A hidden treasure of 1960s Vancouver recordings resurfaces
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 17:06:18 +0000
You’ve probably never heard of Kurtis Vanel. But in the 1960s, he was one of Vancouver’s top recording engineers.
Vanel co-owned R&D Studio, where the Poppy Family recorded Vancouver’s first million selling record, Which Way You Goin’, Billy?
He also owned a label called Baroka, which released three singles by the psychedelic favourites Mock Duck. You may have never heard of them, either, but test pressings for an unreleased Mock Duck album have sold for $1,000.
Vanel was a bit of a hoarder, and never seems to have thrown any of his old tapes out. When he died on May 6, 2017, the public guardian and trustee packed up about 250 boxes of reel-to-reel tapes, with about 50 tapes to each box.
The trustee got involved because Vanel died without a will. It has spent almost three years dealing with his estate, selling his house and duplex in Burnaby and locating relatives to divvy up the proceeds.
Sounds simple, but it wasn’t, because there were many layers to Kurtis Vanel.
To begin with, he was born Douglas Gyseman — he changed his name to Kurtis Vanel for numerological reasons.
After his recording studio, Vanel/Gyseman landed a job at Simon Fraser University in the audiovisual department. The SFU archives have some marvellous photos of a very hairy Vanel reclining in a barber chair amid a pile of recording equipment, tapes and books.
“He was a real eclectic guy,” said his friend Jamie Anstey. “We talked on the phone for hours and hours because he was so knowledgeable about music.”
Kurtis Vanel, circa 1967. Vanel was then going by Douglas Gyseman.
Vanel lived alone and died on his 81st birthday, probably from a heart attack. He left behind a house that was literally jammed with stuff.
“When you went to his house, you opened the front door and there was newspapers stacked up to the ceiling,” said Anstey.
“I said ‘What are all these newspapers here for?’ I thought I might get rid of them for him. And he said ‘No no, I need to read them all. I don’t rid of them till I read them cover to cover.’
“He was a news junkie, he would record the news on video, VHS, when he couldn’t watch it.”
When Vanel didn’t return phone calls, Anstey went to his house and banged on the door, to no response.
“I went back a second time three or four weeks later, and there was a big dumpster in the driveway full of garbage,” he said.
A homeless man claims he salvaged some boxes of books and magazines from the dumpster. He took them to Don Stewart of McLeod’s Books, who discovered they contained a cache of Far East magazines from the 1870s, which are rare and valuable.
Stewart purchased them for a significant amount of money and I did a story on the find for the Sun. The story was spotted by Vanel’s cousin, Alan Stewart, who told the public trustee the magazines probably belonged to Vanel.
The public trustee went to McLeod’s Books and confiscated the magazines, saying they’d been stolen in a break-in at Vanel’s house. But the homeless man, whom I’ve never met, left a message on my phone vehemently denying he’d broken into the house — he said the magazines were in the garbage.
Anstey’s business card was discovered in Vanel’s effects, and when the public trustee contacted him, he offered to purchase Vanel’s tapes, which are a big piece of Vancouver’s musical history. This may have stopped them from being tossed into the garbage, as well.
But it took him a couple of years to do a deal, which he was only able to pull off with the help of Alan Stewart.
Anstey wasn’t able to purchase the tapes directly from the trustee — they’re part of Vanel’s estate, so they had to be appraised and offered to his heirs. So Anstey gave Stewart the money to buy them, and Stewart passed them on.
Stewart also facilitated the purchase of Vanel’s old eight-track recording console for local radio legend Larry Hennessey, who wanted it for his studio. It has historic value, because it recorded Which Way You Goin’, Billy?
Anstey is over the moon about the tapes, which are a motherlode of obscure acts from the 1960s. They were stacked up at Anstey’s recording studio during a recent visit — he’s going through each one, trying to figure out what’s there.
“This is very cool,” he said, picking up a box with a reel-to-reel.
“The Viscounts are a very early Vancouver band, 1960, 61, 62. These are masters, (recorded on) Sept. 22, 1961. There are some original (songs) and some covers, and nobody knew it existed before yesterday.
“It’s awesome because it’s undiscovered Vancouver history. It’s been stored away for 60 years.”
Jamie Anstey with some of the tapes recorded by Kurtis Vanel in the 1960s and 70s.
Most of the tapes were probably never released, like a March, 1965 session with American folksinger Billy Roberts. Roberts wrote the Jimi Hendrix classic Hey Joe, and the tape includes a version Roberts doing Hey Joe on an acoustic guitar.
Another box contains a live tape of actor Bruno Gerussi at a club called The Inn on Dec. 24, 1964. The writing on the box indicates the future Beachcomber tells jokes and recites a pair of Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems.
“Did I just blow your mind?” laughs Anstey.
So far, Anstey has found tapes by Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck, Three’s a Crowd, The Eternal Triangle, Gillian Russell, Tom Northcott, Mike Campbell, Syrinx, Mock Duck, the Chessmen, the Undiscovered Country, Kris Robinson, the Collectors, Howie Vickers, Morningstar, The Versatiles, Les Vote and the Emperors, Jim Fleet and the Blueboys, Gary Murphy, Stan Triggs, Carol Purdy, Tiny Tim and Terry Black.
But he’s only scratched the surface. Vanel told him he had unreleased tapes of 60s favourites the Painted Ship, whose lost album is the Holy Grail for local record collectors. Did Vanel have a copy? Anstey plans to search through every box to find out.
“It’s quite a mix of stuff and it’s going to take me quite awhile to go through it all,” said Anstey.
“There’s speeches, a lot of records that were copied on tape. I would say about 20 per cent of all those tapes would be of some historic interest and value.”
One tape lists Hans Fenger, the hippie music teacher behind the Langley Schools Music Project. The acclaimed 1976 recording featured a chorus of high school kids trilling charming versions of songs like David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Klaatu’s Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, and has sold 100,000 copies since it was rediscovered and re-released in 2001.
A live tape of Hans Fenger was among the tapes Jamie Anstey found in Kurtis Vanel’s collection.
But this Fenger tape seems to be a live recording from 1968, and features the future teacher doing covers like Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, Donovan’s Sunny Goodge Street and Country Joe and the Fish’s Fixin’ To Die Rag.
Fenger has no recollection of it, or Vanel.
“What was his name?” Fenger said with a laugh. “You know what they say about remembering the ’60s. … Did I go to SFU? Really?”
Still he plans to contact Anstey and have a listen. Which is really what saving Kurtis Vanel’s collection was all about.
“There’s really nothing in it for me to gain financially,” said the 42-year-old Anstey, who is obsessed with 1960s music. “This (studio) costs me rent to have all this and store tapes and stuff. I’m paying for it out of my own pocket, to store Canada’s music history.”
The Far East magazines that were confiscated from McLeod’s Books remain in limbo. Alan Stewart thought he had a deal to buy them for $3,000, but the trustee raised the price to $4,600, insisting that Stewart buy all the books the trustee had set aside, not just the Far East magazines.
Then an appraiser suggested the trustee restore the magazines to make them more valuable.
“They got this guy who said if you spend $6,000 for restoration it would maybe net you $16,000,” said Alan Stewart. “So these things are now appraised at $16,000.”
He passed, so the books may wind up at auction.
jmackie@postmedia.com
Kurtis Vanel in his later years.
A Mock Dock single on Kurtis Vanel’s Baroka label.
Some of the tapes recorded by Kurtis Vanel in the 1960s and 70s that were recently purchased by Jamie Anstey.
A live tape of Bruno Gerussi was among the tapes Jamie Anstey found in Kurtis Vanel’s collection.
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