In between worlds

I seem to remember the boat trip to Canada. No luxury cruiser this. There was no ballroom or shuffleboard or dining with the captain. We did however have our own individual buckets to throw up in and a tin container to collect our food in from the kitchen which was in the bowels of the ship. Mom was sea sick the entire time which was a few weeks so my father would take me for walks around the deck. He would without any complaints make the many dizzy trips to the canteen which was my only entertainment. Our home in Canada was on DeBoulion St. the ghetto which witnessed the development of many artists such as Modechai Richler and Leonard Cohen. There was not much food on the dining room table but there was a phonograph from which classical music and fairy tales echoed off heavy vinyl albums. We would huddle around it. In our living room, I loved to fall asleep on the s cratchy couch listening to my father practice on his violin. I remember him walking all over town to auditions. Bus fare was a luxury. As a child I was fascinated by the talk of the musician's guild, the place where I imagined my daddy went with his violin, lined up in front of table that was lit with candles and awaited to be assigned work. There always was music, musicians and the smell of oil paint in our house.

One of the first jobs my father landed was playing with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra. He was chosen out of a huge group of applicants for the job but impressed the conductor so much, that he was even given a signing bonus to make sure he would accept. This gig only lasted about a year. So shortly after being liberated from the concentration camps, my father hated to be told when to show up for practice, when he could eat and when to wake up. Even more importantly, his wife and kids were still living in Montreal, the travel back and forth was difficult, and he missed seeing us as often as he would like.

The climate for popular music in the 1950’s was ripe for someone with a pioneering spirit. The pop music recording industry was entering a boom in the United States and Quebec was yearning for its own home-grown recordings. The availability and popularity of vinyl 45’s and 33’s was growing and more and more people were listening to the radio because of that amazing new technology – transistor radios.

However, disc jockeys and 400 watt stereo systems still had not been evolved, and there was still a large demand for live music, and one thing that my father was great at, was performing on stage.

Upon his return to Quebec, although there were occasional opportunities to play in a symphony orchestra, the field of popular music and stage acts was ripe. Adam Gutman developed a show business angle and started touring many of the clubs and stages both in Montreal and throughout Quebec. Trois Rivieres, Val David, St. Donat and many other villages got to see our father do his unique stylings of pop music and gypsy fare combined He became reborn as George Adams and his reputation began to grow. When we were lucky, we got a chance to travel with him too.