It's billed as the "last hurrah" for Gerry Green's Crescent City Shakers.
But is it?
The White Rock Traditional Jazz Society's Sunday afternoon session on Oct. 27 (2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Crescent Beach Legion Branch 240, 2643 128 St.) will feature the always-inspired clarinet improvisations and booting tenor sax of leader Green, plus the powerful sound of trombonist Jim Armstrong, and the lift of the band's tight rhythm section – Peninsula-based banjoist Bill Dixon, bassist Dave Brown and drummer Nick James.
The Shakers are a combination guaranteed to get the dancers up on the floor – and stirring up things even more will be the energetic presence of virtuoso Australian-born multi-instrumentalist Simon Stribling (of Stribling's Society Seven fame), on trumpet and, as the band flyer puts it, "anything else he brings along".
They all go back a long way in the Vancouver and White Rock traditional jazz scene – Green, Armstrong and Dixon, for example, were the British Isles contingent of the Grand Dominion Jazz Band, which called it quits in 2020 after 35 years of playing the jazz festival circuit in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
Green and Dixon have both worked with Rice Honeywell's Red Beans and Rice and other bands over the years, while the Shakers have, themselves, been together as a unit for around 15 years.
But as Bill Dixon explained over coffee recently, "with Jim now in Portland and Dave living in Spokane and even Simon coming from Victoria, me and Gerry have said this is, likely, the last one."
But they didn't say absolutely – and this writer, for one, is hoping that Bill and Gerry Green, at least, will continue to provide their welcome presence on the local jazz scene.
WRTJS regulars will know Bill well, not only for his banjo technique and agreeably light rhythmic touch, but also for his irrepressible, dry, Cockney-accented humour.
I recall an instance, long ago at the Bonita's venue in the former Pacific Inn, when I had been called up to the stand by Red Beans and Rice leader Honeywell for a guest vocal and had chosen the '20s jazz standard Sunday.
"Sunday," Rice called out to the band, which included Bill, filling in (as I recall) for regular banjoist Jim Marsh, who had left him a huge book of chord changes – about the size of an encyclopedia or one of the more detailed dictionaries – for the band's repertoire.
"Sunday," Rice called again, as expectant dancers waited, and the front line raised horns to lips, while Bill leafed hurriedly through page after page in search of the elusive tune.
"Sunday, Bill," Rice repeated, as Bill continued to turn pages, still about two-thirds of the way through the book.
"Hang about," Bill complained. "I'm only up to Thursday afternoon."
Don't let his casual approach fool you – Bill knows his music six ways from Sunday.
He also knows the fickleness of the music business – from long experience in which he has played with some of the best both here and in the U.K.
The Lewisham, South-East London lad was barely out of secondary school – but already a jazz fan, and full of the enthusiasm of youth – when armed with an instrument of which he had only rudimentary knowledge, and a few chord changes passed on by a friend, he went out for his first professional audition.
Either the angels were smiling, or people liked him, Bill said, because he was soon doing gigs with a number of pick-up bands in the Greater London area – and then won a chair in Dick Charlesworth's City Gents, a well-known band whose gimmick was to dress in the formal business attire of stock-market traders.
From Charlesworth, he joined the famed Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, and held down the banjo chair for two years, playing, touring and recording with the group until his Achilles heel – an absence of singing ability, or even vague singing ambitions – let him down.
The moustached, trumpet-playing Ball – a well known figure in British traditional jazz in the '60s and '70s – had a flair for showmanship that had broadened his appeal to a wider stage and TV audience. While also a vocalist, he had a yen to have a singing banjo player in his band.
"Kenny Ball kept on at me to sing," he said. "I kept saying, no, Ken, really – I really can't sing.
"He'd say 'go on, you can sing, anyone can sing.'
"I said 'Ken, I really can't sing.'"
Eventually Ball prevailed upon Bill to try a vocal on something basic – the old spiritual tune Down By The Riverside – but in the middle of a gig.
"I got through it somehow," Bill recalled.
"Then, when we got off the stand, I'm wondering how I did.
"Kenny Ball takes one look at me and says ... 'You really can't '$@#%'-ing sing, can you?'"
Ultimately, Bill said, the bandleader found a banjo player who could sing – but who was enjoying such new-found success as a vocalist he decided he didn't want to play banjo anymore.
"Now he had a banjo player who couldn't sing and singer who wouldn't play banjo," he said.
"So he let the both of us go."