“The Creator gave me a gift: my excellent memory. »
Alfie Wade Jr on the line, or rather on WhatsApp. Communication is choppy and the man is not always easy to understand. But we can confirm, in fact, that his memory is still vivid.
Mr. Wade is 91 years old. He remembers everything as if it were yesterday. You have to hear him talk about his youth in Little Burgundy, his first music groups, his years as king of nightclubs… Through him, almost a century of history passes by. A real gold mine.
Let’s just say it: Alfie Wade Jr was Montreal’s first star DJ. A pioneer of Crescent Street nightclubs, a dynamo of Quebec’s black music scene. It was long before techno music, long before rave partieslong before Boule Noire and Pierre Perpall.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALFIE WADE JR
Alfie Wade Jr, circa 1972, Crescent Street, with a friend and hairdresser Mitch Field
From early childhood, Mr. Wade knew he was destined for music. His father worked for Canadian Pacific and campaigned for the rights of African-Canadians. Her mother sold roses and cigarettes in clubs. After closing, she sometimes brought visiting musicians home for breakfast. “I listened to them talking and making music from the top of the stairs,” Alfie remembers.
A child from the Little Burgundy neighborhood, he took piano lessons with Daisy, Oscar Peterson’s sister; studied at the Montreal School of Art and Music; frequented Charles Biddle and Oliver Jones, and founded his first rhythm’n’blues groups at the end of the 1950s, including the Soul Brothers and the Stablemates (with guitarist Nelson Symonds) who performed in the region and of course in Montreal, whose reputation as a festive city is already well established.
We played primarily for white audiences. Because the black community was not large at that time. What were we? Three hundred people at the time?
Alfie Wade
“It was long before Haitians, Caribbeans and Black Americans immigrated to Montreal,” he continues.
PHOTO FROM THE DISC JAMMIN’ JAZZ, BLUES AND BEBOP
The Stablemates in concert at the Old Mill in Montreal in 1969. From left to right: Chet Christopher, Alfie Wade, Bob Rudd, Nelson Symonds, Dougie Richardson and Charles Duncan.
A revolution
Alfie Wade is interested in music from all angles. At the beginning of the 1960s, he left Montreal for New York, where he learned the basics of sound recording, from microphone positioning to recording LPs.
When he returned in 1965, he intended to share his new knowledge with Montreal. That’s good news: Crescent Street is becoming the new heart of Montreal’s nightlife and businessman Johnny Vago offers him the opportunity to be a DJ in his new club, Don Juan.
PHOTO FROM THE DISC JAMMIN’ JAZZ, BLUES AND BEBOP
The Soul Brothers; Nelson Symonds, Alfie Wade, Bill Kersey and Johnny Wiggins, in 1958
Alfie Wade then created a real revolution. It replaces medium-intensity speakers – the norm until then – with giant speakers with powerful wattage and deep bass, roughly the equivalent of what we know today.
I understood the science of sound. I was aware that sound had an impact on the central nervous system. There are decibels that we cannot hear, but which we feel.
Alfie Wade
“So if you have the right music and the right equipment that can deliver the decibels at all levels, it has a direct effect on people,” he explains. It takes them out of their everyday space and transports them to an indescribable zone. All they can say afterwards is that it was cool…”
Musically, Alfie Wade sees the big picture. He introduced Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, Sly and the Family Stone and Latin music to Montrealers… Inspired by New York DJs, he mixed his records based on beat, so that songs flow together easily, another new feature that will become the standard for disco, then techno, DJs. His conception of sound is theoretical, organic, not to mention a little mystical. “I was just a messenger,” he said.
A bar in his name
With Alfie Wade, Crescent Street becomes essential. He is not just a DJ, but a star in his own right, a flamboyant dandy of Montreal nights, with a vaguely Cotton Club look. He is friends with other stars of the time, Leonard Cohen, Armand Vaillancourt, Gilles Carles, Vittorio, Tony Roman. Robert Charlebois is his neighbor at Square Saint-Louis. It is part of the fauna in.
“He was really in high demand. If you look in old newspapers, they devote long articles to him. We cite him as a real swing, as someone important on the Montreal cultural scene,” says writer and journalist Kristian Gravenor, who devoted an article to him in 2016 in Coolopolis, his fascinating blog on shady and nocturnal Montreal.
Solicited, Alfie goes from nightclub to nightclub. We found him at the Drug in 1966, then at the Métrothèque, a club with dancers galore (in cages, yes!) located inside from Berri-De Montigny station – today Berri-UQAM.
But it was at Vieux Rafiot, rue Saint-Sulpice in Old Montreal, that he had his best years, between 1967 and 1970. He left his mark on the place so much that in 2018, when a new bar was inaugurated in the same place , its owner will give it the name Alfie’s, in his honor. That says it all.
PHOTO FROM THE DISC JAMMIN’ JAZZ, BLUES AND BEBOP
Alfie Wade Jr with Gary Siuart, New York, 1975
Passing through Harlem
In 1972, Alfie Wade returned to live in New York, to work in nightclubs and in events. He joined forces with the Harlem Chamber of Commerce, for which he organized city fairs and acted as an Internet consultant, then a nascent technology.
In 2002, he moved to Sète (southern France) with his wife, the artist Anne de Chabaneix, and began the third chapter of his life. His character with his flamboyant look quickly integrates into the city. Between two tai chi sessions, he promotes double dutch (double rope jump) for young people from “sensitive” neighborhoods, then returned to jazz, his first great musical love. In 2018, more than 70 years after his debut in the profession, he released his very first album, Jammin’ Jazz, Blues and Bebop. Better late than never !
PHOTO THE PRESS
Alfie Wade during our interview
Even from a distance, Alfie Wade has not forgotten his origins. “Deep down, I’m still a Montrealer,” he says. But Quebec has perhaps forgotten it a little.
Hence this little reminder on the occasion of Black History Month. Unlike Toronto, Montreal is a real nightclub city. And this deep culture would perhaps not have flourished as much without his contribution.
“When he left Montreal, we lost something,” said Kristian Gravenor. He brought a positive aspect that inspired other people. He was an innovator, a seller of concepts. He was really considered someone important and central in this cultural scene. »
Musician Angelo Finaldi, composer of Nanette Workman’s greatest hits, takes the tribute even further. According to him, a street should be named after him.
Crescent Street, Alfie Wade Street? The idea is launched!