When Vancouver began to boom just before the First World War, it became known as a theatrical centre thanks to such people as Alexander Pantages. He was a Greek immigrant who made his fortune in the Klondike gold rush and parlayed it into one of the two biggest theatre chains in North America. His descendants (some of whom founded the city’s annual polar bear swim on New Year’s Day) are still active in West Coast show business.
As Vancouver grew, it became a thicket of vaudeville houses, cabarets, hotel ballrooms, supper clubs, and unclassifiable nightspots. Many early jazz artists slipped into the mix. Twenty-five veterans formed what they claimed was the world’s largest jazz band. In 1919 and 1920, Jelly Roll Morton — late of New Orleans and one of the first important jazz composers, or at least one of the first to write down his compositions — played the Patricia Hotel, which still stands. Then times changed, as times are wont to do.
Big bands became...
George Fetherling has published fifty books of fiction, poetry, and cultural commentary. He lives in Vancouver.
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