My Early Years: 1962-1979, Vancouver
Folk music was huge back then. Hootenannies were all the rage. I know, know. Hootenannies? What the hell is a hootenannie? Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, The Weavers and Odetta and their guitar playing: I loved the sound of acoustic guitars. A really popular club in those days was The Inquisition on Seymour Street, now the Telus building, between Georgia and Robson. Here we heard some incredible music from Tom Northcott, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, and Josh White and the Modern Folk Quartet. I was always drawn to the songs with a Spanish sound – usually Mexican folk music adaptations using the Phrygian modes (i.e. the Am,G F and E progressions).
My brother Anton had started playing guitar before me and went on to be the lead guitarist for one of Vancouver’s most successful psychedelic rock outfits, The United Empire Loyalists. He taught me a few things and introduced me to Terry Cruz who had been to Mexico. With Cruz, I learned some of the percussive right hand techniques such as those used in Huapango and Sones – not unlike some techniques typically found in flamenco.
A regular source of flamenco excitement in those days was the Johnny Carson Tonight Show who often had José Molina, Juan Serrano and José Greco as guests. Peter Baronas was already a good guitarist. He had taken lessons in Madrid, so he showed me a lot of stuff. My first formal lessons were with Bill Lewis who had a guitar shop on West 10th Avenue and later on West Broadway (present-day Prussin Music). Bill was more of a guitar builder than a flamenco guitarist. He taught with sheet music, so his playing was academic and a bit dry. Fortunately for us, a new guitarist rolled into town.
Jeff Middlebrooks was an American who had lived and studied in Spain – specifically in Moron de la Frontera with Diego del Gastor – so he had a very authentic sound. His playing was very percussive, with lots of thumb, strong ligados, and a lot of compas – just what I liked! For awhile, Jeff lived in Kitsilano next to Michael Dunn’s place where we would play guitars and carry on late into the night. One night one of the neighbours got so upset about the noise that he began hurling empty wine bottles onto our roof! When we told him we wanted them full in the future, he suggested various options for bottle storage on our person.
It was around this time that I met Angel Monzon, a dancer trained in the Clasico Español Bolero tradition. He had danced with a number of large dance companies, including Carmen Amaya’s, and had toured all over the world. One of his trips brought him to Vancouver and he decided, like so many others, to stay. He performed with and collaborated with Vancouver’s leading lady of Spanish dance, Kay Armstrong. We have a wonderful photo of the two of them hanging on the wall at our dance school, Centro Flamenco.
I used to go visit Angel in his basement suite on Nelson Street and we would rehearse in his kitchen and listen to flamenco records. He always had a bottle of muscatel on the floor in the corner. It was a huge, industrial-size jug with a hole for a finger to go through so that slinging it on the shoulder for a swig was not as dangerous as it looked. Angel had a group of students, among them Bluma Field, Joyce North, and Connie, who would perform around town.The first time I saw Angel with his group was at the Spanish Canadian club on West 4th Avenue where Bob Potter and Gordon Humeny were the guitarists – and my guitar heroes!
Angel had a great sense of humour. Let me share with you my favourite Angel Monzon story. Angel always had tears in his eyes when he told this! He was invited to perform in Kelowna, BC at a summer festival. As part of the celebration, Miss Kelowna was invited on stage to take a bow. For those who don’t speak Spanish, “Kelowna” sounds a lot like culona which means “big arse”. Angel couldn’t believe that his newly adopted country would actually give out prizes to big-assed girls!Another truly great Monzon memory: we all boarded a Greyhound bus to go to Osoyoos, BC. The dancers were two ladies from Victoria – one was Ukrainian and the other was from the Basque region with limited training and little experience. Let’s just say that they didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence! José Lara showed up at the bus station at 8:30am with his Cordobes hat already on and a mickey of cognac in his pocket. By the time we passed Hope, we were all passed out as well and the cognac was gone. We’d led the entire bus in various renditions of “Porompompero” and had put on quite a show! When we finally got to Osoyoos, I asked Angel what we would be doing in our show that evening. I thought that we would be entertainment at a banquet or some other function, but when we pulled up outside the town theatre, my worst fears came true! The marquee read: TONIGHT 8 pm: ANGEL MONZON and his SPANISH DANCERS!
I was not exactly Mr. Experience in those days, so I was nervous – very nervous! Angel gave me the order of the first half of the show, but when I asked him what we were doing in the second half of the show he assured me: “No vorry for nutting”, and he suggested we do the same dances as we did in the first half and just change the order. After I picked myself up from the floor, he said, “These peoples know nutting!”
He was right! We were a huge success and instead of throwing things and wanting refunds, they wanted to buy cassette tapes of our concert! Monzon was great!
At that time, the only Spanish restaurant in town was Papi’s La Barraca on Main Street, close to Broadway where all of the aficionados hung out: Harry and David Owen, Angel Juarez, John Fairburn, José Lara and José Rivas from the Chateau Madrid. Even Paco de Lucia ended up there after his first Vancouver appearance.
José Greco, José Molina, Carlos Montoya, Paco Peña, Mario Escudero and el Ballet Nacional de España were some of the acts that visited Vancouver. This was a time when you could convince an entire flamenco company to come to your house after the concert to entertain you and your guests for a few drinks and canapés. Those days are over.
Ciro and his company came to Victoria – not Vancouver – and I’m glad I took the ferry because it was the best show I’ve ever seen. Back then, Seattle also had a pretty good flamenco scene due in part to the Seattle World’s Fair – a flamenco show was part of the Spanish pavilion. Harry and David Owen, Tim Clark, Joyce North, and Huguette and Angel Juarez started performing at Gassy Jack’s in Gastown while José and I performed in Ladner at the Marbella Restaurant and at Las Tapas downtown on Cambie Street.
My best gig, however, was playing solo guitar at El Parador on West 4th Avenue, which is now Las Margaritas. My solo repertoire was only about ten minutes long when I started the gig, but as I learned from Angel, I just reversed the order after ten minutes to extend my set! I would record my records with my reel-to-reel tape recorder and slow it down to half-speed to figure out what the guitarist was doing and then I would go to the restaurant at night to try out my new material.
It was a great gig, but after awhile I wanted to have a break. I decided to visit my friend Ernie Banks, a guitarist living in San Francisco and to check out the scene there. I had met El Ernesto in Moron de la Frontera and he taught me a lot about bulerias compas when I stayed with him in Madrid.
It was right around that time when I first met Gary Hayes. He was playing for Téo and Isabel Morca in Bellingham, WA and Cesar Alvarez, a singer from Toronto and brother of Paco de Léon, who later came to sing in one of our festivals. I thought I was doing quite well as a guitarist and was pleased with my progress, until I got a call from Téo Morca in Bellingham. Gary was in Spain and Téo was looking around for another guitarist he could work with while Gary was away. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll go down and show him my stuff!” Téo started to do some bulerias and I played some of my fancy-ass falsettas. Téo did a llamada and I played another falsetta. Téo did another llamada – a bit louder and more obvious – and I played another falsetta. Téo was very gracious, but he finally had to tell me that dancers have ways of communicating with the guitarist. His llamadas were answered by busy signals at my end. Even though I had played for dancers before, it was not the same as playing for Téo. He worked the compas and the guitarist had to work it with him.
This was the biggest eye-opener in all my years in flamenco. How embarrassing! I left his studio with my proverbial tail between my legs, determined to go to Spain to learn how to play for dancers. In the fall of 1979, after working with Angel Monzon and José Lara at the newly opened La Bodega for a couple of months, I packed my bags for Spain and I brought back my own dancer. But that’s another story!
