‘A GREAT MUSICIAN’
Foster likens Banks to Oscar Peterson
David Foster, renowned Hollywood producer and 16-time Grammy award winner, is grieving.
He said he has lost his most important mentor, Edmonton musician and former senator Tommy Banks.
Banks, 81, who served in the Senate for 11 years, died Thursday in the palliative unit of the Grey Nuns hospital. In a statement, his family said a public service of celebration will be held at a later date.
“The world has lost a great musician,” Foster said by phone from Los Angeles. “I know he was Edmonton’s favourite son, but I hope people realize he truly was world class. In my mind, you can say Oscar Peterson and Tommy Banks in the same sentence.”
Foster met Banks in the late 1960s when he was 18 and Banks was already a big name in the Canadian music industry. Foster had heard Banks was leaving his band at Edmonton’s Embers club, and there was an opening for a keyboard player. He came to Edmonton to audition.
“He was the draw. I tracked him down like a mule, like a detective,” said Foster. “When you grew up in Victoria, it was quite isolated, but he was already a giant when I was 18.”
Foster got the job, and Banks made it his business to pass on what he could about the music business.
“To say he took me under his wing was an absolute understatement. I admired him so much.”
Banks created a Gemini Awardwinning television series out of Edmonton featuring performances by the ultra-famous, including Tom Jones and Tina Turner, decades before the city was known as a cultural hub.
In fact, many people credit Banks for being a founder of the city’s arts scene.
At 18, he was co-ordinator for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Much later, Banks chaired a foundation that raised funds for the Winspear Centre. In gratitude, the city named a street after him. He was also an officer of the Order of Canada.
Within the last six months or so, Banks was in Los Angeles twice, and Foster spent time with him.
“It was one of those great things that I could say all the things I wanted to say. I didn’t know he was sick.”
Banks was committed to his community and his country, Foster said.
“Sometimes as musicians, we tend to think about our music and not much else. But he was so highly evolved, with politics, and the way and shape of the world. And how he could make it a better place.
“I revered him and he didn’t disappoint. He taught me so much about life, and not just music.”