A TURBULENT GENIUS
The legendary career and mysterious fate of drummer Claude Ranger
Claude Ranger: Canadian Jazz Legend Mark Miller Tellwell Talent
If music journalists overuse any word to the point of triteness, it’s “legend.” From now on, that label should be reserved only for musicians who measure up to its meaning, such as Claude Ranger.
It doesn’t get more legendary than the life that veteran Canadian jazz journalist Mark Miller documents in his new biography of Ranger, appropriately titled Canadian Jazz Legend.
During his four decades or so of playing that concluded in the late 1990s, the drummer set the bar high for swinging and creativity in Canadian jazz. Ranger first tore it up in his hometown, Montreal, before he moved to Toronto in 1972 and then to Vancouver in 1987. In every city and every era, he jolted a musical community with his brilliance and nonconformist behaviour.
Throughout his career, Ranger was admired for the drive and ferocity of his playing — in particular, his propulsive ride-cymbal work — and for his commitment to creative music-making, even if financial struggles and poverty ensued. As Miller recounts, when the drummer’s colleague, Toronto multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson, described Ranger as “probably the greatest drummer in Canada,”
U.S. saxophonist Dewey Redman chimed in, “Make that the world.”
But Ranger was also an indelible presence and the stuff of countless stories because of many a colourful spat or fit of piqué. In March 1980, Ranger notoriously — although perhaps apocryphally — quit Moe Koffman’s band, some say midway during a high-profile gig in Australia. More often, Ranger bristled so at making music he found substandard, he would play half-heartedly on purpose, as if to supply the music with no more than what he thought it deserved.
Still, there was no shortage of musicians who wanted to play with Ranger, and as a bandleader he was a mentor to many young bassists and horn players, showing them what it meant to lead an artist’s life.
Then there were Ranger’s signature addictions. They included beer, plus over-the-counter painkillers that he popped to relieve the ache of a boyhood injury to his arm. Most visibly, Ranger chainsmoked — to the point of being able to play one-handed drum solos while his other hand lit up.
Ultimately, Ranger belongs in the annals of legendary because his story concludes with his disappearance. In late 2000, Ranger, then 59, retired from drumming and while living in public housing in a small Fraser Valley, B.C., community, simply vanished. The RCMP investigation remains open.
While Miller has not solved the mystery of what happened to Ranger — the book’s conclusion, while open-ended, is poetically understated — the biography is marvellously researched and persuasively told.
Miller interviewed Ranger three times during the drummer’s time in Toronto, and has supplemented that work with many more conversations with the drummer’s peers through the years. The book also benefits from deep dives into the reporting on Ranger in mainstream sources and jazz periodicals alike.
The result is a richly detailed read; it’s doubtful if Ranger could have kept a better diary himself. Miller is able to zero in, putting readers on the bandstand with Ranger in all his beautiful, unpredictable fury, and pull back, situating his place in the fabric of Canadian jazz during some of the music’s pivotal moments.
The author of 10 previous books that for the most part focus on jazz, Miller is both sympathetic yet rigorous in drawing Ranger’s portrait. Even if Ranger did not emerge as he does as a crucial figure in Canadian jazz history, Miller would still hold readers rapt with his vivid depictions of the jazz scenes of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Exceptionally lucid and populated with candid characters who are still active and making great music, this biography is required reading for Canadian jazz buffs and students.
The 280-page book includes a dozen-page discography that will help old and new fans of Ranger locate the tracks that preserve his work, and Miller in his narrative adds enough critical commentary to allow a reader to tease out the must-hears. The biography’s index is a welcome boon.
But beyond its obvious appeal to jazz lovers and practitioners, Miller’s book could find favour more broadly — with any reader interested in the tale of an immensely gifted, but tragically flawed, artist who remains sorely missed.