A Paekākāriki story set in the early 1970s when the village was still predominantly working class.
The old pub was great. Denis Glover drank there. We had Bullocky Jack who used to clear sections, Squadron Leader Evett with his big Bomber Command moustache, and a little guy who’d sailed in sailing ships, and then became a fitter and turner.
Even Miss Peach was still around, taking her canary in a cage wherever she went, and at four o’clock every weekday, Bill Carson would shut his little chemist shop, haul a suitcase into the pub, and dispense from his special corner of the bar. And for ten weeks we had Buddy Wilson.
Buddy’s place in our village musical history began when the bar manager wanted me to meet this guy who needed a piano player, and arranged for us to meet in the Ballerina Bar.
The Ballerina Bar was a dag of a place. It was quite dark and small, with gift shop pictures on the wall, and a door with a frosted glass dancer pirouetting away because the publican’s wife had once been in ballet. The bar itself reminded me of a men’s urinal, thanks to the chrome plating rivetted right along the front.
Anyway. There’s old Buddy, maybe sixty-three, sixty-four, about five foot two, and bald. He had a sallow, pinched-looking face, a bow tie and a dirty-old-man overcoat.
The Bar Manager brings me over. “I want it understood,” he said, giving me a hard look so I’d know this was important, “that Buddy here is in charge of the entertainment at the Paekakariki Hotel. He speaks for me. What he says, goes.”
Well! The little fella blushed. He looked at the floor and he looked at the wall, struggling not to look totally chuffed.
“Phleased to mheet hew,” he said. Not as bad as that, but he did have an impediment. You didn’t notice it after a minute or so but you got the feeling it had closed more than one door in his life.
He’d left a notebook on the bar. I didn’t want to look at it, but you know how your eye goes straight for an open book? He’d drawn a plan:
“THE BUDDY WILSON BIG BAND,” it said in big letters with double inverted commas right across the top of a double page spread. It showed three rows of horns (the back one for trumpets, the middle one for trombones and the front one for saxophones) plus a place at the back for the rhythm section. Right across the bottom was a square box in which large red letters said” BUDDY WILSON “LEADER” “SAXOPHONE” “VOCALS.”
He whipped the book away. “Jhust dhreams,” he said.
Anyway, I agreed to play for him. He didn’t have a band, so I asked Kuru Love and Ron Brazier. I warned them, but they both said fine.
We didn’t practise, thank God. Buddy couldn’t because he did shift work during the week¾he was one of those old porters who stood around the foyer of Parliament, mostly waiting for something to carry in that seldom arrived. We just played tunes we all knew Lady be Good, Never on Sunday, Blue Smoke ─ that sort of thing. Buddy told me: “You play whatever you like. If I don’t know it, I’ll just riff along.”
The only riff Buddy seemed to know was the one from the Saints. Oh my God:
A Foggy Day (Oh When the Saints)
in London Town (Oh When the Saints)
had me low (Oh When the Saints)
had me down (Oh When the Saints)
Kuru and Ronnie were wonderful. They heard this sax sounding like a cat being strangled and they didn’t wince. They didn’t roll their eyes. They didn’t laugh. They just kept playing as well as anyone could, and in between brackets they went out of their way to make Buddy feel like one of the guys.
Even our instruments looked bizarre. There was an old upright piano that had some character as well as verve if you took the front off, and Kuru had his old spangled bass guitar from his Maori showband days. (Kuru had toured Asia with the Inkspots, and when Oscar Peterson first came to Wellington and was urged to play at a Wellington musos’ shindig after the concert, it was Kuru he chose, from among other capable bass players who had played, to sit in for Ray Brown, no less. And Ronnie (who was a dwarf, visual artist and an A-list guy for musicals that had pit bands) had a new kit with Italian cymbals.
Buddy’s new alto had been stolen so he used his old one with rubber bands where the springs had gone. He polished it religiously, but he couldn’t look the part – just an ageing, skinny, sick-looking sax player in a baggy suit and black bow tie.
But keen? That sax blared out and Buddy’s vocals came with all sorts of hand movements and expressions of deep joy and longing. He told the audience who wrote each song and who made it a hit in what year. And when he sang You Make Me Feel So Young it fitted in okay because, far from being personal, it was his tribute to Frank Sinatra.
Our big number was Ghost Riders in the Sky. We’d finish a number and Buddy’d turn around. “Ghost Riders!” he’d shout and then disappear into the men’s lavatory. The rest of us would play something ─usually anold three-chord Elvis or Fats Domino number ─ and then the star would almost cartwheel onto the stage in yellow cowboy gear and a ten-gallon hat, firing a bloody cap pistol at the ceiling.
Then he’d grab the mike:
“An ol’ cowpoke went ridin’ ….
And the crowd would roar:
“One dark and stormy night!“
Buddy had fans. Some were getting on, and they would’ve clapped a concrete mixer if it played the old tunes. The young ones thought that Buddy was just the most amazing thing you could see on a Saturday night. And when we did the chorus¾the Yippee Ky Yay bit?¾ the whole pub’d join in, jumping up and down and fist-pumping the air.
I’d thump out some dreadful hammed-up solo and Buddy would gallop round the stage, firing away¾at me, at the customers, at the bar ladies.
Then it would conk out. The pistol would conk out. Buddy’d get annoyed. He’d crouch over it, fiddling away.
He’d get two more shots away¾yay! Then pistol would conk out again and Buddy’d lose his temper. He’d throw the gun down, curse, and boot the bloody thing off the stage. When he sang, he’d still be puffing.
We did Ghost Riders in the Sky every Saturday night for ten weeks, and every night the gun would conk out, and every night Buddy would lose his temper and every night the audience loved him for it ’cause they thought it was all part of the act.
The gig began to fizzle. It was coming into winter and the crowds were dwindling, and the publican, Denny Aspell, wanted us to wear a uniform and couldn’t understand why nobody wanted one, except Buddy. Denny couldn’t understand why he had to pay for a bass player, either. “What’s the bass drum for? Boom-boom-boom! Let ‘em hear it.”
On our last night, Buddy recorded us on an old reel-to-reel. He’d got a workmate to record a special introduction, like we were a string quartet or something. “Welcome to a performance by the Buddy Wilson Quartet, recorded live at the Paekakariki Hotel, featuring ….. ” The old bugger probably hawked it round the record companies.
After that, Buddy kept ringing me, once, twice, every week. Would I go around the pubs with him, try for another job? Could we rehearse? Would I come to his bedsitter and hear the tape? I kept fobbing him off. The last time, he rang after midnight and my wife at the time went butchers.
Buddy died a few months after that. His landlady had found him.
You know, for twenty or so years since then, his name never came up. I never came across musicians who’d played with him. Then, a few years later, I was playing with Jack Steele, a trad jazz clarinet player who was well into his 70s. Buddy’s name came up and Jack told me that he had asked three of his muso friends to the burial with their instruments. No-one else turned up, but they played A Closer Walk with Thee as Buddy was lowered into his grave, and The Whole World in His Hands as they left. Then they had a few beers.
That was cool, eh? Jack and his mates did their best to give Buddy Wilson a real old-time New Orleans funeral, right there in the Taita cemetery.
Hotel photo credits Andrew Ross. https://paekakariki.nz/the-last-years-of-the-paekakariki-pub/
