I have a vivid recollection of the phone call I received from saxophone
player, Glen Gish, suggesting that the Shantelles were looking for a
horn
section and that possibly Stew Meadows, Glen and I should check out the
group. We all loaded into my '47 Dodge Coup and rumbled into the city
to
catch the band.
The three of us were Burnaby guys and had been bitten by the R&B
bug
a year or so earlier when we formed a group called the "Bluesmen". Stew
Meadows and I were no strangers to fairly demanding horn charts as a
result
of our participation in the New Westminster Band, playing a wide
variety
of music in the classical genre. I attended Burnaby South high school
because
of their superior music program and excellent Concert band. Gish having
played in a couple of local Burnaby bands, was finding it difficult
strapping
his saxophone case to the back of his "650 Triumph" motorcycle. He was
the only person I ever saw play an improvisational sax solo and smoke a
cigarette all at the same time! Meadows attended Burnaby Central
high school, where he excelled in their concert band, playing trombone,
and also worked part-time in his father's gas station repairing
"Corvairs".
I cannot recall the school where we first saw the Shantelles perform,
but
I remember seeing a "clean-cut" act with youthful exuberance on stage
and
a full sound. Kentish gyrating impressively around the stage and doing
the odd spin and the spits "James Brown" style with Patterson, Pulham,
Dean, Tingle and Tansley providing a solid musical foundation. We
joined
the group under the direction of their brilliant sax player, Brian
Tansley,
who did all the horn arrangements in his head. Inevitably, Tansley
honed
the rough edges of the "Burnaby Boys" and we became a pretty good
musical
team, for our ages, both instrumentally and visually, so we thought.
I moved to Toronto in 67 and attended Ryerson and continued playing
trumpet
for another twelve years traveling across Canada as well as New York,
Boston,
Nashville, Miami, Nassau, Puerto Rico, Freeport and a few other places
I'd care to forget. We did some recording with Capitol records and
opened
for Natalie Cole on her Canadian tour in '75. I still keep in touch
with
Gish, who resides in White Rock, and Meadows in Kelowna. As a direct
result
of this web site I connected with Brian Tansley in Ottawa after many
years,
and see him and his great family fairly regularly. Wishing all the very
best to the members of the Shantelles and their families and to the "Regents"
for producing the "Bands of the Great Pacific Northwest" web site
..........and
God bless the "Grooveyard"!!.
Gary L.
Geensword
(trumpet-Shantelles)
This
website
brings back so many great memories. Our group, Kentish Steele and
The Shantelles, played mostly in western Canada -- mainly around the
"lower
mainland" of British Columbia, Vancouver, New Westminster, Burnaby,
Surrey,
Vancouver Island and, during the summertime, in the Okanagan. In
addition to the usual jobbing gigs, we played regularly in some of the
nightclubs and dance halls in the area. I guess the most memorable of
these
for me were the Grooveyard in New Westminster and Oil Can Harry's and
Lasseter's
Den in Vancouver.
Kentish Steele
and
the Shantelles emerged from an earlier group whose members included
myself,
Brian Pulham and Jim Patterson. Paul Dean, Brian Tingle and
Kentish
Steele came on board within a year to form the nucleus of the
group.
During that first year Kentish Steele worked in the engine room on one
of the BC Ferries and it always blew me away how a guy could work that
hard on stage for four or five hours and then go straight to the docks
for an 8 hour shift on the boats. I guess, it was just one more example
of how much we loved to play (and what punishment we would go through
to
do it -- speaking of punishment, I till have a sore back from moving
that
Hammond B3 up and down stairs for all those years).
For most of its
life,
the Shantelles was a five-piece band but for a brief period we grew to
the size of the promo picture shown here (taken at Brockton Point in
Stanley
Park as I recall). In this larger configuration the band sounded
great.
It was a lot of work to administrate and rehearse a band of this size
and
while the music made the work worthwhile it was hard to make it pay. We
returned to the five piece format within about year of this photograph
being taken.
There were a
number
of fine R&B groups around this time in Vancouver that fell into two
categories: with horn sections or without. All the groups
that
I was most familiar with were formed for one reason: to provide good
live
dance music. A song was quickly dropped from a set list if no one
danced to it. At least one instrumental per set was included -- a lot
of
these tunes were copped from early albums from Northwest groups.
The Shantelles
and
most of the other groups active at the time around Vancouver mainly
covered
the music of the well-known American R&B bands of the era.
