The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 44

44 The GAZETTE, Mont-eal, Jan. 1 1, 1975 Local jazz great LKCAIsO FSUKpAiSj Remembering Rene Thomas cally at the Cafe St. Jacques. Back in Europe, Rene worked all over with a trio ft (Gazette, George Cree) Paul Tietolman of CKVL-FM: "You caa put anything over in CRTC ruling for good-bye to the CKVL-FM means Solid Gold sound of organist Lou Bennett and Klook (Kenny Clarke), Chet Baker and another film soundtrack made with John Lewis, Una Storia Milanese, for Visconti. That also included Jaspar.

Rene played with everyone in Europe, including a duo with ultra-avant-garde drummer Hans Bennink. WITH GETZ In 1970, Stan Getz was in Paris to catch the tennis championships. He dropped into the Blue Note (where he had played during 1959 to 1961). Being told that jazz was dead in France, he was astounded when he heard the trio of Eddy Louiss, organ (a former vocalist with the Double Six) drummer Bernard Lubat and Rene. That evening lingered in his memory and when Getz formed his next group, these three were it.

A two record set on Verve by Getz called Dynasty plus Lucky Thomp son's A Songbook in Europe on MpS are. I think, the only two examples of Rene's play ing still available in North America what a pity! Rene returned to Montreal in 1973 to visit relatives. I was lucky enough to have a radio show, Round Midnight, on CJFM at that time and able to renew art old friendship, first at the Bistro (which Rene said was just like Paris) and then for a beautiful two hours on the air. SOLO CONCERT Shortly afterwards, Raymond Gervais' group presented Rene in a solo guitar concert (a first for him) in an acoustically beautiful church just behind Place des Arts where an artist of his caliber should have been but now, will never have the chance to play. That concert was a highlight of my long life of listening to jazz and it was also the last time I saw Rene.

One of the giants of the guitar is gone. Rene" was described by Sonny Rollins in 1958 as "better than any of the American guitarists on the scene today." Getz described him as "a disciple and heir to Django's legacy, a gentle soul mixed with absent-minded poetry and earthly gypsy fire." I never heard Ren6 play badly and no one will convince me that he wasn't one of the greatest jazz guitarists who ever lived. May he rest in peace. RESTAUR AKT SEArUUD IN OLD MONTREAL fully licensed --r IO.DIB LeCHALUTIER 395lEMOYNEpreiMcGllt RESERVATIONS: 845-1807 Major Credit Cards Honored Your fiosf Jose' inviles you to LAVAL'S FIRST HAUTE GASTRONOMIC RESTAURANT (French Cuisine) A cheice of over 100 renowned wines Licenced Businessmen's lunch 179Q Boul. Des Laurentides, Level (Vimonf) Exif 6, tost lourenfian Aula Rou'e free reservations: parking 669-6874 HOUSE OF STEAK IB GEORGES STEAK HOUSE Situates' et Cafe da Nora DELICIOUS SCAMPIS Businessmen's Luncheons Daily FREE PARKING 10,715 PIE IX BLVD.

322-2020 MONTREAL NORTH A IITTIE ITALIAN RESTAURANT Y0l Will LIKE TO DISCOVER lancli table fhate Itattee Cniwe Folly licensee! Open from A.M. to rmdnignt Closed Sunder House Specialty SPAGHETTI FLAM BE 1472 Crescent Street new de Meisonnauve Blvd. Reservations: 2S4-0307 i-M D'Hote liW from $3.50 RENE THOMAS time, with appearances at La Poubelle, the U. of and Greenwich Village in the Laurentians; the sound track of a Guy Borremans movie, La Femme Image, featuring Rene" and Jaspar (it's still being shown) plus one of the all-time great TV shows on CBFT's Noir et Blanc, which had Rene set off by three of the finest tenor men (locally) of the day Wimp Hert-stridge, George Kennedy and Jack Rider, with Art Roberts on piano. While Rene lived here, he ventured to the Big Apple (NYC) to record with Sonny Rollins, Sonny and the Big Brass and with an interna-M-nal grnui including Toshi-ko, United Notions both for the now defunct Metro-Jazz label as well as recording his own date in the autumn of 1960 for Orrin Keepnews' Jazzland label with J.

