Goldsmith's voice remains untarnished

Hans Stamer fires up a jewelry tool in his Vancouver shop. His rock band wowed the critics, but he has returned to his roots in recent years by recording an album of jazz ballads. Darryl Dyck photograph for the Globe and Mail.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 1, 2011

Hans Stamer crafts by hand his own jewelry designs.

“It’s something I’ve been doing all my life,” he said in an accent that betrays his German birthplace even after a half-century in Canada. He turned 73 earlier this month. “It makes me a fairly good living, even at my age.”

He makes bracelets and brooches, engagement rings and wedding rings.

“A lot of times when I finish a piece and it is handed to the lady who is getting married to the gentleman, I get a big hug,” he said.

He also has on offer in his shop compact discs tucked inside jewel cases. For many years as a young man, he abandoned the jeweler’s workbench for the concert stage, put aside a craftsman’s tools to instead hold a microphone. This was one goldsmith who sought to make a gold record.

Mr. Stamer (pronounced STAY-mer) began an apprenticeship at age 16 in his native land, taught by master goldsmiths in skills that trace their roots to the ancient Phoenicians. He was early into his training in Hamburg when he attended a concert by the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

“Louis was the king,” Mr. Stamer said. “He blew our minds. I said, ‘I’m going to sing like that some day.’ ”

(The 1955 concert is notorious in the annals of jazz, as the performance ended in disarray when youths rioted after the amplifying system went on the fritz. Chairs were smashed and broken pieces thrown at the stage of the Ernst Merck Hall. Twenty-three rowdy concertgoers were arrested. The New York Times ran a front-page story days later with the headline: “United States has secret sonic weapon — jazz: Europe falls captive as crowds riot to hear Dixieland.”)

Mr. Stamer caught many acts that toured through Hamburg, including a rocking group from Liverpool who appeared at clubs along the Reeperbahn. Not long after he moved to Canada, he was surprised to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. He had been unaware of their startling rise in popularity.

In Edmonton, he fronted a group called The Famous Last Words, a hard-driving blues outfit. In front of a microphone, Mr. Stamer lost his accent, transforming himself into a raspy-voiced, hand-clapping son of the Southern soil. He was “a boy from Hamburg who sounded like he was from the Mississippi Delta,” said Al Girard, the group’s drummer.

Mr. Stamer then wound up in Quebec as lead singer of the Backstreet Dudes, replacing Chan Romero, the author of Hippy Hippy Shake, who had abandoned the band after finding God one Christmas while at home in Montana. The Dudes renamed themselves Phoenix of Ayer’s Cliff, after an Eastern Townships village, and toured the United States.

After the group disbanded, Mr. Stamer returned west, landing in Vancouver, where, in 1969, he joined Django, which had a regular gig at The Parlour, a small club without a liquor license at Pender and Main. The quintet, featuring the spectacular stylings of guitar wizard Gaye Delorme, shared a house near Jericho Beach, spending a part of each day in meditation. They placed lit candles and flowers around the stage while performing. (Mr. Delorme died earlier this year, aged 64.)

By the early 1970s, Mr. Stamer had formed his own eponymous band, changing the spelling of his name to Staymer at the urging of the record company. He also released a full long-playing record with an album cover featuring him rubbing a washboard. “The cuts virtually sizzle and sputter with a form of musical and vocal intensity that is indeed a delight,” the music-industry magazine Billboard stated in a review. The single Dig A Hole got scattered airplay across Canada and the U.S.

The band signed with RCA Canada and opened for the likes of James Brown, Tina Turner, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. A second album was praised for “a loose, easy-rolling funkiness” by Jim Millican, a reviewer for the Canadian Press.

A full-page advertisement appeared in Rolling Stone. The band was preparing to go to San Francisco for a show, where they were to meet Ralph J. Gleason, the influential jazz and rock critic.

The visit was cancelled when the critic died suddenly.

“One of those breaks,” Mr. Stamer said.

Soon after, the label lost interest.

“Nobody knew what to do with us and the whole thing fell apart.”

The singer returned to his old craft. He did not give up music entirely, performing around Vancouver with the R&B Allstars, a well-regarded outfit with as many as 10 players who were known for wearing formal white tuxes, “a real whoop-de-doo show,” Mr. Stamer said.

He opened a shop, only to abandon street-level retail after being pepper-sprayed by a thief.

In 1998, Mr. Stamer earned a Juno Award nomination with Bill Bourne and Andreas Schuld for best blues album for No Special Rider.

The award went to Colin James, the younger Vancouver bluesman.

There were no hard feelings.

When Mr. James got married, it was Mr. Stamer who crafted the wedding rings.

Two years ago, Mr. Stamer at last recorded the album he had in mind ever since seeing Louis Armstrong all those years ago. The title track of Everything Happens to Me shows the goldsmith’s voice has not tarnished over the years. This record is gold in everything but sales.

