Big band jazz dominated popular music between WWI and WWII. Every band had a vocalist and big band records by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and other singing stars amplified the music’s popularity.
Jazz was dance music and pop music until the emergence of smaller combos led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. Rock ‘n’ roll’s emergence in the 1950s and ’60s signaled the end of jazz’s domination of pop music, but the tradition of jazz singing lives on. Male jazz singers are a rare breed now, but one of the world’s greatest calls Victoria home.
Since moving to the city in 1995, Joe Coughlin has recorded five new albums and reissued a pair of earlier vinyl records on CD. He has won many awards including The Jazz Report Award for Male Vocalist of the Year in 2000 and the National Jazz Award for Male Vocalist of the Year in 2008 and 2009.
Joe is releasing a new CD, Dedicated To You (Cellar Live) this September. Along with a Victoria-based quartet, Joe is scheduled to perform at a celebratory CD release benefit concert at Dave Dunnett Community Theatre in Victoria on October 8 at 7:30 p.m. It will be his third benefit concert for the Sno’uyutth Legacy Scholarship for Indigenous graduates of Oak Bay High.
Born an incomplete quadriplegic in Windsor, Ontario in 1954, Joe has been performing on stage since he was five. From ages 5-7, he was the spokesperson for Easter Seals as “Timmy” in Southwestern Ontario. As Joe explains with a laugh, “Applause was introduced to me very early in life!”
Joe sang in the church choir and started drum lessons at age nine. He learned to read music and later joined his high school bands on the drums. His high school big band instructor introduced the young musician to jazz with clever big band arrangements and records by jazz drummer Buddy Rich, but the teenage Joe had other musical interests, too.
“My brothers and sister had a ’60s folk music group, and I saw how the girls looked at my brothers up on stage… and that got me going,” Joe remembers. “By Grade 12, I was serious about rock music and joined a band called Whiteheet. We won Windsor’s Battle of the Bands a couple of times and got steady work in clubs three nights a week… and the drinking age was 18,” Joe adds with a grimace. Joe is now a vegetarian who doesn’t drink alcohol and uses Chinese herbs for pain relief.
By 1977, Whiteheet’s first record became a hit province-wide, and long-haired, mop-headed Joe was singing lead propped up on his crutches in skintight satin pants and platform shoes. Whiteheet’s original 45 single, “Deceiver/Devils Knight” on PTC Records with Joe singing lead vocals, is for sale online for $500.
“After I got my BA degree in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Windsor, we hit the road playing all over Ontario,” Joe recalls. “My dad was an English professor at St. Clair College, and he wasn’t too pleased about it. I remember one gig up north at a Kirkland hotel where we drew 250 people the first night and nobody for the rest of the week, because we didn’t play heavy metal. Closest we got to that was a ZZ Top cover. I did the rock life until 1979, got bored, and started studying jazz.”
After learning songs from records played on a Detroit jazz station, Joe auditioned for the Du Maurier CBC Search for the Stars in 1979 and 1980. The 25-year-old’s jazz singing caught Eleanor Sniderman’s ear during the competition, and the wife of Sam “The Record Man” Sniderman signed Joe to a three-year, three-album management contract on her prestigious Aquitaine label.
Eleanor had produced Liona Boyd’s big-selling debut LP and Anton Kuerti’s acclaimed collection of Beethoven sonatas as well as two dozen more classical recordings on her Aquitaine label. Joe’s 1981 recording was her first and last jazz album.
Joe’s debut record garnered rave reviews, widespread airplay and international distribution… and then, within weeks of its release, it vanished. A messy divorce between Sam and Eleanor pushed Joe’s recording into obscurity.
Last year, the wizards at London’s Abbey Road Studio performed a skillful digital lift off a pristine copy of the LP that Joe found on the internet. The 40-year-old, now-new CD is an historic Canadian jazz gem featuring some of Canada’s greatest jazz musicians including pianist Bernie Senensky and drummer Terry Clarke, who rejoin Joe on his latest CD. It’s symbolic of Joe’s life and career, his transcendence over adversity.
Joe had his first major surgery at five, a double leg cast.
“It was at The Crippled Children’s Centre. That’s what the wing at London’s Victoria Hospital was called then,” Joe explains with a shrug. “The orthopedic surgeon said, ‘kids like Joe have a life expectancy of 40 years.’ I heard him say it to my folks, but my mom and dad ignored that, saying, ‘The word can’t is not in Joe’s vocabulary.’”
“Later, I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be on TV,” Joe continues. “But a big CBC TV honcho told me in 1978 or 1979 that ‘I’d have to be a star on my own before I got on TV, because I look funny.’ That’s what he said. That guy was the head of variety programming for CBC.”
