Live long enough, and you will doubtless be personally familiar with the reality of "the road not taken": a time when you stood at a crossroad, with a decision to make, a direction to choose, and years later wonder what your life might have been like had you taken the other route.
Not quite the same, but close, is the feeling that you should have made more of something that you did choose to do: paid closer attention, taken some notes, appreciated it more. As Joni Mitchell put it in song, you don't know what you've got till it's gone, by which time it's too late and the moment has passed.
I thought of this the other day when I was searching for something to listen to while working. When I'm writing or editing I tend to go for something quiet and/or familiar, that won't distract me or get me so caught up in the music that I can't concentrate on what I'm doing. For this reason, quiet jazz is a favourite go-to, and thus it was that, out of the blue, I found myself thinking of Fraser MacPherson, and travelling back in time some 45 years.
Those of you who know your jazz will recognize the name. Born in Winnipeg in 1928, MacPherson started off as a clarinetist who was influenced by traditional New Orleans jazz, then switched to tenor and alto saxophone. A resident of Vancouver from 1948 until his death in 1993, he was a mainstay of the Vancouver music scene (via a series of quartets and trios that played at local clubs and events) and the Canadian music scene (via performances at festivals, on tours, and on CBC radio); he also enjoyed international success, making four tours of the then-USSR between 1978 and 1986, which was unusual for a North American musician in those pre-glasnost days. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1987, and awarded the Prix Oscar Peterson for lifetime contributions to jazz.
I knew none of this in 1980, when I was 16 years old and working my first job at the River Inn hotel in Richmond. I was in Grade 11, and worked two days a week (Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. to midnight) as cashier/hostess at the hotel's casual dining restaurant, the Deckhouse Grill. It was in an area off the main lobby which also housed the Jetty pub, a small, dark-panelled room; there was an adjacent lounge area directly opposite my cashier's desk, and it was here, for a short time, that MacPherson and two or three fellow musicians — one of them guitarist Oliver Gannon — played live jazz a few nights a week.
I think they had been booked to play in the hotel's fine-dining restaurant on the top floor, but the restaurant was closed for a time, so they migrated to the lounge for a while. I chatted occasionally with MacPherson and Gannon between sets, and while I knew little (at that time) about jazz standards, one that I did know — thanks to it being one of my dad's favourites — was the Erroll Garner classic "Misty".
I mentioned this during one conversation, and imagine my delight when, during the next set, MacPherson caught my eye from across the lounge, announced that their next song would be "Misty," and off they went. I have a grin on my face just thinking about it, but it's only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I truly appreciate what a magical moment it was: a Canadian jazz legend listening to a 16-year-old and playing a song for her by request.
I wish I had known then what I know now, that I had asked more questions, heard more stories, paid more attention. You really don't know what you've got till it's gone. Hand-in-hand with those regrets, however, is the fact that at least I travelled a short way down that road, and had that experience, however fleetingly. As another song says, they can't take that away from me.
