Jasper Clarke RIP. April 11th 1961-March 22 2010

Not New Orleans related, but important nonetheless. Here's a cut and paste of the obit I put up on Vancouverjazz.com for bassist Jasper Clarke, one of my closest friends and musical collaborators. April 11th 1961-March 22 2010Yesterday afternoon, peacefully and surrounded by his family, bassist Jasper Clarke lost his two year battle with brain cancer at his home in Squamish. He was only 48. Jasper hadn't been on the Vancouver scene much the past ten years since he moved up to Whistler with his family in 2000, but he was a very active player in the 90s. We met when we were both students at VCC in 1991, when Jasper approached me about forming a quartet to play some recitals at the college. That first group included drummer Ian Brown (who went on to fame and considerably more fortune with the Mattew Goode Band) and faculty member Alan Matheson on piano. We recorded some demos with my then-girlfriend Linda Nessel on piano and the late Al Wiertz on drums (now that Jasper's gone, half that band is dead) and then Jasper scored us a tuesday night gig at Murphy's Pub downtown, where we held forth for almost five years. I basically owe Jasper my introduction to the Vancouver scene, since almost every player I subsequently worked with in town I met and played with first at Murphy's, including bassists Danny Parker, Al Johnston, Chris Tarry and Darren Radke, drummers Stan Taylor, Al Wiertz, Claude Ranger, Paul Townsend, Bruce Neilsen, and George Ursan, trumpeters Brad Turner, Jeff Mahoney, Bill Clark, Alan Matheson and Norm Quinn, guitarists Budge Schacte, Jon Roper and Ronnie Thompson, and saxophonists Max Murphy, Mike Allen, and the late Al Clooten. All of these players could be found at Murphy's over the course of that run, and you could hear them for the price of a glass of draft. I recorded all kinds of demos with Jasper and worked all kinds of gigs. Sometimes we played as a duo (we did this for a couple of months every wednesday at the old Blue Note at Broadway and Cambie and sometimes just for laughs on the street at Granville Island). When Jeff Mahoney had his quartet at the Note with Clint Sargent on guitar and Sarah Maclaughlin's drummer Ash Sood, Jasper was his first and only choice on bass. Jasper was on my quintet for my first ever gig at the Vancouver jazzfest, in 1997. It was at his suggestion that we played Mingus's multi-key multi meter opus "Sue's Changes," and it was Jasper who powered us through every one of those difficult metric modulations on bass, just as Mingus had done. Jasper was a Mingus freak, and made a serious study of his music from both a compositional and a playing perspective. He played the same super-heavy gauge strings Mingus did (I've seen other players try to play Jasper's bass at jam sessions and have to give up mid tune) and loved to move meters back and forth between 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures, as did Mingus. I've been a great advocate of this sort of thing ever since. His wife Michiko tells me he played a gig as recently as last february, so, you know...he went down swingin, as we all would like to. I spoke to him on the phone about a week ago and he recognized my voice, but could only get out about six words. I took the opportunity to tell him how much his friendship and support meant to me, and I told him I loved him. It's important to do these things while people are still around to hear it.Next to my wife, Jasper was the best friend I had in this world. I miss him already and wish I'd kept in touch more than I did.