Aside
from the Shantelles, I really enjoyed two other Vancouver R&B
groups,
one large and one small. The large one was the Night
Train Revue. I never understood how they managed to run such
a large operation and make any money. Probably, like most of us, they
didn't
make much and did what they did for the love of the music. The
Night
Train Revue always impressed me with their musicianship and very
soulful
front line of singers, who always put on a great show. Another
Vancouver
R&B group that I really liked was Jason
Hoover
and the Epics . They were, my mind at least, the benchmark for
laying
down a groove.
I guess we
didn't
know it at the time, but looking back at it there was a Northwest music
movement in the 60's and 70's. We were influenced by the Northwest
sound
and had a lot of tunes from NW groups in the list, especially when we
played
as a five-piece unit. We listened to groups like the Kingsmen,
the
Wailers,
Jimmy Hanna
and the Dynamics, Merrilee and the
Turnabouts,
Dave
Lewis, (early)
Paul Revere and the Raiders,
etc. We would scour the record stores in Vancouver and go down to
Seattle from time to time to get the latest records. Once in a
while
we would get down to the Seattle-Tacoma area to hear groups play
live.
I recall hearing the Kingsmen and the Wailers in a "battle of the
bands"
at the Tacoma Armory in about 1965 or
1966.
The the place was packed with people dancing and I remember being
impressed
with the distinctive sound of the groups, especially the Wailers'
drummer.
By
about 1968 many of the northwest bands, both in the US and Canada,
seemed
to have moved away from the blues based R&B style dance music that
I loved -- probably influenced by the British invasion. Some of the
groups
who played and recorded in the late 60's were definitely showing the
influences
of the Beatles and Stones but were in a kind of "transition zone" (some
had the old NW sound but wore Beatles suits on stage!). On the
other
hand, Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, etc. were taking the horn bands
to
another level of musicianship (one that required substantial
investments
of time and effort -- but not necessarily producing any more danceable
music, in my opinion).
By 1971 we had
all
pretty much gone our separate ways; some to careers in music, but most
to other things, with music remaining as an avocation. After being
resident
in five different universities across North America I settled in Ottawa
where I have lived since 1978. My "day gig" is as a university
professor
in Experimental Psychology and Systems and Computer Engineering.
I have continued to play saxophone in (mostly) small groups. Like
back then, I still play the music for the love of it -- trying to play
the best I can --
mostly with others who are trying to be "legends in their spare time",
like me. Like back then, when I play a dance gig, my criterion
for
the quality of our music is whether or not people will dance to
it.
Over the years I have also played in jazz and fusion groups. Things
haven't
changed all that much -- good music is still played live and people who
like live music still come out to hear it (however, you can now get a
B3
sound out of a 25 pound box that is CLOSE ENOUGH to not have to worry
about
the health of your lumbar spine!).
In 1990 the
Shantelles
reunited for a gig at the Commodore in Vancouver which featured many of
the groups that played in the Lower Mainland of BC during the 60's and
70's. The five piece nucleus of the Shantelles, Kentish Steele, Jim
Patterson,
Brian Pulham, Paul Dean, Brian Tingle and myself, played together again
for the first time in 20 years. It was wonderful to see everyone
after so long and to play together again. It was amazing how the
old arrangements were still in our fingers. It was also really great to
see so many of the people who supported the band in those days who came
out to say "hello".
What happened
to
the members of the Kentish Steele and the Shantelles?
Jim Patterson,
the
Shantelles drummer, graduated from UBC with a degree in Physics and
went
to work, briefly, for IBM. He then had a career in the public
service
and, by the time of the reunion in 1990 had bought a small hotel on the
island of Maui.
Brian Tingle,
who
played the Hammond B3, worked for years for BC Tel, first as an
installer
and then as a trainer during the time he played in the Shantelles. He
worked
there until his untimely death a few years ago.
Our bass
player,
Brian Pulham, lives in Powell River BC where he is the Librarian.
Kentish Steele,
our
vocalist and front man (check out the tight pants in the picture --
imagine
doing the splits on stage every night in a pair of those!). Kentish
still
lives in Vancouver and, last I heard, still gigs around.
Our guitar
player,
Paul Dean, played with a number of Canadian groups and went on to form
the group "LoverBoy".
Unfortunately,
I
completely lost touch with the members of the horn section of the group
after about 1970. I heard that Glen Gish lives in the lower mainland
still
and that Gary Greensword had played out east for a while. (Guys, it
would
be great to hear from you if you read this.)
If anyone wants
to
get in touch, please e-mail me at brian_tansley@carleton.ca
I'd love to hear from anyone who remembers the band.
Finally,
thanks
to Sam Carlson for maintaining this great site.
Brian
Tansley,
Ottawa, Ontario, May 2001