The magical history tour of John Lennon's Rolls-Royce

The gypsy-themed paint job on John Lennon's Rolls-Royce is often mistakenly referred to as psychedelic. BELOW: A close-up view of the Flying Lady hood ornament and an unforgettable paint job.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 19, 2011

VICTORIA

Rolls-Royce painted it black. John Lennon had other ideas.

His car is parked in the lobby of the Royal BC Museum, a surprise attraction for those exploring the history of the province. The Rolls travelled a long and winding road from London’s Carnaby Street to Spain to Manhattan to South Carolina before winding up in a city Mr. Lennon never visited.

Only one person is allowed to drive the car. Jim Walters, a 56-year-old mechanic and proprietor of Bristol Motors, is named on the insurance forms. He recently drove the Rolls off a flatbed truck before squeezing the car between double doors and easing to a stop in front of the museum’s ticket desk.

The body is painted a garish yellow with flowers on the door and signs of the zodiac on the roof, all framed by fanciful scrollwork.

The car is so valuable now that it can no longer be driven on city streets. It last had a spin along the Pat Bay Highway three years ago. Before that, it was even piloted as far afield as Seattle by Mr. Walters.

“It floats down the road,” he said. “Very, very smooth and quiet. Absolutely silent. You don’t feel bumps like you would in a normal car. You don’t feel the transmission shifting. No clunk, or jump.”

What’s it like to drive a car that has ferried the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Moody Blues, Bob Dylan, Yoko Ono, and Elton John?

“You feel like you’re in another world. It feels like you’re back in the 1960s.”

In 1965, shortly after getting his driver’s license at age 24, the famous Beatle bought a sports car and a luxury car. The latter was a Rolls-Royce Phantom V Limousine, serial number 5VD73, painted a sober shade known as “Valentine black.” The Phantom was the carriage of choice for the upper classes. The Fab Four rode in Mr. Lennon’s new limousine to Buckingham Palace to receive their MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) medals from the Queen.

Soon after, Mr. Lennon had the rear bench modified to convert into a Pullman-style double bed, a shagadelic bit of interior decorating. A radio telephone was added, followed by a television, a refrigerator, and a floating turntable for some 45-rpm rock ’n’ Rolls. A loud-hailer was also installed, so that he could address people outside the cocoon of his luxury ride.

The Rolls was shipped to Spain, where Mr. Lennon was portraying Gripweed, a private, in the filming of the anti-war comedy “How I Won the War.” A chauffeur drove him to and from the set, the blowing sands of the arid Spanish soil, as well as the limousine’s low clearance, necessitating repairs on his return to England.

Inspired by an old gypsy caravan he had bought for his garden, Mr. Lennon ordered his Rolls to be painted in a similar motif. An English coach builder commissioned the artist Steve Weaver to paint the Romany-inspired flourishes, which are often mistaken for psychedelia. The repainted car was delivered to Mr. Lennon, along with a bill for £290, on May 25, 1967.

One tale, perhaps apocryphal, describes an elderly woman setting upon the car with her umbrella while yelling, “You swine! You swine! How dare you do this to a Rolls-Royce?”

The vehicle followed Mr. Lennon and Yoko Ono to New York after the Beatles broke up, though the crowded streets of Manhattan did not prove welcoming to a behemoth stretching more than six metres.

The couple donated the car to a museum in 1978 in exchange for a tax credit. It soon wound up in storage. In 1985, five years after Mr. Lennon was shot to death by a deranged fan, the car was placed for auction with Sotheby’s, which expected to fetch about $300,000 US.

A fierce bidding war was won by Jimmy Pattison, the Vancouver entrepreneur and car dealer, who bid a shocking $2,229,000 US for the car, which he wished to place in his Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museums. It was exhibited for a time in South Carolina, before being put on display in a glass case outdoors during Expo 86 in Vancouver.

Mr. Pattison donated the Rolls to the province. It spent several years at an automotive museum in suburban Vancouver before winding up in the hands of the Royal BC Museum.

In 1993, Mr. Walters was contracted by the museum to maintain the vehicle. He had been shocked to discover it beneath an old parachute in an underground garage in which pigeons had taken roost.

Some of the chrome yellow paint had flaked, so he undertook the painstaking task of repairing the paint job without altering the hand-painted gypsy flourishes.

For years, the car could be found in his shop on Chatham Street, near Chinatown, a gobsmacking sight for the unsuspecting. “It blew a lot of minds,” Mr. Walters said. These days, the Rolls is usually stored in a climate-controlled warehouse in suburban Saanich.

One repair remains. He haunts thrift stores in search of a 1967 portable, black-and-white Sony television to replace the original that has gone missing.

To keep the car in running order, it needs to be taken for a spin.

Mr. Walters thinks the solution is to rent Western Speedway and have a street sweeper clean the debris from weekend races.

“Get all the seals lubricated,” he said. “Oil pumped through everything.”

Of course, he will be behind the wheel.

Otherwise, baby, you cannot drive the car. Beep, beep. Beep, beep. Yeah.

On Feb. 5 in Paris, the British house Bonhams will be auctioning Mr. Lennon’s first automobile, a blue 1965 Ferrari 330 GT. The auctioneer’s upper estimate for Lot 363 is €170,000 (about $226,000). The Beatle bought the Ferrari in April, 1965. Six weeks later, he took delivery of his Rolls.

