As an uber saxophone geek, my immediate impression was the remarkable resemblance Bucky bears to Gene Ammons, not only physically, but sonically as well. Like Ammons, whose father, Albert, was a great pianist in his own right, so Bucky’s father was also. It was at his father’s where Bucky first learned his craft, his apprenticeship a cavalcade of dance hall, jazz club and society engagements. Like those of his vintage, Bucky’s knowledge of the post-war, pre-disco popular song book is expansive; by the time he has worked his way through the “A’s”, even the most reprobate jazzbo lapses into catatonia, eyes rolling back and jaw clenching.
I braced myself against the dank that summer could offer up on the Halifax waterfront and made my way, resolutely, to the door of the Gottingen Seniors residence. We had agreed upon the commissary; saxmen always meet in the day for coffee. Immediately, it became clear that spotting Bucky amidst the sea of Bryl Cremed and blue rinsed, anglo-saxon octogenarians would prove easy. Bucky appeared resplendent in navy blue, golf shirt, cardigan, Sansabelt slacks and white loafers. How would a saxman dress?
My first encounter with Bucky Adams had come courtesy of the mother corp, the musicians’ great aunt Martha. Always palming a crisp new two-dollar bill as a reward for a kiss on her wizened and papery, rose shaded cheek … the CBC. After abandoning attempts to find “The Grinch”, “Charlie Brown”, “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” or even “The Drummer Boy”, anything to resurrect my fallen Christmas spirit, I happened upon a special celebrating one of Canada’s main claims to “great country” status; the Trans-Canada Highway. The journey was peppered with numerous vignettes of vintage NFB Canadiana, all sewn together by the contemporary cross-Canada journey of a Hari Krishna devotee, by foot. Somewhere, intertwined between the perambulations of a would-be avatar (draw in sax God-devotee theme) and the National Dream writ in asphalt were the stories of hard-working, interesting but unremarkable lives; True Canadians. Upon this tapestry of mediocrity was emblazoned Bucky and Halifax. I had been engaged upon my own heroic journey since a chaotic encounter at the Banff Centre for the Arts, followed by a knock-out combination of an episode of Tapestry about synchronicity and a Shelagh Rogers remote broadcast from Point Pleasant Park. Since then, I have been quite fixated upon Halifax, the apparent at least imagined, nexus of my rite of passage into adulthood. So, the saxman was leading me back to Halifax for my continued liaison with destiny and no doubt he would bestow upon me boons that Edmonton could not deliver. Sitting at the foot of the saxman, I imagined, in a gesture of life affirming profundity, he would lift a single tenor saxophone reed in the palm of his hand with the profound pronouncement of the day’s lesson.
Bucky was a myth in Halifax; any black man playing a saxophone, even holding a saxophone, became Charles “Bucky” Adams. He was rumored to be at Spring Garden and South Park every passable day, favoring the suit and tie crowd with Gershwin or Strayhorn/Ellington. Or he was at the historic properties on Saturday mornings, delighting the fennel buying, Volvo driving, NGO directors of Atlantic Canada with the blues. Bucky is heroic; a prophet amongst infidels, pronouncing the end of the days of jazz, and a time when John Coltrane would appear again at the Newport Jazz Festival to deconstruct another 1000 bars of some hitherto romantic ballad, stridently reaffirming his preeminence over the saxophonic kingdom.
By Ken Hofman | April 19 2020