Lifetime honours

He’s played with Duke Ellington, backed up Bob Hope and Red Skelton and kept the big band sound alive in Thunder Bay long after its mass popularity waned.

Say the word music in this city and one name immediately comes to mind – Roy Coran. On Sunday the 80-year-old bandleader was honoured for more than 60 years in the music business and handed the American Federation of Musicians local 591’s inaugural lifetime achievement award.

There couldn’t be a more fitting choice, said union director Wayne Faulconer, who emceed the awards ceremony on Sunday night, an evening that also saw veteran entertainer Rodney Brown walk off with musician of the year honours.

"It went to a guy who I think has probably done more to promote music on the individual, and also on a group level. To hold together a big band these days, in the economy (is incredible)," Faulconer said.

"You can imagine back in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s big bands toured. But in order to have a 30-piece band, and to pay them and give them benefits, it’s impossible, especially in today’s market."

And yet Coran, who still plays his saxophone with the same vigour he had during the big band era, marches on.

Coran studied music at the University of Chicago and started his Jazz Big Band in 1950, featuring 10 musicians.

They were a fixture on the local music scene, playing every Saturday night at the Exhibition Auditorium, dishing out the sounds of Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey to crowds as high as 3,000.

That same year he opened Coran’s Music, where countless aspiring musicians bought their first instrument and where most of the best saxophonists and clarinetists in Fort William and Port Arthur nurtured their craft, in the studio he kept at the back of the store.

Coran, whose orchestra still plays regular shows, said he became hooked on the big band scene reading DownBeat magazine.

"I used to get it every month, I’d just go and buy it. And I just said to myself, I’m going to be a bandleader one of these days. And it came true," Coran said.

One of his earliest memories was being asked to accompany pianist Earl (Fatha) Hines, a revolutionary figure in the world of jazz, during the latter years of the Second World War. Still a teenager, Coran said his cousin, Albert Belluz, invited Hines back to his house after a show in Port Arthur, for a night of jamming.

"Earl Hines sat at the piano and my cousin put a bottle of win on it and he played. So my cousin says, ‘I have a tenor sax here, why don’t you play with him?’ I said, ‘Oh, I can’t I’m not good enough’. He says, ‘Get that horn out and play.’ So I got the horn and I was trembling going up to Earl playing the piano."

The fear soon dissipated and he’s been playing ever since.

Hedi Beale, a vocalist with the current edition of Coran’s Jazz Big Band, said she believe the lifetime achievement award was a long time coming.

"When you think about it, he has more than 60 years in the business. And he has a very unique talent. He writes arrangements for as many as 20 musicians. That means each part that he writes is different, but it has to fit when everybody plays together at the same time," Beale said.

"That takes some very thorough knowledge of music. Roy is a legend."

Though he’s used to tooting his own horn on stage, Coran’s a modest man when it comes to accolades. But it wasn’t hard to tell on Sunday night he was proud of the honour bestowed up on him.

"I’m really happy as can be about it," he said.