “all the time.”

As a player Roessingh says Dixon was “a kind of trickster” who would get a sly smile on his face and then do something totally unexpected that would surprise and delight his fellow musicians. “He had such a simple little drum kit – like something from a toy box – but the stuff he did with it!”

Antoine Drye, a renowned New York trumpeter who has performed with many of the best jazz musicians in the world, says Dixon was a “natural drummer” and a “swinging dude” who fit very well into the New Orleans and New York scenes that he joined in the early nineties with his best friend, bassist Sean Drabitt. “That’s a hell of an achievement in itself,” says Drye, noting that to become a working musician in New Orleans and New York, the very breeding ground of jazz, “takes balls.”

Drabitt calls the years in New Orleans with Dixon “a golden time” where a group of  young players learned together under the tutelage of the great Ellis Marsalis. He remembers playing up to three gigs a night,  gigs that sometimes included members of  the Marsalis family – Ellis, Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason – in different configurations. Nicholas Payton and Brian Blade were also part of the scene, as was Jason Stewart.

Stewart, now bassist for the Ellis Marsalis Quartet, says Dixon was “a great drummer” and a clever person with a particularly dry sense of humour. He had “a great feel” and was clearly well entrenched in “a certain tradition” of drumming, he adds, noting that unlike some drummers who overwhelm the bass, he meshed really well because of the quality of his sound.

Drabitt says that everything Dixon hit sounded good and that he had a “masterful” ride cymbal on the level of Claude Ranger’s, the iconic Canadian drummer who mysteriously disappeared in 2000. “He got the colours he needed.”

Dixon had little formal musical education beyond high school but studied with Ranger,  Jeff Hamilton (Diana Krall’s frequent collaborator), and Marvin “Smitty” Smith, a famous drummer who toured with everyone from Sonny Rollins and Dave Holland to Sting and Willie Nelson.

Mostly, though, he got his musical education the old-fashioned way by listening to records, playing gigs, and immersing himself in the scene. Drabitt says he was heavily grounded in the early sixties both “soundwise” and “approachwise,”  citing drummers like Elvin Jones, Grady Tate, Tony Williams, Billy Higgins and Philly Joe Jones as major influences.

Multiple Juno winner Hugh Fraser, who played his first professional gig in Victoria with Dixon’s dad George and eventually would mentor Dixon, says that even before he traveled to New York and New Orleans, the young Dixon “sounded like an old spirit,” and had a “wide open” swing feel that distinguished him from other drummers, not only in Victoria but also in Canada.

Fraser feels that his immersion in the New Orleans and New York scenes simply magnified qualities that were already there. “He had such traditional flare and drive” says Fraser, crediting Dixon’s listening to a lot of different recordings and growing up with his drummer dad, for the great feel he possessed.

Fraser adds that Dixon’s enthusiasm made him fun to play with. “He was always up for playing in the true sense of the word.” He fondly recalls the young Dixon pulling up to his (Fraser’s) mother’s house  in a convertible MG with the top down and his dad’s drum kit stuffed in the back – a scene right out of the 40s in Fraser’s mind – ready and excited to play.

He remembers, too, that while teaching in London he would get phone calls from Dixon and Drabitt at 4 am in the morning, excitedly telling him they were at Mary’s (his mom’s) house jamming.”I thought jams happened only when I was there, ” laughs Fraser, adding that Dixon “was a sweetheart we’ll all miss so much” who infused his music with a playful, magical spirit.

Phil Dwyer, another multiple Juno winner, met Dixon and Drabitt in the summer or 1988 or 1989 when they played together with Dave Keen at Pagliacci’s in Victoria.  A precocious musician himself who had  journeyed to New York a few years earlier to immerse himself in the scene when he was only 17, Dwyer says “it was pretty clear they were (real) musicians who were in it for the long haul. “I was really pleased to hear that they had both struck out for south of the border.”

When Dixon returned from the U.S., Dwyer says you could tell he was someone who had “been sitting at the feet of the masters and paying attention.” He describes him as “a real groover” who “hadn’t checked his ego at the door – he’d checked it at the building down the block.”  Dwyer adds that he had great respect for the jazz tradition “without pandering to it,” and when he played, he made things feel good and gave back “the right kind of energy.”

