Project Jazz Verbatim

417 – 245 East 3rd Street
North Vancouver, BC  V7L 1E8
CANADA

Voice: 604 682-5983
Skype: jazzverbatim
LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/pub/gary-barclay/14/400/863
Email: jazzverbatim@gmail.com

Since 1968 I have recorded, firsthand, approximately 240 behind-the-scenes interviews with some of the world’s great jazz and blues musicians. From 1971 to 1985, I produced and hosted The All-Night Jazz Show on CHQM and QM/FM in Vancouver, while independently producing jazz features for CBC Radio and co-producing features by remote correspondence for Radio Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I have written approximately 100 articles on jazz personalities based on my collection of interviews for various regional publications. Five transcriptions, with brief introductions and extensive endnotes, are ready for a projected book with the working title Jazz Verbatim. I have produced 21 one-hour radio shows, recorded “live” on location at Vancouver nightclubs with such groups as the Bill Evans Trio, Jack DeJohnette’s Directions, the Headhunters, the Ahmad Jamal Quintet, the Gabor Szabo Quartet, Oregon, the Mose Allison Trio and the Grant Green Quintet. I have been credited for my interview contributions with Dizzy Gillespie on the 1992 National Public Radio 13-part series Dizzy’s Diamond, with Sonny Rollins on CBC Stereo’s The Arts Tonight and, in 2007, on Hot Air on CBC Radio One. I graduated with a B.A. in English Literature (Hon.) at the University of British Columbia in 2000 and with a B.A. in Religion, Literature and the Arts in May of 2004. I withdrew after completing one term of a Masters of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia at the end of 2004. I co-hosted and provided interviews from my collection for The Bean, a two-hour CBC Radio One Special, broadcast nationally on Thanksgiving Day 2006. My review of Abbey Lincoln’s 1981 performance in Vancouver, as well 29 transcribed pages of our interviews recorded during her visit for a biography she proposed (one hour remains to be transcribed), is in The Abbey Lincoln Collection at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University Libraries. From 2006–2009 I served as Associate Editor, Arts & Entertainment, for Vancouver’s Lifestyle Magazine. The recorded “live” club performance I produced of the Grant Green Quintet in 1975 was released as Slick! Live at Oil Can Harry’s by Resonance Records on Record Store Day, April 21, 2018. Portions of my interviews related to this album are available at The Evolution of Grant Green’s Funk (Funk in France/Slick! Live at Oil Can Harry’s bit.ly/2Jm3Lep and Dig the Funkier Side of Grant Green: Newly Discovered Recordings, on The Checkout bit.ly/2qNTgtj

Memberships
Audio Engineering Society – Chair, Vancouver Section (2012–2014)
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)
Oral History Association

Accolades
“You have an amazing list of interviews and the show concept sounds excellent. I’m sure that a lot of the Nation[al] Public Radio non-commercial stations in the U.S. would be interested in it. . . . Best of luck. The oral history aspect of this music is essential and you are providing an important service to the music with this approach.”
– Michael Cuscuna, Producer, Mosaic Records

“Gary Barclay has an important and valuable project . . . .”
– Ward Marston, Producer and Re-recording Engineer

“Important and fascinating . . . .”
– Roger Beardsley, Finance Director, Historic Masters Ltd.

[Favourable statements from the following and others, once located, will be added]:
Joachim Ernst-Berendt, Writer, Producer, Broadcaster and Concert Promoter
Jay McShann, Musician

CHQM AM/FM, Control Room A, mid-’70s

CHQM AM/FM, Control Room A, late-’70s

Art Blakey, Gary Barclay, and Themba Tana, backstage at The Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC, 1981

Linton Garner (1915–2003)

Why are my interviews unique?

I asked Linton Garner, pianist-composer and older brother of Erroll, “Linton, why are my interviews unique?” His answer: “The interviews, in the first place, were all and completely unstructured. I think that might be one of the first things that comes to mind. Many interviews are structured with prearranged questions which lead to pat answers. I don’t get that sense that yours are structured. They’re completely unstructured, so the answers that are given are given freely. Something that you never put in your résumé is that you are a musician. You recognize the freedom of unstructured response. Your personal feeling is that you have no right to predetermine how the answers should be, how they should come, or – you know, there’s no certain order. It’s more of a conversation and you punctuate that from time to time with a question or two, but at no time do you direct the interview per se. I think that is what makes it unique. It’s just my humble opinion, Gary. I think the philosophy behind it is why should you try to put words in the mouths of these great artists? They are all articulate themselves. They can speak freely. That’s what I feel. Why do I have to prompt Duke? Why do I have to set up questions for him, you know? Or anybody else? Spontaneous response is always good because it gives such a wonderful sense of freedom to the artist, and so it opens them up more and there’s a knack to doing that. The knack is to have the sensitivity to respect them as being able to convey what they are about or whatever the subject is about. They can convey their own words. And, since they are the source, you have to have the intelligence to let the source speak. Why do you have to prompt a source? Do you see what I mean? And don’t forget to mention that you’re a musician. That’s important, you know, because a lot of interviewers are not musicians. You not only play, you’re steeped in music from your childhood. Being a musician has to give you a different insight than a non-musician, of course. Incidentally, it seems as if most of your interviews are with black musicians, indicating your understanding of the importance of the information coming directly from the source. About seventy-five percent of the information about black musicians has been written by Caucasians. I think it would be apropos to hear what the originators have to say.”

Copyright 2007–2019. Gary Barclay. All rights reserved.