Lovena B. Fox

Lovena Fox was born and raised in Vancouver, and music ran in the family. Her father had a jazz club on Hastings Street called the Harlem Nocturne. Through the late 1950s and into the 1960s the Nocturne, at 343 East Hastings, was the city’s only Black-owned nightclub, a cabaret near Hogan’s Alley in the old Strathcona neighbourhood where much of Vancouver’s Black community had its roots. It never got a liquor licence, so it ran as a bottle club where patrons brought their own, and the vice squad kept a close eye on it. The music and the floor shows kept the doors open every night.

Fox came up on Vancouver stages. She was in the cast of the Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’ in Vancouver, and in July 1987 she was back at the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage for Black & Gold Revue, a follow-up billed as the return of the Ain’t Misbehavin’ stars. Dean Regan conceived and directed it, Doug Louie led the band from the piano, and Fox shared top billing with Lovie Eli, Marcus Mosely, Denis Simpson and Sibel Thrasher. She also went to Los Angeles to compete on Star Search, and through the late 1980s she was a working session and backing singer, putting her voice behind Bon Jovi, the Payola$ and Colin James.

In 1991 Richie Mayer and producer David Bendeth at BMG Canada put her together with Toronto singer Saskia Garel. Garel had been born in Kingston, Jamaica, trained in jazz and classical voice at the Royal Conservatory and York University, and won the Oscar Peterson Award. Fox, the theatre-trained belter, became the lead singer, and Garel handled the raps. As Love & Sas they released Call My Name on BMG/RCA in 1991, a bright mix of R&B, funk, swing and hip hop. ‘I Don’t Need Yo’ Kiss’ came first, with Garel delivering one of the earliest rap verses by a Canadian woman on a major label record. ‘Don’t Stop Now’, written by Larry Sturm, followed in 1992 and climbed to number 15 on CKLG in Vancouver that August. ‘Call My Name’ and ‘Once In A Lifetime’ kept the album on the radio. Call My Name won the Juno Award for Best R&B/Soul Recording in 1992, and the duo took the same award again in 1993 for ‘Once In A Lifetime’. They toured Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom before going their separate ways in the summer of 1993. Garel moved into theatre and television, starting as Mimi in the Canadian production of Rent.

One of Fox’s songs had already started a life of its own. A melody and lyric came to her in a dream, and she woke and sang it straight into the tape recorder she kept beside the bed. She took it to Vancouver producer and keyboardist Dave Pickell, and they cut it in the studio as ‘Why’d U Have 2 Make Me Luv U’. Pickell was also working with Lara Fabian at the time, and when Fabian heard Fox’s recording she wanted it for her own album. She wrote a French lyric, ‘Dites-moi pourquoi je l’aime’, and it went onto Carpe Diem in 1994, the record that broke Fabian in Quebec and went double platinum in Canada. Polydor carried it to Europe in 1998, and Fabian sang it again on her chart-topping Live album in 1999.

Her own solo album, Now’s The Time, came out on Rece Records and DeTash Music in 1997 (RR 2131), with help from FACTOR. Darrin Bowler and Toné Z produced it at their TazzDab Production House, played and programmed the instrumental tracks, and the result is pure late 1990s R&B, built on samples from James Brown’s ‘The Payback’, Parliament’s ‘Chocolate City’, The Gap Band, Heavy D and Eric B. & Rakim. Fox co-wrote all eleven songs and wrote the closing title track alone, setting it against the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. Her publishing company, Anevol, is her first name spelled backwards. Carlos Morgan, who won the R&B/Soul Juno that same year, sang backgrounds on ‘Lay Back And Unwind’ and ‘I Like It’ and co-wrote the latter. Wade O. Brown, Michelle Brown and Christine Hamilton filled out the vocal stacks, Sugar Bear rapped on ‘Freak Me Rite’ and Junior on ‘Gotta Do Me Right’, and Vic Florencia mixed. The Pickell recording of ‘Why’d U Have 2 Make Me Luv U’ sits at track eight, with Don Baird on piano and Mischke and Rique Franks on backing vocals.

The biggest role of her life was already under way. Fox had been part of the Canadian workshops of Ragtime, the Flaherty and Ahrens musical that went on to win the Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book. She appeared in the Los Angeles and Vancouver companies, understudied on Broadway, and then landed Sarah, the young mother at the heart of the story, first in the Chicago production and then on the U.S. national tour. Eight shows a week, she said later, was hard work, but she was living the dream. In March 2000 Playbill found her solo disc Holdin’ Out, a RECE Records release built around the Now’s The Time songs, on sale at the merchandise counter in the theatre lobby. The performance earned her a Best Actress nomination at the 2001 National Broadway Theatre Awards. She took her own lesson from Ragtime: that every day we should follow our dreams, chase them, catch them.

More stage work followed. Playing Lucy in Jekyll & Hyde at The Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Connecticut, opposite Brad Little as Hyde, she won the 2002 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress. She co-starred in The Education of Randy Newman for A.C.T. Theatre in Seattle, and her credits grew to include Little Shop of Horrors, The Colored Museum, Sophisticated Ladies and Jacques Brel. In the spring of 2004 she came home to star as Eva Perón in the Arts Club’s Evita at the Stanley Theatre, directed by Bill Millerd with Bruce Kellett as musical director, running from April 29 to June 13.

She gathered those years onto Broadway Visions, a self-released album issued later in 2004 under her Urban Destiny Production Co. Each song comes from a show: Fame, Jesus Christ Superstar, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Porgy And Bess, Ragtime, Evita, Jekyll & Hyde, Aida and Jacques Brel. ‘Wheels Of A Dream’ is a duet with Lawrence Hamilton, her Coalhouse Walker Jr. from Ragtime, recorded at WestTrax in New York. ‘I’m Keeping Out Of Mischief’ and ‘Son’s Of...’ were cut live with the Arts Club band at the Granville Island Stage, with Kellett on piano, Rene Worst on bass, Graham Boyle on drums and Jon Roper on guitar. She produced her own vocals at Bear Studios with engineer Ryan Marchant, and the booklet is full of production photographs from the Arts Club and Downtown Cabaret shows.

In 2005 Fox was inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame. She has since carried a one-woman headline show onto cruise lines through Alaska, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Europe, released the CD Versatility, and turned up on television from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Jerry Lewis Telethon to All My Children and Dead Like Me.

Notes: Toné Z, co-producer of Now’s The Time, appears to be co-writer Tony Azzopardi working under a production name.

-Robert Williston