Montreal's first star nightclub DJ Alfie Wade, on clubs, Leonard Cohen and Little Burgundy

   Alfie Wade was born and raised in Little Burgundy, lived at Weredale House from 11 to 18 and later brought disco, as we know it, to Montreal.
   Wade returned from New York and transformed nightclubs by replacing tinny shelf speakers with massive booming sound systems we now know and love.
   Wade left Montreal in the early 1970s for New York. For the last 30-or-so years Wade has been living with his wife in Sete on the French Riviera.
   Wade is aiming to visit Montreal for the 375th anniversary next year. We would somehow like to organize a sponsored invitation.
   We recently spoke about a variety of things he did in Montreal.
Leonard Cohen  We were all at Westmount High School together. There was Leonard, Robert Hershorn, Morton Rosengarten, Jimmy Richstone of Richstone Bakery. I split Montreal  in 1959 for New York City and returned in 1965. I hooked up (Crescent Street bar owner) Johnny Vago's Don Juan discotheque. All the Jewish guys from high school were customers. Leonard, Morton and I would get together on the eve of Sabbath at Robert's house in both in the city and sometimes in the family's place up in the Laurentians. We were working our way, trying to consolidate our inner spiritual base.
   Leonard decided that he was going to make his singing career and he would come to Robert's pad on Cedar (Elliot Trudeau was down the block). Leonard came with his guitar and and proposed what he wanted to do. My late friend (and godfather of my son) Alfred Vincent Brown got Mary to hook him up with  Columbia Records.
   I had just come back from New York and had been working for five years in a recording studio with the best people on the planet, (Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Jeff Barry, Bobby Darrin, Paul Anka etc). I learned the industry inside out.
   I said you need a little bit of that and this. We pitched Leonard ideas. Finally he got to Columbia. I used to run into him in New York. I lived on West 84th St. from 1960-65 and his sister had a pad on Central Park west.
   We were all seeking, talking about the Conference of the Birds and Gurdjieff and were deeply into the whole spiritual thing. I was not in any way surprised that Leonard wound up in California in the Zen ashram because this is what we were all looking at even before Robert's passing. It was like all the Jewish cats all of us sort of turned full circle. Robert  rediscovered his place in Judaism and Leonard too. There was a lot of that polarity going forth.
Rockhead's Rufus Rockhead was from the Barbados. They were the black Jews. They knew about business. Old Rufus, man he was a superb gentleman. He ran that place with an iron fist in a velvet glove. All the women loved him because he gave them a rose when they came in. He was a super gracious guy but he was a hard-nosed businessman. He had the tavern below and the cabaret upstairs. They flourished for years with second line entertainers, not third line, Guys like Red Foxx and Nipsy Russell and Flip Wilson. I knew Nipsy Russel in Montreal when I was aged 14. Also tap dancer Ralph Brown, Johnny Gardiner. Leo's Kids (local black kids). We would also meet the entertainers' kids. We were instantly locked into the show business situation. That's all we wanted to be.
Chez Paree Sammy Davis and the Mastin Trio played Chez Paree. Our apartment was above the floor. We'd listen to Tony Bennett and all those guys. My friend Jacko was a waiter at Chez Paree and we'd meet a lot of the entertainers. We were looking for the potheads. It wasn't coming to Montreal that swiftly. We'd talk to the tap dancers and all that. I saw Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in the Esquire Show Bar when Norm Silver ran the place as well as King Curtis, Eddie Long, John Davis and other RnB pepole. It was fantastic.

See also: State of Montreal discos 1970

La Licorne The Licorne (on Mackay, west side, north of St. Catherine) was made by the Lallouz family and a French family from France. They formed a coalition. They then got (artist) Mousseau and opened like four or five places all in one shot. When I started to work for Johnny Vago I visited those places. They used bookshelf speakers, You couldn't catch the beat or get the feeling to dance. It was almost like you were in a bar just for conversation. So when I went to work for Johnny Vago I changed the entire system. David Greenblatt was the guy who installed the system. I brought super shit in there and everybody was saying "oh man the fucking shit is too loud." They got used to it. I brought my girlfriend Angela in there and revolutionized the entire musical presentation. I introduced Sly and the Family Stone and I got all the people rocking.
Le Drug I split and went to Le Drug and (owner) Bill Sofin took excellent care of me. He put in in an apartment in the back of the place and I had the time of my life. I went to work for him. He cleared up all my debts. Put me on my feet. Zubin Mehta came to the place where he'd have the meetings of the boards of directors of the MSO and the'd all come party. A whole gorgeous crew, the Lalouz family, they were like royalty and I had a spot in Le Drug downstairs. It was like a closed seating area. The dancefloor and so forth. I did good for Sofin. Sofin had multiple pharmacies going all at once. His wife Beverly had the bread. Those guys took good care of me.

Guy Street I moved over to Yvon Robert's place opposite the old Her Majesty's Theatre. It was Yvon Robert's son (upstairs from the Royal Tavern) Lee Gagnon used to play jazz saxophone and I'd do the disco stuff. Finally that consortium of French guys got onto me because they saw every time I moved the fuckin music, the people followed me, so I went to work for them at the Metrotheque. 