R. Monterose a hard to find LP that is as beautiful today as when it was recorded. Again in that period his trio (Pierre Beluse, Fred McHugh) played opposite the M.J.Q. during the Montreal Jazz Festival. The M.J.Q.

got a standing ovation and so did Rene! I almost forgot the Cafe St. Jacques where a then-unknown Detroit tenor-man named Joe Henderson played with Rene for a couple of months. Rene Thomas re-'urned to Europe and almost immediately (1963) was re-imported here to play another Montreal Jazz Festival (Loew's Theatre) plus a week at La Tete de L'Art where Paul Bley did a great deal of sitting in. They had met musi COME TO BIG SYIS ENJOY THE ATMOSPHERE OF BARBADOS GET INTO THE SWING By JAY NEWQUIST of The Gazette Rumble, rumble. The times they are a changin at CKVL-FM.

Goodbye to the days of Le Solid Gold. CKVL-FM must keep in the good graces of the CRTC, which is about to pounce on FM stations across Canada with a slew of new regulations designed to bring the other band into a creative renaissance. Or so it appears. You can never discount, broadcasting politics, especially in Quebec, so listen as the CRTC tightens its stranglehold on CKVL-FM with a 75 per cent French content rule (65 per cent evenings and weekends). It means more live radio, more so-called "involvement radio" and a top-to-bottom house cleaning at the Verdun station's digs.

AN ALTERNATIVE Those who should know (or say they know), lament that all CKVL-FM can do is make the best of a bad situation. Paul Tietolman, who presides over the FM side of the family-run business, is more charitable. He won't even concede that the changeover is teeming with hassles. "In all honesty the CRTC changes don't jrean anything different than what should be done in the first place," he charitably explained this week. Tietolman believes that FM should be an alternative and at least publicly sides with the CRTC.

"They're straight people, they're not irrational." Eventually, he stresses, the station would have gotten around to those changes anyway. Tietolman is "resigned" to' the French fact of Montreal broadcasting and agrees with the idea of a "maximum chance to cultivate" the Quebec French music culture and bring back the "young French people who have been straying away from the French fact." Hence the changes. Whether the changes are spontaneous or simply imposed by some heavy elbowing, CKVL-FM has finalized plans which should take place at the end of Spring. First off the mark is a 52-week series of live concerts from Le' Patriote, the last French-language bastion in Montreal for that endangered species chansonnier. In true radio hustling form, Tietolman calls the deal a "bright, bold concept" and casually mentions the $20,000 mobile van to record shows on location.

LIVE SHOWS Next, the station will slip into radio plays, a notable entry being Michel Tremb-lay's Bonjour. University students can get into the act with their productions. CKVL-FM will also snag talent play By LEN DOBBIN for The Gazette Guitarist Rene1 Thomas died of a heart attack in Spain. Rent's name means more to Montrealers than to anyone but Europeans as he lived and played (oh! how he played) here for about 5 years from 1958 to 1953. Rene was born in Liege Belgium on Feb.

25, 1927. He started playing guitar at age 10 and being from Belgium was of course attracted to Django Reinhardt, the legendary Belgian gypsy guitarist. Django, in fact was an early encouragement to his career. Another important person in Rene's musical life was U.S. guitarist Jimmy Gour-lay, who settled in France after the war and put Rene' and many of the French and Belgian musicians on' to people like Charlie Parker, Her-bie Steward, Al Haig and especially guitarist Jimmy Raney.

THE 'BOB SHOTS I recall having a beer with Raney in New York City in 1955 and his telling of going into a club in Paris and hearing a guitarist play Raney's own entire recorded version of Monk's 'Round Midnight" as a tribute. It was Rene Thomas. At the time, Rene was working in Paris with a group called the Bob Shots, including fellow Belgian reed-man, the late Bobby Jaspar. Ron Sweetman, who covers the Montreal scene for Down Beat, recalls being on a job in the small coastal town of Os-teni and expecting there to be no entertainment of any kind. He saw a notice of a jazz concert at a local cafe and still rates what he heard in an all-night jam from Thomas and Jaspar that evening a highlight of his listen-in? exDerience.

Rene arrived in Montreal around 1958 and turned the city upside down. He was heard everywhere, but mostly at Frank Nash's Little Vienna, which was situated on Stanley Street near De Mai-sonneuve. Featured was Rene's trio plus vititing U.S. jazzmen like Bobby Jaspar, J. R.

