BIG RuDE JAKE

It was a cold Toronto night on Bloor Street, 1991, my trumpet and I were out busking, when a fella in a trench coat, fedora and wing-tipped shoes stopped to listen. He introduced himself as Big Rude Jake and said he liked my style; I too was in a trench coat, fedora and wing-tipped shoes, a rebellion to the Grunge movement that was dominating the so-called “Indie” scene at the time. He invited me to sit in at his house gig at the Silver Dollar, and that Wednesday night, I became a Gentleman Player. We were joined at the hip for the next seven years; me and Jake against the world in a movement we called SwingPunk. It was “jazz for sweaty people”, anti-establishment lyrics matched to a greasy, grimy groove like 1930’s Harlem. We were big on the Canadian University circuit, we toured the States with 3rd wave ska bands, and were a top-selling artist back when record stores had a rack for indie bands. As one music mag put it, we were “the alternative to Alternative”