Stories my Father Told Me

My dad, Hank Monis, made his living as a journeyman musician. He played weddings, bar mitzvahs, parties, and clubs in the evening, and taught private lessons and did studio work during the day. He began studying the guitar as a boy in his relatively small hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts, until one day his instructor announced that there was nothing else he could teach him. Hank was so naturally gifted that he had surpassed his adult teacher at the tender age of 13.

Fall River is about an hour directly south of Boston, and is situated on the Taunton River. There was a music hall on the pier, and during the 30s big bands would come there to play. My father and his younger brother Cesar, both teenagers at the time and therefore too young to gain admittance, would take their uncle’s rowboat out and anchor it directly under the venue. They would share a root beer and enjoy the music while the dancers’ silhouettes came in and out of the light seeping through the floorboards above. Hank said it was practically as good as being inside.

Dad had every intention of moving to New York City to become a jazz musician when he finished high school, but WWII interrupted his plans. He served for almost three years as navigator on a bomber in the South Pacific, and was so wrecked by the experience that he had to spend two years at his parents’ house recuperating from the trauma when he got back to the States. He told me that it took that long for his terrible nightmares about the war to abate. A Japanese anti-aircraft bullet had gone clean through his lower back on one of his missions, earning him a Purple Heart. It also left sufficient shrapnel in his body that for months after he returned home he found small bits of it on the wash cloth he used while showering.

My dad’s eldest sister Lyda lived with her husband and three daughters in Brooklyn, and he moved in briefly with them when he was finally well enough to get on with his life. Like every veteran at the time, Hank had received a chunk of money from the G.I. Bill, and he decided to spend it on a good guitar. John D’Angelico was a master luthier who opened his business in Manhattan in 1932, immediately becoming famous both for the beautiful appearance of his guitars and for their unparalleled sound. His notoriety meant that his instruments were in very high demand, so he began only taking custom orders. It turned out that someone who had commissioned a guitar from him backed out of the deal at exactly the time Dad was looking to buy, so he jumped on the opportunity. D’Angelico was so renowned that even his apprentices are known for their excellent work, and many famous jazz musicians, Jim Hall included, played their guitars. My father often said that buying that instrument was the smartest thing he ever did - it made his career.

After some months my father moved into Manhattan - that’s where it was all happening, after all. He roomed with a piano player name Paul Germano; a rather flamboyant gay man, fond of writing silly ditties such as my personal favourite, “I See Icy Icicles.” Mr. Germano also liked to smoke grass, the possession of which at the time led to a lengthy prison term. He kept his stash in an empty film container, meaning he only ever had a little on hand, both because it was an expensive commodity and because he was very anxious about getting caught. A homosexual holding marijuana could expect the worst treatment imaginable as he made his way through the very conservative New York justice system, followed by the heaviest possible sentence. One day Dad and Mr. Germano were both home, enjoying a pleasant afternoon and sharing a joint. Just then they heard a loud whistle blast coming up from the street below, and Mr. Germano, paranoid as ever, assumed it was a raid. He frantically gathered up all the weed on the table, grabbed the joint out of my dad’s mouth, and ran into the bathroom, flushing everything down the toilet. Meanwhile Hank had gone to the window to discover that there wasn't a policeman in sight. Rather, the whistle had been blown to mark the beginning of a parade. Mr. Germano was not amused by this turn of events, but my dad found it hilarious.

Hank eventually started getting gigs in Manhattan at dance and jazz clubs where mobsters and their girlfriends regularly came to have a good time. The men would often stop in front of the bandstand as they glided past with their dates and ask for a particular tune to be played. If their request was not filled in a timely fashion, i.e. immediately, the next time they circled past the musicians they would discretely open their jackets to reveal a gun nestled snugly in their waistband. And presto, the closing strains of the previous tune would still be hanging in the air when the band would hastily launch into the opening chords of the very song the guy had asked for. Quite a coincidence, that.

It was also often the case that as the evening wore on, men in the audience, increasingly in their cups, would come up and ask to play someone’s instrument. My father never allowed anyone, and especially not drunken patrons, to touch his precious D’Angelico. He would politely deny their request, and sometimes the men would demure, but sometimes they would get belligerent and challenge him to a fight in the alley outside the club. Hank was small, but he was wiry and surprisingly strong, probably from lugging around his gear. Amps are not light. He also never backed down from a fight, so he would agree to meet his antagonist outside at the next break. He told me that he would have to calm his breath and straighten his back before going out the back door, so great was his fear of being badly hurt, but there was never any question that he had to go. Often the man who’d challenged him wouldn’t be there, but sometimes he was. Hank didn’t go into a lot of detail about how those fights unfolded, but I’m guessing that most times he came out on top.