Monterose, Pepper Adams and on one snowy Sunday night with a handful in attendance, a most incredible two-guitar evening with Jim Hall (who. was in town with Yves Montand). SOUND TRACK There was also the group led by Milton Sealey at the Vieux Moulin which featured Rene and J. R. for too short a Want to join a band ensemble If you're a former band student and want to continue performing and developing your skills in wind or percussion instruments, Vanier College's Continuing Education Ensemble Chorus will provide you with the ideal opportunity.

Directed by Gerry Danoyitch, the Band Ensemble Chorus starts January 27th, at the Ste-Croix Campus. 333-3920 Vanier College Continuing Education Room C-204 821 Ste-Croix Blvd. by Cote Vertu, St-Laurent WITH TROPICAL 21 50 ing at the new jazz haven, In Concert, and has a front-and-centre table for shows at the Nelson Hotel. The CRTC may have its own goal but Titeolman has his. "There is an unbelievable need for a French reck staucn in Montreal," he says, lapsing into the lofty prediction that CKVL-FM will be a in less than one year with an audience close to 500,000 listeners.

(The latest BBM rating last November pegged their listening audience at An early casualty of the new format is Le Solid Gold is already being fazed out to the chagrin of many listeners. A recent survey of 3,000 French-language listeners by CKVL-FM noted that 97 per cent requested English music. Tietolman doesn't deem this a significant response. "If you ask hog3 what they like to eat, they'll say pig food." The same applies to Solid Gold. "People requested what they were already getting and that survey was just not representative." In any event, Tietolman is convinced that Le Solid Gold was about to self-destruct anyway.

"Our figures taken from similar stations in the U.S. shows that the Solid Gold format has a life expectancy of about 18 months." (The format debuted in May, 1973.) "Solid Gold brought us up from nowhere but it can go only so far. We feel that we 342-2262 IN THE BAKK Lithographs and Original Graphics of World Famous Artists, including Chogall, Picasso, Dali, Kossonogi, Moskowitz, Miro, Raymond, Wochennauser, Purall and Maurice. $29.00 to $49.00 some higher All custom framed an doube matted. 1 PARMA 1 Tm Italian French rp Fully licensee OS' CO 1I7J St.

Uuis St, lmrt fil ft? 744-0214 rat. Open 0il true tl t.m. Weekends ra fW from 4 t.n. Saturdays until I i.m. this city." can go further and expand into a larger market." All of, which may bring problems: Is there enough quality French music to plug into a 75 per cent French format? Tietolman thinks so.

NO BUBBLE GUM "We're not going to be a bubble gum station because French music has gone far beyond that," Tietolman stresses. He says the station won't suffer under the new rules; in fact, "no one will." "We are in a certain situation and if we felt we couldn't handle it, we'd quit." "This is a French city in a French province. Frankly, I think you can put anything over in this city," Tietolman says, adding "if they offered me an English license, I wouldn't take it." Not everyone is so entranced by the new situation. The irony, some say, is that just when the quality of the local French music output is improving, the CRTC rules will open up a wide market that can only be filled by inferior talents and their inferior music. If you want a French rock station so the scuttle butt goes where do you go after Michel Pagliaro? Either nowhere or everywhere, according to your persuasion.

WAY AHEAD In his more than cordial appreciation of the CRTC, Tietolman refuses to concede that CKVL-FM is in a bind or compromised in the slightest way. In fact, he feels way ahead of the game since CKVL-FM has already started to change. "I'd rather be where we are now than in the shoes of the English FM stations when they are told how and when they must change." At present that is the primary iffy situation. Just how will English FM stations fare when the CRTC flexes its new muscles and rules in the coming weeks? Maybe a 30-per cent Canadian content rule as now exists on AM? "They may be screaming pretty 60on now," says Tietolman. Meanwhile, if CKVL-FM is being put out by the imposed changes, no one is admitting it.

Rest assured that Tietolman's grey-haired 30-year-old head got that way fop some reason. And he's all smiles. "In a year we'll wipe CJMS' ass right off the wall." TV Times changes SUNDAY 3:00 p.m. (2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11) Super Bowl Football. 3:00 p.m.

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