Vancouver pianist and trumpeter Brad Turner, who met Dixon in the early nineties and played with him in various quartet and trio gigs in Victoria and New Orleans,  says Dixon was one of those rare drummers with both great technique and great musicality, making him a tasteful accompanist and a formidable soloist who played flawlessly with passion and fire.

He recalls a night in 1994 when The Sean Drabitt Quartet (Drabitt, Dixon,Turner and saxophonist Terry Deane) played the entire John Coltrane A Love Supreme album. “Josh was on fire that night,” says Turner, adding that he was the kind of guy who would “give you the shirt off his back” and was a “gregarious, generous and intelligent person.”

Tom Vickery, who gigged with Dixon around town and played with him at the Hermann’s jam every Thursday night for the last few years, says ” he had a passion for those drums”, and “he made me play,” adding that he was always upbeat when he arrived, could play any style, and “had a special touch.”

Dixon also made an impact outside the jazz world. Victoria Juno-nominated bluesman Bill Johnson credits Dixon with stretching him as a musician:

“As I’m a blues artist, playing with Josh Dixon was an experience that left me feeling both guilty for restraining him, and on the other hand, free from the blues form. If I felt the inspiration to take off into uncharted territory, he would be there ready to fly. He was like a springboard for my imagination. Those gigs were among the most musical experiences of my life.”

It’s not only older, established musicians who have great things to say about Dixon. Mitch Fisher, a 12-year-old student of Dixon’s who studied with him for five years, says Dixon was “a very nice guy” who in their weekly sessions focused more on “on playing than just learning,” and had “a really good positive attitude.” Fisher says other drum students had the same experience and always looked forward to their lessons with him.

Those words might have been spoken by Vancouver drummer Jesse Cahill who has written on his blog how important Dixon was to him as a young drummer growing up in Victoria and trying to make his way in the jazz world.

“Josh was one of the first real jazz drummers that I ever saw perform live. I’ll never forget him coming to my high school when I was in grade nine and playing in a trio with pianist Louis Rose and bassist Russ Botten. After that I made a habit of going to check him out at the restaurants and cafes around town whenever I could. Eventually he started giving me the opportunity to sit in on his gigs, always offering encouragement and advice. He gave me a few formal lessons but most importantly he was always happy to hang out and talk about playing music.”

Evidence of Dixon’s impact can be found in the press, too. A glance through journalist Joe Blake’s old Backbeat columns in the Times Colonist shows that Dixon, with Drabitt, had a major impact on the local scene very early in his career. “Ferociously swinging,” and “concise, joyful, orchestral” are just a few of the descriptors Blake used as early as 1991 in praise of Dixon’s drumming.

The last word, though, must come from Sean Drabitt who has been with Dixon on his musical journey since they were 16-year-old’s playing the music of The Police and forming their first jazz group. “I was always impressed with his ability to be so nurturing,”says Drabitt. “He always seemed to care.” And of his general approach to life and music, Drabitt adds, “He had an old wisdom to him…he was very accepting and a genuinely nice guy.”

Needless to say Josh Dixon will be missed by many people, not least among them is Grammy-winning New Orleans trumpet and piano iconoclast Nicholas Payton, who put it succinctly when he expressed what Dixon meant to his fellow New Orleans musicians:

“Josh’s cymbal beat made you want to smile and dance. Don’t need much more than that.”

The Victoria jazz community is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of drummer Josh Dixon last Wednesday  at age 41. The coroner’s report identified a congenitally enlarged heart as the cause of death.

Tributes to Josh are pouring in not only from the Victoria community but also New York and New Orleans where he lived for a number of years and performed with some of the top names in jazz including Herb Ellis, Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, and Kurt Rosenwinkel.

An informal jazz jam tribute is planned for this Thursday, January 26, 8 -11 pm, at Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria.

A formal memorial service will be held at Hermann’s on Saturday, March 3 starting at 4pm.

Josh’s wife Jennie is creating a website to honour him. It is up now and will be completed in February.

I’m currently working with Sean Drabitt on an extended article that will pay tribute to Josh and  document his life as a musician. Stay tuned.

