Author: Owen Clark
Title: Musical Ghosts: Manitoba's Jazz and Dance Bands, 1914-1966
Description: Toronto: Clark Productions, 2007. Paper bound, large square quarto, profusely illustrated with black and white photos, Pp252. Includes bibliography and index. Tight and clean - a very good or better copy. 1.13 kilograms unpacked - extra postage will be requested for shipment anywhere outside the province of Manitoba. From the Prologue by the author: I am a musical archeologist and Manitoba is my dig (pun intended!). I didn't start that way but in the 1990's I made a conscious move in that direction. In 1992 I taught a class for the University of Manitoba: The History of Rock Music. For the last class I focused on Winnipeg, not just Rock music but also all the people I had worked with, the clubs, theatres and dance halls that had come and gone. After the class one of my colleagues, Colin Walley, said: You need to write a book! 'The anecdotes and people you talk about are priceless. In 1993-'94 I was teaching at West Kildonan Collegiate. The television production students and I created an interview format show The Jazz and Dance Musicians of Winnipeg and we started videotaping interviews with musicians. Since 1993, I have interviewed hundreds of musicians, singers, families and people connected to the industry. A trip to Archives Manitoba in the old Auditorium building made me realize that I could spend hours digging through filing cabinets and stored records. This was truly a musical archeologist's paradise. All the information that the public has access to is on the old dance floor where thousands of feet danced the hours away to the best of Winnipeg and visiting bands from 1932 to 1968. My research has taken me, in person, by phone or email to various parts of the world. From Nanoose Bay, British Columbia to London, England; Austin, Texas to Marie, Quebec; Whitehorse, Yukon Territories to Palm Springs, California and many points in between. As a result of all the research and the contacts I made, my wife Kolleen and I decided to host a musicians' reunion party on July 20th, 2005. We invited musicians and singers who had been active in Winnipeg between 1945 and 1960. It started as a backyard party but as the responses poured in we had to move it to the Viscount Gort Hotel. Over two hundred musicians, singers and their families played, sang, laughed and cried, remembering the past and hoping to meet again soon. With very few exceptions, everyone I contacted was more than willing to help with the research. My musical friends and/or their families became my archeological crew, searching their attics and basements for long-forgotten boxes and carefully stored family treasures; digging through boxes of records and photos, literally thousands of pictures, newspaper clippings and books; public archives, Henderson Directories and phone books, some in pristine condition, some suffering the ravages of time and/or exposure to cold and moisture. We read old letters, contracts, obituaries and personal memoirs originally written for family members. I felt a great sense of responsibility as people entrusted me with their history, tangible and intabgible, and trusted me to tell their story. As sax player Al Sprintz said: Get it right, not like some of the books I read. In some cases the results of the digging have been given to me: I don't want them back, just take care of them for me. The final repository for all artifacts will be a publicly held archive. We welcome all reasonable offers on our books.

Keywords: Jazz Manitoba History Criticism, Music Halls Manitoba Winnipeg History 9780978498801


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