Tommy Banks

by Jason Anderson

Whether he’s conducting symphony orchestras, leading his big band or tickling the ivories on his own, Tommy Banks’s eagerness to entertain and his abiding love of jazz have always been plain to hear. He demonstrated his panache as both bandleader and player on albums like the energetic 1978 live set, At the Montreux Festival, and equally spirited recordings with his friends Clarence “Big” Miller and P.J. Perry. And for all this proud Albertan’s other accomplishments as a TV show host through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, an advocate for the arts and the hippest senator to ever serve on Parliament Hill, music has remained his greatest passion.

IN DEPTH

"I was in awe.” That’s how Tommy Banks once described the reaction to seeing and hearing the Duke Ellington Orchestra live at the Edmonton Gardens as a teenager in the early 1950s. Having grown up with parents who were both big jazz lovers—his grandfather was a vaudeville veteran, too—Banks couldn’t help but be enraptured by the talent of the players or the genius at the helm. As he did for so many impressionable fans and musicians, Ellington remained a role model throughout Banks’s almost seven-decade-long career as a pianist, bandleader, conductor, TV personality and politician.

An advocate for the arts and the hippest senator to ever serve on Parliament Hill, music has remained Banks’s greatest passion.

As the leader of Tommy Banks and the Banknotes, the performer launched his professional career playing Las Vegas and other jazz hotspots through the late 1950s and ’60s. But after learning just how difficult the life of a touring musician could be, Banks concentrated his energy on the local music scene. That energy seemed boundless: His endeavours in Alberta included countless live radio performances on CKUA, co-ordinating (and often guest-conducting) the pops program for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and hosting The Tommy Banks Show, a TV variety and interview show that lasted from 1968 to 1983. He led a jazz quintet at Expo ’67, oversaw music programs at major institutions and served as musical director for the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary. (The latter was also an occasion to collaborate with a musician and songwriter who’d played in Banks’s band from 1963 to 1978: David Foster.)

In 1983, Banks also entered the history books by leading the first foreign jazz group to tour mainland China since the 1949 revolution. Meanwhile, he arranged, produced and recorded everything from commercial jingles to music for rock and country artists at his Century II Studios. Given his additional work as a community builder and advocate for the arts, and his inductions into the Order of Canada and the Alberta Order of Excellence, it wasn’t so surprising when the jazzman finally made his way to Parliament Hill to serve in the Senate from 2000 to 2011.

If you want to hear a true reflection of Banks’s mind, body and soul, you’re best off with the many recordings of his big band and those featuring vocalist Clarence “Big” Miller; those players are showcased in smoking form on the 1978 album At the Montreux Festival. Banks’s own playing is just as lively on 1995’s Yes Indeed: Solo Piano, a set that showcases his congenial brand of showmanship on renderings of songs recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and, yes, Duke Ellington.