But, by 1989, Joe was on CTV hosting Challenge Journal and Disability Network on CBC until 1992. He was co-host and presenter for CBC television’s Harry Jerome awards. He anchored CBC News at 11 and also provided entertainment reports.
Joe had already raised millions as a fundraiser for Ontario March of Dimes in the early 1980s. While singing in Toronto jazz clubs at night, he worked at the first Employment Equity office established by Metro Toronto council. He was vice president for Ontario Society for Training and Development and senior management training manager at American Express Canada. He helped raise millions as executive board member for Variety Club of Ontario, a show business charity for children with special needs.
When he wasn’t working or singing, Joe was sailing. His dad had crewed with the South Port Yacht Club on Lake St. Clair, and Joe started sailing as a teenager on a HR25 he calls “a fast little rocket ship.” By 30, he had sailed all the Great Lakes.
Joe worked as a consultant for many blue-chip companies from 1992-1995, then took a four-month contract with the BC Provincial Government and moved west when his marriage dissolved. He served as Communications Manager for the BC Government Office for Disability Issues and Communications Director at Equal Opportunity Secretariat from 1995-2014.
“One of the interview questions asked for the job with the BC Government’s Office for Disability Issues was ‘What do you think is the biggest barrier to full participation for persons with disabilities?’
My short answer was poverty,” Joe remembers. “The interview panel was taken aback and asked for further clarification. I said, ‘with a good job and decent income, barriers like lack of accessible housing, transportation, etc. disappear.’”
“The mandate for my job was to improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities, and I had 18 months to do it. What a challenge!” Joe continues. “But after working for non-profit in government and private sector for years, it was a challenge worth taking.”
Eighteen months morphed into a 10-year journey that saw the establishment of a $25 million Supports to Employment fund for people with disabilities, a Self-Employment Program that provided seed capital and entrepreneurial training for persons with disabilities, a shift in focus away from welfare (which is way below the poverty line) to gainful employment, improving transportation between Vancouver Island and the Mainland, ensuring cross-government access to websites for blind and visually impaired persons, establishing individualized funding for home support services to enable persons with disabilities to live independently, improving access to public transportation for those with mobility challenges, and substantive changes to the BC Building Code to improve access.
“It wasn’t easy, and the slow pace of change was frustrating, but we are making progress,” says Joe. “We still have a long way to go.”
During his years with the BC Government, Joe continued his competitive sailing while serving on the board of Victoria’s Disabled Sailing Association.
He also became a fixture on Victoria’s jazz scene with annual showcases at the Victoria Jazz Festival and the Jazz Society’s annual fundraiser at the Empress Hotel. Joe also played local venues, but admitted, “after 40 years on the road, touring isn’t getting any easier.”
In 2005, Joe hurt his back in a fall and had to quit sailing. He officially retired from his job with the BC Government in 2014 and now gets around in a power chair that limits his touring and performing, although it fits in his specially designed SUV.
“Thank God I can still sing. It doesn’t affect that… affects getting out of bed, going to work, but I’m going to have to live with this and have some fun, too.”
Joe’s singing is better than ever. His technical virtuosity, his breath control and horn-like phrasing, and his exquisitely enunciated readings of thoughtfully chosen lyrics are married to Joe’s seemingly inherent will to swing. His playfully elastic sense of rhythm and velvet-like crooning caress a timeless repertoire.
Shaukat Husain, host of CFUV-FM’s jazz program Straight No Chaser for 38 years and co-owner of Victoria’s Sweet Thunder Records for 15 years, is a fan.
“I heard Joe on his recording, Second Debut, when it was issued in 1984. It was amazing, and I was hooked,” enthuses Husain. “Here was a jazz singer who blended with the band and took the lead like a trumpet or a saxophone. He uses his diaphragm like an opera singer to project his voice. It’s a big baritone voice that keeps up with the jazz instrumentalists he sings with.”
Joe once opened for jazz great Dizzy Gillespie at a big fundraising event in Toronto. Dizzy was in the wings listening to Joe sing.
“Dizzy calls me over after my set and tells me I have a gift,” Joe remembers. “He said my speaking voice and my singing voice are the same, like Carmen McRae and a few other great singers. ‘So, don’t ever listen to critics. Don’t ever give up!’”
Sidebar
What would you say to your 20-year-old self?
“You’ll be living on the west coast in 20 years, so learn how to sail and navigate all the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair before you move. Sailing on the Pacific Ocean is a whole other trip.”
Who has been your greatest influence?
“Dizzy Gillespie. He told me I had the same gift as Carmen McRae and to never give up.”
What are you most grateful for?
“Being able to maintain a positive attitude despite many obstacles on my way to success.”
What keeps you grounded?
“Knowing that 40 years after Dizzy’s advice, I haven’t given up. I’m still paying my dues.”
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Fantastic article on a fantastic singer