It comes from readers now and again. Sometimes I expect it. Most times – because of the very nature of “The Barris Beat” – I never anticipate it at all. There are times, however, when phone calls or e-mails seem to arrive non-stop. The message is simple:
“Why don’t you write something provocative?” they ask. “Why aren’t your columns more critical?”
In the first place, while the column does offer an editorial perspective, I’ve always felt my point-of-view should tell stories, offer fair and reasonable comment and reflect the community’s pulse as much as mine. But above all, I’ve always felt “The Barris Beat” should present constructive criticism or no criticism at all.
I think I come by that philosophy honestly. As some of you know, my father Alex Barris originated “The Barris Beat” as a daily entertainment column at the Globe and Mail in the 1950s; for a time, it also appeared weekly on CBC TV as the first of the Canadian, late-night, variety shows (when nobody had heard of Leno and Letterman). Although his column and TV show sometimes delivered over-the-top humour, they were nevertheless fair and generally constructive. Not purposefully hurtful. Never demeaning. And while I owe some of that editorial approach to my father, I had another mentor from that same era.
Writer Helen McNamara spoke by word and deed. Born in Galt, Ont., in 1919, she landed her first bona fide writing position with the Toronto Telegram, reporting for the so-called Women’s Department of the paper. Her passion, however, was jazz. She freelanced for such publications as Jazz Panorama, Canadian Composer and Melody Maker in England. “McNamara’s Bandwagon,” her first music column at the Telegram, Dad told me, was published the same day the Globe published his first music column, “The Record Album.”
Though they wrote for rival newspapers, however, Alex and Helen became fast friends. They covered jazz acts together. They interviewed some of the same U.S. stars together. They even co-hosted a weekly jazz disc show (first on CFRB radio, then on CBC radio). Above all, they went out of their way to showcase Canadian musicians and Canadian performers when the rest of the country, indeed the world, couldn’t care less.
So, while she allotted sufficient space for the visiting American heavyweights of the jazz world, Helen ensured that local artists such as guitarist Sonny Greenwich, vibraphonist Peter Appleyard, trombonist Rob McConnell, pianist Oscar Peterson and countless other Canadian acts got sufficient review space and constructive criticism. She even wrote a book about the big band era, titled “The Bands Canadians Danced To.”
In particular, Dad told me, Helen paid tribute to Nova Scotia pianist Cy McLean, “who became the first black musician to crash the Toronto musicians’ union [and its] imperious and racist president.”
What perhaps made Helen McNamara’s example most worth emulating, was that she covered the jazz scene at a time when women had little opportunity to do such things. She gave Canadian musicians ink and air time when it wasn’t fashionable. She helped put them centre-stage when they had none, gave them an audience when they needed one, and paid attention when “Canadian jazz” and “notoriety” rarely appeared in the same sentence. She did all this with a lifelong polio disability that would have deterred most even attempting to build that musical constituency.
In other words, Helen McNamara, like my father, gave members of her community a chance to be noticed, to be enjoyed and to be celebrated. I’m sure there were nights on the job when neither the musicianship nor the venues deserved attention, but she felt inspired to write something, anything, that made the experience memorable. Finding the positive became her mission.
Years later, in 1997, when Helen became hospitalized with Parkinson’s disease and was threatened with skyrocketing hospital expenses, my father approached many of those same musicians for help. To a man, the Toronto jazz community pitched in. Major Canadian talents, such as Guido Basso, Jim Galloway, Ed Bickert, Moe Koffman, Phil Nimmons, Peter Appleyard and Oscar Peterson agreed to perform at a benefit concert. They did so – for free – and raised over $30,000 to cover health bills. My dad emceed that night.
“Nothing I have ever been involved with,” he wrote later, “has given me as much satisfaction or feeling of accomplishment, as that night.”
Helen McNamara died just before Christmas, the same day Oscar Peterson passed on. The same way she inspired a generation of musicians and her working colleague, Alex, she inspired me with her search for the positive, her wish to serve as well as comment.
