#Smope

Harry Webb mural from The Cellar, n.d.

The Cellar was Vancouver’s preeminent jazz club from 1956 to 1963. The top touring jazz cats all dropped in, including Cannonball Adderly, Ornette Coleman, Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charles Mingus. For more deets, see The Original Cellar Jazz Club.

Harry Webb was a well known local artist and landscape architect.

Black Spot, April 1961

The Black Spot opened in 1958 at 4345 Dunbar Street. In the beginning it was variously called “Mother’s” and “The Living End” before the Black Spot name stuck, presumably as the antithesis of a certain local burger chain.

The clientele were mainly students from UBC and Lord Byng, and in the early days it featured poetry read by bill bissett, Peter Trower and other local poets, lots of chess playing, and music by anyone who felt like hammering away at the piano. Later it became a serious jazz venue where young musicians could cut their musical teeth.

The only signage on the exterior was a black dot, and the interior decor consisted of barrel tables, lots of black, fishnets on the ceiling, wine bottle candle holders, and a Godfrey Stephens mural.

Older Dunbar residents were less than impressed with the Black Spot, and in 1959 circulated a petition to have it shut down, but those efforts failed.   

Lost Rivers (2012)

The first caretaker’s cottage at Mountain View Cemetery near Bodwell Road (33rd Avenue) and North Road (Fraser Street), ca. 1891

Calgary Shades, Friday 16 September 1960

The Moon Glow Cabaret was located at 331 East Georgia Street. After relocating from Calgary to Vancouver, the Shades added “Calgary” to their name because there was already a “Shades” in Vancouver. The guy wearing shades is Tommy Chong. 

A Young Child Named Maya Rudolph

In 1975 I had just come off a brief tour I was on with a band that was opening for Joe Walsh, when Irving Azoff’s company, Frontline Management, which managed Walsh suggested I’d be a good fit to tour with Minnie Riperton.

They were right; when I met Minnie I felt I’d met a long lost older sibling, and would continue working for her after she left Azoff’s management, and throughout the remaining years of her career.

Besides a voice seemingly from heaven, she had the most delightful family as well. Her two children Marc, and Maya were a joy, and her husband, Richard Rudolph, who still to this day, is one of nicest people you could ever meet.

I was just in my early 20’s, toting around a Hasselblad camera wherever I went. When I was working as Minnie’s tour manager, I rarely had the time, or situation to formally photograph her. Although I always had my camera, I was still a very young photographer, and had not yet developed the skills to capture what it was I saw in her, so my collection of photographs of her is limited.

However, during our off time off from touring, I was often at their home around her family and photographed Maya frequently. Most children get very antsy in front of a camera, but she seemed to be fascinated with the photographic process. She held a firm gaze and always seemed to be studying this photographic process very closely, so I’m not at all surprised that she’s become one the finest comedic actors working in front of a camera today.

I’m also not surprised that Maya found her way into comedy. What few people may know about her mother is that Minnie was one of the most hilarious women you’d ever meet. She had a wry, even ribald wit that would totally disarm the coolest of characters, the biggest record producers, and the most pompous industry executives of the day.

Maya was five or six years old in this photograph. It was taken at their home in Westwood, CA near the UCLA campus. Maya in her swim suit, sitting in front of the TV with a vintage cable TV box, near a baseball bat & glove, while Minnie in one of her flowing dresses steps out of frame right, and “Sparkle” their devoted Standard Poodle slips by behind her.