I want to add a few thoughts on why a blog devoted to the Vancouver Island and Coastal BC jazz scene would run a piece on a vocalist from New York performing in a Vancouver night club (see No Club Is An Island).

Forty or fifty years ago, largely through the work of performers like Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, and Stan Getz, jazz was comfortably in the mainstream.  Turn on a popular AM radio station and you would hear Take Five, It’s a Raggy Waltz, Desifinado or The Girl from Ipanema.  Tune into a variety TV show and you would see Count Basie or Nat Cole or any number of jazz greats performing.  They even had their own TV shows and specials.

We all know that has changed and that jazz is almost a dirty word in the mainstream media. For evidence, just count how often you see a jazz album review in our self-styled national newspaper.

It’s also a poorly defined word. Ask the average guy on the street what jazz is and he’ll probably tell you it’s weird music with ten-minute long drum solos and no melody.

Guitarist Martin Taylor doesn’t even tell people he plays jazz anymore. When asked by a stranger, he’ll say he likes to play songs from the American songbook and Brazilian tunes. He’s found that folks will then listen and discover they really like what he does – which is play jazz.

We need to find other ways to break down the barriers. One way is for composers to write music that bridges musical genres. Another is to open up performance venues and programs.

As saxophonist Monik Nordine pointed out in a recent interview on this site, jazz has always welcomed and integrated other forms of music into its fold.

And so when a new artist comes along who can deliver a believable version of a jazz standard and write original music that connects with the worlds of hip hop and soul, that to me is a good thing even if he does wear a sideways baseball cap and sneakers when he performs.

And when a club devoted to dance and DJ music is willing to take a risk and bring in a jazz musician, that’s also a good and should be supported.

We’re making progress. Here on the Island we’ve got jazz happening in churches, art galleries, and restaurants. But there’s lots more we can do to bring in new audiences and break down barriers.

No, we’re not talking underwear – rather an inspiring collection of  short jazz films produced by Randy Cole, an independent filmmaker in Montreal.

Originally from Vancouver, Cole produces ultra-short documentaries featuring players like Montreal trumpeter Kevin Dean (you may recall he was here in Victoria in May with PJ Perry), saxophonist Al McLean, and guitarist Mike Rud (who will be very familiar to Vancouver and Victoria audiences of the past).

Cole’s latest film captures the musical and emotional bond between Kevin Dean and his late father Richard through Dean’s telling of the story of Pops, a jazz ballad he composed for his dad shortly before he died.

Against the backdrop of a lovely rendering of the song in the serene setting of a Montreal church, Dean talks about growing up in a musical family and being inspired by his farmer father who, as a musician (sax and bass), could really “play pretty.”

Although brief, the film takes us right to the heart of their relationship and reveals the deep emotion that often inspires musical creation.

While you are at it, you might want to check out Cole’s other films.   The ones I’ve seen are superb. In fact, watching this material has got me thinking – maybe there’s a filmmaker on Vancouver Island who might want to capture some of our own jazz stories?

The clocks have changed, the rain has come, and fall is firmly in place on the west coast. What better time to stream a beautiful new recording through my home stereo.

And what a recording it is. Released on October 25, Changing Seasons is a lyrical 35-minute jazz-suite-cum-violin-concerto performed by a 17-piece  superstar big band, a 20-piece string section, violin virtuoso Mark Fewer and trumpet great Ingrid Jensen all blowing, bowing, and swinging their way through 1000 bars of classical, jazz, and show music cooked up by  the great Phil Dwyer and his fertile musical imagination.

Modelled in part on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, it’s a refreshing breeze bringing the warmth of spring and the promise of summer to a sometimes frozen music world.

For some time now I’ve been thinking about the jazz and classical communities within that world and their apparent inability to get together in any meaningful way – at least on this continent.

My wife and I were in Europe in September and attended a concert at Bimhuis, the acclaimed center for improvised music in Amsterdam. There we saw a 30-piece big band of jazz and classical players (with a vocalist and tap dancer to boot) thrilling the audience with startlingly original compositions that mixed classical, jazz and experimental music as naturally as fresh water blends with salt in Holland’s seaside estuaries.

