They Loved to Play: Memories of the Golden Age in Canadian Music

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

Trombonist Murray Ginsberg chronicles his career and those of many other
prominent Toronto musicians in this voyage into nostalgia. They Loved to
Play is based on dozens of interviews as well as Ginsberg’s extensive
experience, which dates back to the late 1930s.

Ginsberg says the idea for the book began with the encouragement he
received following a series of profiles he wrote for his “Canadian
scene” column in International Musician. The oldest musician
interviewed was saxophonist Nat Cassells, who played with Luigi
Romanelli and The Monarchs of Melody in the 1920s. This is followed by
reminiscences of band members who played with Horace Lapp, Trump
Davidson, and “Canada’s King of Swing” Bert Niosi. Other jazz and
pop musicians represented include Phil Antonacci, Frank Bogart, Howard
Cable, Johnny Cowell (who also played in the Toronto Symphony), Bobby
Gimby, Hagood Hardie, Mart Kenney, Cy McLean, Ellis McLintock, Gino
Silvi, and Frank Wright. Ginsberg himself played in a legion of bands,
jazz ensembles, and studio orchestras (most notably at the CBC)
throughout the 1940s and ’50s, and was a member of the Toronto
Symphony from 1961 to 1978. His “classical” sojourn is reflected in
profiles of Victor Feldbrill, Hyman Goodman, Judy Loman, Seiji Ozawa,
Albert Pratz, Steven Staryck, and Walter Susskind. From 1979 to 1995,
Ginsberg worked in various capacities for the Toronto Musicians’
Association.

Recurrent themes are the growth of the Toronto Musicians’ Association
since its inception in 1888, and the importance of the CBC in promoting
Canadian culture. The anecdotes are generally upbeat, but Ginsberg does
draw attention to the heavy drinking of some musicians,
performance-related injuries, and racism that barred blacks from joining
the Musicians’ Association until World War II.

Perhaps the book should have ended with Ginsberg’s return to England
in 1994 to the lady who was his World War II romance. Some of the
concluding vignettes, as well as the “coda” on the future of music,
which includes an interview with electronic musician Steve Webster, are
rather sketchy. The book’s subtitle is also too general since no other
Canadian city apart from Toronto is discussed. Nevertheless, this
well-illustrated memoir does succeed in its primary purpose of putting a
human face on the gallery of musicians who illuminated Toronto’s
musical culture.