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Pacific Salt
Pacific Salt
Gramophone - 1973
Michael Panontin
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"Play the trombone, son, because a good trombone player is never out of work."
In a spin on that quintessentially Canadian hockey advice ("Be a goalie 'cuz they always need goalies."), Ian McDougall's dad obviously steered his son in the right direction. The Calgary-born/Victoria-raised trombonist, who had originally intended to play the drums before hearing that fatherly advice, is best known in these parts for his time as a lead soloist with Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass. But along the way, he's also had slots with Fraser MacPherson, Woody Herman and Ted Heath, as well as on CBC-TV and with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
McDougall settled in Vancouver in the early sixties after a brief stint in England touring with the John Dankworth Band. After earning an M.A. at the University of British Columbia in 1970, he founded the fusion group Pacific Salt with some of the city's premier jazz musicians, among them Oliver Gannon, an Irish-born guitarist who arrived on the West Coast the year before after graduating from Berklee.
Gannon's story is much the same as McDougall's, only it was his mother who first suggested he take up his instrument. "As soon as she said 'electric guitar', my eyes lit up," he told the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, "so I got an electric guitar and came home and started plonking out open-position Cs with my amplifier." From there it was on to the public library and a copy of Barney Kessel and the Poll Winners. "I learned how to play the guitar with Barney Kessel as my teacher just by listening over and over again," he told the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society. "And I don't think I ever to this day returned the record to the library."
Gannon arrived in Vancouver not knowing a soul, but it wasn't long before he got a high-profile job in Fraser MacPherson's band, which performed regularly at the Cave on Hornby Street. From there, he met McDougall and joined Pacific Salt. The group, which also included trumpeter Don Clark, pianist Ron Johnston, bassist Tony Clitheroe and drummer George Ursan (and then later saxophonist/flautist P.J. Perry), was formed ostensibly as a co-operative, said Gannon, "but we knew that Ian was the head honcho".
That said, the songwriting on Pacific Salt is shared by nearly all, with five different members contributing at least one tune. It was the group's first disc proper, with four tracks re-recorded from their Feb. '73 session at the CBC Vancouver studios. As the album cover seems to suggest, much of Pacific Salt can be filed under jazz-rock, especially some of the shorter tracks like Perry's poppy opener 'Goose Juice' and Ursan's funky 'Raw Toast', the latter featuring some of the strongest horn solos on the record. McDougall and Gannon each contribute a couple of longer, more complex workouts. McDougall's 'You're My Little Sweetheart' starts off somewhat ominous but then shakes off the seriousness by the midmark to evolve into a raw and dirty sax and guitar workout. Gannon's closing 'North Bluff Stop', on the other hand, is a full-on rave from start to finish, carried by lots of guitar soloing of the sort that would probably have made Mr. Kessel proud.
Though McDougall headed east to Toronto that year to take up residence with Rob McConnell and his Boss Brass (in the process proving his dad right), the others kept things going locally, recording a live LP at Vancouver's Playhouse Theatre in 1976. Pacific Salt also gave back, as it were, performing numerous shows - sometimes as many as three a day - teaching the history of jazz at local high schools around town.
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