BEATLES AT PALACE

The Beatles rode to Buckingham Palace in John Lennon's new Rolls-Royce Phantom V Limousine, a glimpse of which can be seen towards the end of this Pathe newsreel clip.

Rock 'n' rolling off the mother tongue

Art Napoleon addresses a rally opposed to the building of the Site C dam on the Peace River, which would flood is ancestral home. Geoff Howe photo for The Globe and Mail.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 20, 2010

VICTORIA

Art Napoleon tells a story about himself. He is aged six or so when his teacher conducts a talent show.

Not wanting to be left out, the boy borrows a classmate’s harmonica, an instrument which he has never held before.

He squeaks and honks and fakes it, knowing enough to repeat his own phrasing, making the improvised tune sound like a real song.

He remains a performer at age 49, a man who, in his own words, straddles “two worlds” — his ancestral home in the Peace River Country and his current address in the capital city; one, a milieu where moose is a staple and the other, where Staples is a chain store. His mother tongue is Cree and his second language is English.

He acts and performs standup comedy and makes music. His latest release is a remarkable collection featuring covers of familiar songs by the likes of Smokey Robinson and Hank Williams. The tunes are familiar, though, for most, the lyrics are indecipherable. On the disc, titled “Creeland Covers,” he sings almost exclusively in Cree.

The melding of a half-century of popular music with an ancient language has never been done before, as far as anyone knows, not even by the great Buffy Sainte-Marie, for whom he has been an opening act.

The result is a refreshing take on songs so familiar as to have become aural wallpaper. Sung in Mr. Napoleon’s haunting Nehiyawewin, the dialect of the northern woodlands Cree, one discovers new-found appreciation for the original power of the numbers.

“I started with a whole bucket of songs, a whole canon of artists that I respect and admire,” he said. “Artists that are well received on the Rez scene. They like Nazareth, CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival), that kind of rock. They like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, the rootsy country. Merle Haggard. George Jones.”

As a boy, little Arthur grew up on those classics, though his introduction to music came from a grandfather telling ancient stories while accompanying himself on a traditional handheld drum.

Born at the hospital in Pouce Coupe, B.C., the boy was raised by his mother’s parents after her death during his first year of life. His uncles competed in local rodeos, inspiring in the boy not so much a desire to ride horses as to emulate the rodeo clowns. More than once, he inadvertently set afire some props found around the house as he tried to emulate pyrotechnics he had seen.

“Got into mischief,” he said with a chuckle.

Shy away from the stage, a showman came forth when handed a microphone.

A television host and a folk festival stalwart, Mr. Napoleon is also an award-winning children’s entertainer. You can find a hilarious comedy routine on YouTube in which Mr. Napoleon echoes the “I Am Canadian” television-commercial monologue with an “I Am Indigenous” monologue. “I believe in round dances,” he says, “no square dances.”

While Cree can be heard on his earlier albums such as “Siskabush Tales” and “Mocikan: Songs for Learning Cree,” the new release forced him to shoehorn his native tongue into rock and country constructs.

“Certain words are not translatable,” he said. “Certain words in English take a whole sentence in Cree. The other way there are certain words in Cree for which you have to say a sentence, or phrase to describe that.”

For example, the Cree word moskomaw means singing in so powerful a fashion as to bring a listener to tears.

Some concepts simply don’t exist.

“We don’t have a word for 'resource.' We don’t have a word for ‘management.’ We don’t have a word for ‘time.’ ”

Over time he eased his frustrations by taking artistic license with his Cree.

“At first I found it difficult as I was trying to be a perfectionist. Once I relaxed, it got easier and then got better as the process rolled along.

“This is a first crack at it. Next time we’ll satisfy the linguists.”

He sings in Cree Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, John Fogerty’s Long As I Can See the Light, and Neil Young’s Pocahontas, an ironic selection. His cover of the the Beatles’ Rain, originally released by the Fab Four on a single with Paperback Writer, is a killer, while two Hank Williams’ standards — Jambalaya and Weary Blues from Waiting — sound like Cree classics.

The most powerful number on the disc is a stirring folk rendition of Redemption Song. He opens in Cree before switching to English, reworking Bob Marley’s lyrics to express the anguish of his own people: “Oh, pirates took our lands, they saw dollar signs in trees, they drank the creeks and dig their coal, passed around their disease...”

The song then segues into Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, a medley he was to have performed on Sunday as the emcee during a protest at the Legislature against the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam.

He is no newcomer to politics, having served as an elected councillor and, briefly, as chief of the Salteau First Nation.

The proposed Site C dam on the Peace River would flood some of the lands on which he had trapped squirrels and weasels as a boy growing up on the East Moberly Lake reserve. “Arboreal. Subarctic. Very beautiful,” he said.

It is on those same lands that he hunts the moose that fills his freezer in the city, from which he makes such delicacies as the moose-tongue soup he served on the weekend.