Metrotheque at Berri metro They had this incredible,

huge space with go-go dancer cages. One night they brought Liberace. My booth was right at the door when you come in. So I had a wonderful chat with him. He was a gracious guy and was totally fascinated by the shit I was doing.   That same evening the cops came in and busted the joint looking for underaged kids.  I put up all the lights and the cops went around and checked everybody's ID and Liberace was standing beside me watching all this and when it was all done I knocked off the lights and the record I played was Stop in the Name of the Love by the Isley Brothers. The place exploded. That was a great move.

Trudeau and Marleau

Vieux Rafiot The next place was Le Vieux Rafiot. It involved the late Jean Gaugin, art teacher at Sir George Williams. It was just at the point where the murmurings of the regeneration of old Montreal was about to take place and so he'd come whenever he'd see me on Crescent. We were all hanging out. The guy badgered me. He said Old Montreal is the next step. He said I even have my own studio loft down there. It was like people moving to Soho from Mid-Manhattan. I said ok. I went down and met the brothers. Guy and Robert Arnaud and cousin Claude and we struck a deal. I said ok I'll come and work there. I had already trained DJs. My friend Ralph Williams was the DJ and we had two other kids, young guys he ran with. I trained these guys how to program the music and I told people that I'm opening a place in Old Montreal. They said "who goes there?" I said, "the parking is free, the lot closes at 5 pm when all the businesses were done. there's 75 free spots." Everybody came down and it was all systems go from that point on. I had all white fabric suit,  an Admiral Alfie kind of thing. I got publicity your pop (Colin Gravenor) was still around I think he helped pointing me in the right direction. I ran it like a private club and it just took off. We opened in late spring of 1967 around the time Expo 67 kicked off. Even PE Trudeau would come and I'd hide him in the back. He was chasing French actress Louise Marleau before he got married. I'd put them in the back of the club discreetly. Everybody liked me I was discreet and cool about the personalities that came through there. I worked up until about 1970.
Oliver's Robert Herschorn asked me a favour he said Sydney Rosenstein is taking over Olivers. (Rosenstein  used to work for Johnny Vago at Winston Churchill - he lives in Israel now) My friend Herschorn said, "Alfie why not come work for Sydney you can make it run."
I was a bit disenchanted. I didn't want to take part in that business. The business manuals and books I had been reading said be careful when you get into a family business because you'll never get a real count. But I did things to see if I could take stuff to a manifest state, to see if I could materialize these things through my energy and ingenuity. Chuck Childers and his girlfriend Pinnie had escaped from New York City. They both worked at the Playboy Club. They brought the Playboy Club training manual. I used it to hire the girls. They all had to be at least 5'7"or 5'8" tall.  Penny trained them with the Playboy system and I had this young guy George at the service bar and Chuck would handle the main bar We did $2,000 a week. It was tiny. and we only operated from Happy Hour, more principally from 9 pm to 2 am. Unless you were  a cabaret you couldn't stay open until 4. If you were a bar you had to close at 2.

• The final step A bunch of stock broker guys were clocking a lot of coin. They said you should have your own place, your own spot. So I had been pretty close to the McConnells. David was a good friend. They had that little place down there on St. Paul Street. We were figuring how to turn this place around. The financial crisis hit and the investors ran. Many split to Toronto. The money they were going to send to back me up in 1971 fell apart. I took a sabbatical in St. Lucia for a year. Then in 1972 moved to New York where I stayed until I came here (to France.)

Childhood The blacks mostly worked for the CP. The CN was more industrial, freight cars. I had to walk over the Mountain Street bridge to go to Notre Dame to Canning to the school. I had to walk through the French district. I had to fight my way through those French Canadian kids. They were really prejudiced back then  "hey mon negre."  They were ok when they were in gangs but if I caught one of them by themselves, I couldn't even slap the shit out of him because they'd be cowering like you wouldn't believe. So I had to say "ah shit." 

 Parents My mom used to work in the nightclubs selling cigarettes and flowers. She was friends with Billie Holiday when she came. My father and Mervin  Nash's father were activists even in the time of Diefenbaker. They broke color barriers from the standpoint of labor they had a Philip Randolph the prominent labour leader from the states. They brought him to Montreal during the time of Martin Luther King.

The neighbourhood We used to live on Bonaveture, a short street between Aqueduct and Mountain, you had St. Antoine and Torrance and then Bonaventure, a very short street. There were French and Italians. There was a little grocery at corner of Bonaventure and Mountain. They'd play bocce behind. There were fruit warehouses on both sides of our dwelling and below where we lived was the Father Divine mission. It was always set up like they were going to sit down and eat. So when I was 7 year sold  they'd shoo me away. When they were loading the bananas I'd stand by. There was a vacant lot in front. A fair would come there form time to time and the Italian and catholic parades would take place going over the Mountain Street bridge. They'd have the Ferris Wheel and Merry-go-round and  games. When they'd deliver the bananas I used to stand there and catch the green bananas. My folks wold cook them up with codfish. There used to be a super neat Italian grocery store on St. James between Aqueduct (now Lucien Lallier) and Versailles the Di Ioros. They were really wonderful, friendly people. You could have credit. Later when I was running Olivers, a guy called The Syrian, he was a pain in the ass. He'd come and smoke pot in out bathroom. We said you can't do that. I didn't want the RCMP coming and closing us down. So I went to Angelo Disensi, who grew up with me, and he talked to the Syrian and he stopped giving trouble.