You can be sure that at one point in his concert Saturday night on the square in front of city hall, Peter Appleyard will play a song called Django.
“I think it’s the most beautiful ballad in jazz and I told John Lewis that the last time I saw him,” says Appleyard from his home in the country to the west of here.
Lewis, of course, was the pianist and leader of the inestimable Modern Jazz Quartet, the tasty outfit that took the high road in jazz for so many memorable years in the '50s and '60s with Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Percy Heath on bass and Kenny Clarke (later replaced by Connie Kay) on drums.
Appleyard doesn’t play much of the MJQ catalogue because, “I don’t think anybody did it better. I just don’t think I should be doing that.”
If someone asks for The Golden Striker or Bag’s Groove, two Jackson showcases that helped establish the vibraphone as a force in jazz, Appleyard will play them but he doesn’t go out of his way to do so.
The native of Britain plays so often in Mississauga, sits on the board of Orchestra Mississauga and attends so many concerts here as an audience member, that he feels like one of us. He’s never actually lived here but he’s part of our musical framework.
He plays Django, Lewis’ tribute to the great gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt for more than one reason.
When he was a regular at the Park Plaza with Cal Jackson’s band in the '70s, Appleyard used to play the tune often.
Another huge fan of the piece was a regular named Tibo Kapsi. He would sometimes walk into the club while the band was performing Django and yell out “Bartender: four Cognacs.” That may have accounted for some of the band’s fondness for the piece.
Appleyard now plays the piece in honour of Kapsi, who was murdered in a horrible incident a couple of decades ago on the farm in Woodbridge where he raised Black Angus cattle.
Some youngsters were using a car to chase his cows when Kapsi asked them to leave. When they returned, he went out again to confront them. One of the young men had carved a willow branch into a sharp point and threw it at Kapsi, striking him in the chest and taking his life.
“I didn’t play the song for years after that,” said Appleyard, “but now I play it for my dear friend.”
Every once in a while, after he tells the Django story in a nightclub or bar, someone in the audience will have four Cognacs delivered to the bandstand.