In 1951 my father took a summerlong gig in the band at Bigwin Inn, situated on an island in Lake of Bays in Muskoka. There he met a young waitress named Jean Cameron. She was eight years his junior, slim, lovely, and naive. My dad had been through a tremendous amount for a 28-year-old, but my mother had lived a quiet, sheltered life in Ottawa. She lost her father to the war when she was just thirteen years old, but other than that she hadn’t known any hardships. My dad was lightyears more worldly than she, and I sensed from things he said that he fully intended their relationship to be a summer dalliance. They continued to see each other when the season closed at the end of September, and on November 5th they were married. Hank told me that he received a letter from my mom in October which prompted him to think, “Oh shit - I’m in trouble!” I thought at the time that he meant he had accidentally fallen in love, but considering that my eldest brother was born nine months after the wedding, I have come to think that he probably meant something else. The question of why they got together is moot at this point because they raised five children and had been together almost fifty years when my mother died. I think that means their marriage was a success.

The young couple couldn’t live together with a baby in either of their small apartments, so they moved in with my dad’s parents in Fall River, where my brother David was born. They weren’t there long, however, before they decided that they needed to make a life somewhere that supported live music. My mother had no interest in moving to New York, so my father suggested they move to either Los Angeles or Toronto, both of which had a burgeoning music scene at the time. Jean really wanted to go back to Canada, so Toronto it was. I really appreciate that Hank was amenable to this decision because many Americans are super patriotic and wouldn’t consider living anywhere else. They especially couldn't imagine ever giving up their citizenship, which David and my father did in 1967. They needed to eliminate the threat of David being drafted into the Vietnam War, and also Dad wanted to be able to vote in Canada. Hank told me that the guy to whom he handed in his passport at the U.S. Embassy was appalled that anyone would do such a thing, and consequently asked him quite earnestly, and more than once, if he was really sure he wanted to go through with it.

So my parents moved to Toronto. My father had been a member of the New York local of the American Federation of Musicians, but he couldn’t work as a guitarist in Canada until he gained membership in the Toronto local. He consequently took a job selling shirts at Eaton’s for the ten months it took for his card to come through. This marked the only time in his life, other than when he worked in the mills as a child in Fall River, that my father earned a wage doing something other than playing guitar. My mom told me that Dad was an extremely successful shirt salesman, and I don’t doubt that for a moment. He was a very personable, confident, and persuasive guy. When I was a girl he convinced me that pasta grew on trees, and that pieces of exploded truck tires on the highway were sleeping crocodiles. I thought these things true until I was old enough to figure out how absurd they were, in much the same way that I stopped believing in Santa Claus and Jesus Christ.

My father began the hard slog of getting his career off the ground, but it wasn’t long before it really started to take off. He soon had a reputation for being an exceptional sight reader - an extremely valuable skill in studio work where recording space is rented out by the hour. Every producer and band leader knows that overhead costs go down in proportion to the competence of your players, and Hank could not only accurately read even the most difficult charts, he was also never rattled by the pressure of recording. He told me that as he got older young guitarists would swagger into recording sessions, full of piss and vinegar, intimating that they weren’t the least bit cowed by the “legendary” Hank Monis. I can almost see them rolling their eyes and using air quotes around Dad’s appellation. They were like young guns in the old west, he told me, riding into town to challenge the more mature, established marksman. But when that amber light went on indicating that the tape was rolling, they almost all buckled under the pressure. Not Hank Monis. He could play any song, any key, any feel, cold - he was legendary for a reason, no ironic quotes necessary.

His particular set of talents also made him the go-to guitarist for the CBC. In the 1950s all television was live, meaning you needed performers who could consistently get it right the first time the cameras rolled. My father played on all the variety shows at the time, and had some hilarious stories about the many pitfalls of live TV. I’ve written elsewhere about the catastrophic filming of Moe Koffman playing “Swinging Shepherd Blues” while a sheep relieved itself on his leg. There was also the time when Burt Niosi, the conductor of the band, got overzealous with his baton and accidentally embedded it in the mic above his head, where it continued to hang for the rest of the song. Or when Juliette, a then famous Canadian singer, swept down a grand staircase in a flowing gown, singing “I forget the words” over and over again because, although she remembered the melody, she had completely forgotten the lyrics. What else could she do? And through all of these mishaps (and many more I’m sure), the musicians were expected to keep playing. No laughing, no losing focus, just put your head down and do your job. That’s a kind of professionalism which is only required for stage performances now.