Changing Seasons isn’t quite that adventuresome, but it does challenge the notion that jazz is jazz and classical classical and never the twain shall meet. It also throws down the gauntlet to the institutions that keep music boxed up.

I’m reminded of my attempt two years ago to convince a local symphony to take a risk and produce Christine Jensen’s amazing Treelines jazz suite, a tribute to her Vancouver Island roots inspired in part by Emily Carr’s paintings (imagine the music together with the projected paintings), but no such luck. I didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply to my letter.

That symphony and others like it across the country will occasionally stick one toe out on a limb and produce a Holly Cole or Michael Kaeshammer  concert but sadly that’s about as daring as they’ll get.

And our jazz societies that control most of the meagre funding that goes to improvised music in this country generally stick with the same formula of big-name (often non-jazz) acts filling the auditorium seats while the jazz groups are sequestered in the far corners of the city.

In the meantime our gifted Canadian jazz composers have to move mountains all by themselves just to get their work performed and recorded and then hope that somebody somewhere might eventually have the vision to present it to a larger audience. Which almost never happens, except, God bless them, now and then on CBC radio.

Enough ranting. We can do something about it. Do yourself a favour and download or order Changing Seasons. You won’t regret it. And as the winter winds start blowing, consider writing letters to a few music directors. If they get enough maybe they too will understand that they must believe in spring.

Note: Ottawa Citizen reporter Peter Hum has posted on his superb jazz blog a five-part interview with Phil Dwyer. Dwyer talks about the new album, his childhood fascination with jazz, hanging in NYC in the 80s, his career, his personal struggles, and his advice to aspiring players. It’s a deeply personal and moving interview. Highly recommended.

And blessing of blessings, Phil Dwyer performs with Ken Lister on Sunday, November 20, 7pm, at a Church of the Advent jazz vespers gig in Colwood.

A new recording studio has opened in Victoria that could be just the thing for jazz artists and community bands looking to record an album “live off the floor.”

Electric City Sound (ECS)has resurrected the space once occupied by Zero Gravity, a million dollar state-of-the-art studio that saw the likes of Sarah McLachlan, 54-40, and Nelly Furtado pass through its doors before falling victim to the home recording juggernaut that closed the doors of many studios a decade ago.

Using four custom-designed, acoustically-engineered isolation rooms with floating floors and a host of advanced recording gear, ECS can record up to 24 channels simultaneously, making it possible for even a 16-piece (or larger) band to record live.

Groups can choose to record digitally, to tape, or a combination, thus creating the particular sound they want.

The ECS production team is even offering bands a way of getting their audience to pay for the recording session.

Thirty audience members pay $30 each to attend a special concert, which ECS  records and films. The band is then given a CD and video, which they distribute free to the fans who attended the show. They can also post footage and tracks on the internet, thus promoting the band and the new album.

ECS is attracting the interest of local musicians. A 16-piece community band has already recorded there and a number of local performers plan to produce projects at the studio in the near future.

The production team is setting up a number of innovative community programs and offers competitive rates to groups wanting to use the studio either with their own engineer/producer or members of the ECS production team.

For more information, visit the studio’s website here.

Anyone who has spent anytime at all checking out the local jazz scene knows Joey Smith as one the three busiest bassists on Vancouver Island.

A mainstay of the Marc Atkinson Trio and the first-call bassist for many of the top players on the Island, this gentleman from Tennessee, who landed on our shores by cruise ship and (fortunately) never left, has graced local, national and international stages for many years, including a 2 1/2 year stint as bassist and arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra and performances with the likes of Cleo Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, and Charlie Byrd.

But many here don’t know him on his first instrument – the guitar.

Fortunately, thanks to the Jazz Vespers folks in Deep Cove, you’ll have a chance to check out his six-string playing when he appears with Don Cox on bass and David Keen on saxophone on Sunday, October 3 at 7 pm in the intimate and comfortable setting of St. John’s United Church in Deep Cove.

Smith plays a gorgeous old Gibson archtop guitar given to him by a friend many years ago in Tennessee. It’s a beautiful instrument and the man playing it has a beautiful sound. Don’t miss this one.