In 1973 my father landed the job as musical director for a Toronto production of the Broadway show “The Apple Tree,” a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve based on a work by Mark Twain. The stars were Dinah Christie, who anyone my age will remember from her long stint on “Party Game” with Billy Van and Jack Duffy, and Tom Kneebone, a well known actor and cabaret performer. Dad brought my brother Michael and me to one of the rehearsals for the show, as well as to the opening performance. Mr. Kneebone was an obvious homosexual with a fairly effeminate manner, a state of being which has never been an obstacle in the arts. One of the songs in the show is called “What Makes Me Love Him?”, in which Eve puzzles over why she is attracted to Adam despite his many shortcomings. The final lyric goes, “Or maybe it’s simply that he’s masculine, and that he’s mine.” In the rehearsal we attended, just as she landed on the word “masculine,” Mr. Kneebone did a limp wristed wave with one hand while bringing the other up over his mouth to partially cover a coquettish grin, then bent slightly at his joined knees and let out a high pitched girly laugh while batting his eyelashes. It was one of the gayest moves I have ever seen, and absolutely hilarious. When Dad took us to opening night, both of the stars were given a red rose at the end of the performance, and Mr. Kneebone threw his to Dad. I think he was very moved by the gesture.

Dad also took Michael and me to the recording of the music for The Polkadot Door. The show was aired Monday through Friday on TVO, and each day of the week had its own focus: imagination day, animal day, and so on. Each of these themes had different lyrics and instrumentation. My dad played guitar on most, and banjo on one, while Jack Zaza, a woodwind player who was also on the gig, played a different instrument on every one. Flute for Monday, clarinet for Tuesday, etc. These were the days when every job was a union job - no one got hired without the Federation’s approval. This meant that all musicians had to be paid at least scale, the minimum amount allowable for an hour’s work, and they got paid double if they played two instruments. That means my dad was paid as much as two musicians, and although they probably didn’t pay Mr. Zaza as much as five times the single rate, he would have earned more than Hank, and rightly so.

Both Michael and I already knew Mr. Zaza, but Dad made a point of introducing us to the singer, whose first name, if I recall correctly, was Bonnie. She leaned over to shake my hand while saying hello, and her breath was so bad that it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to recoil in disgust. It brought to mind the George Carlin line, “Your breath is so bad it could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.” Not very elegant, I know, but perfectly apt in this situation. I remember watching the three of them in the booth during the recording, and wondering how Dad and Mr. Zaza were staying so professional and focused as this woman’s foul breath overtook more and more of the small space with each take. Maybe thoughts of escaping that fetid room only added to the men's flawless performances.

My father was also a regular in the O’Keefe Centre pit band. I got to see several shows for free using the comps they gave him, and remember especially liking “Godspell.” I just looked this production up to discover that the cast I saw included Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Andrea Martin - none of whom were really known at the time. I think that lineup explains why the production has stayed with me for fifty years. Dad also played with some really well known American stars. He said that Bing Crosby was a very generous performer, but that Judy Garland was by far the most humble and appreciative. She constantly praised and thanked the band leader and the musicians throughout rehearsals, and made a point of giving them all gifts on closing night.

My in-laws, along with many other members of their generation, were always fascinated by stories such as this and more than a little starstruck. I would roll my eyes and mockingly flap my jaws behind Dad’s back when he told these tales because I had heard them so often. I remember one time my father-in-law asked who was the worst act my dad had ever worked with, and without a moment's hesitation he replied, “Danny Kaye.” Evidently he was arrogant and unpleasant to everyone, but he was particularly hard on the musicians and especially their conductor, Bert Niosi. Kaye and Mr. Niosi had words many times during rehearsals, and Mr. Niosi came to hate him, vowing that he would never permit Kaye to make him laugh again. Kaye got wind of this declaration, so every night he would come on stage and be as outrageously funny as he could, continuing until Mr. Niosi finally reluctantly laughed. Then he would give a supercilious grin to the defeated conductor, and get on with the show. Clearly just a prick, and a good example of why it is generally better not to know what performers are like in real life if you want to continue enjoying their art.

I recently went to an outdoor Christmas event at a local venue, the highlight of which was a horse drawn sleigh ride through a lighted wood. I was in line for the ride with two former co-workers, and we were swapping stories about out childhoods. I mentioned some of the anecdotes I’ve recounted above, and one of my friends said it was a shame that I hadn’t recorded my dad telling them. I absolutely agree, and the preceding article is my way of trying to make up for the oversight.