Schofield, Pete and the Canadians - Missing Parts Featuring Jenny Moyle

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	I Need Your Love	03:25
	2	Welsh Rarebit	03:21
	3	Jess	03:00
	4	The Night Has a Thousand Eyes	03:04
	5	Bobs Back	02:09
	6	TGIF	02:24
	7	Takin' it Home	02:23

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Missing Parts	04:56
	2	Baby Its Cold Outside	03:15
	3	Just the Way You Are	03:30
	4	Glenn's Tune	03:54
	5	Lost Opportunities	02:46

Photos

Videos

No Video

Information/Write-up

Pete Schofield was a Don Mills–based bandleader, saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, and educator who carved out a unique place in Canada’s music landscape by championing the sound of young musicians. Beginning in the 1960s, he built one of Toronto’s most ambitious youth big-band programs, assembling ensembles of exceptionally talented teen players and guiding them through professional-level repertoire, arrangements, and recording sessions long before high-school jazz bands became common. His groups — often billed as Pete Schofield & The Canadians — blended the discipline and sophistication of the swing era with the modern pop, soul, and soundtrack influences shaping contemporary radio, creating a “now sound” that echoed Benny Goodman and Count Basie as confidently as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, and film theme composers of the day.

Working from Toronto’s Don Mills community, Schofield rehearsed, arranged, and recorded with remarkable focus, turning basements and school auditoriums into training grounds for young brass, reed, and rhythm-section players. His bands were promoted in period liner notes as youthful — ages often ranging from fourteen to seventeen — yet they performed with a maturity and precision that drew attention from broadcasters, festival organizers, and audiences across Ontario. The ensemble won recognition at the Western Ontario Band Festival in 1966, appeared in concert halls, gymnasiums, and civic events, and helped establish a pipeline of emerging talent in the Toronto region. For many players, Schofield’s band was the first step toward a life in music; future jazz figures, including tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, credited these early opportunities as formative.

Schofield recorded several albums capturing this fresh hybrid of dance-band swing and pop-era flair. His first widely distributed LPs — including It’s a Sign of the Times and The Now Sound — appeared on Quality Records’ Birchmount label, featuring spirited interpretations of hits such as “San Jose,” “Wichita Lineman,” and “Up, Up & Away,” alongside standards like “The Shadow of Your Smile.” He later launched his own imprint, P.S. Records, to issue Do Something Nice Today! and Yes It’s Toronto, the latter highlighting vocalist Karen Hendrix and celebrating the band’s civic roots with renewed confidence and broader orchestral colour. Across these recordings, Schofield showcased crisp horn voicings, polished rhythm work, and the enthusiasm of young musicians performing charts designed to stretch both skill and imagination.

Beyond his recordings, Schofield’s true legacy lies in mentorship. He nurtured musical ability at the grassroots, bridging classical woodwind training, jazz arranging, commercial studio sensibilities, and stagecraft. His bands represented a rare blend of community spirit and professional expectation — a place where teenagers learned charts straight from the bandstand tradition, were treated as serious musicians, and performed with the drive and polish of far older ensembles. In doing so, he contributed to the development of a generation of Toronto players and helped sustain big-band culture in Canada during a changing musical era.

Pete Schofield remains remembered not only for the albums that captured his youthful, contemporary swing sound, but for the hundreds of young musicians who passed through his program — many of whom continued into Canada’s jazz, studio, and music-education communities. His recordings offer a snapshot of a vibrant moment when modern pop met big-band tradition in suburban Toronto, and when one bandleader's dedication turned after-school rehearsals into something far larger: a proving ground for Canada’s next wave of talent.
-Robert Williston

Jenny Moyle: vocals
Bob McAlpine: guitar
Randy Greene: drums
Ross Harwood: piano
Brian Luborsky: bass
John Mele: congas and very special noises

Saxophones:
Glenn Schofield
Laureal Crawford
John Welsh
Paul Schofield
Keith Loach

Trumpets:
Norm Heard
George Danes
Linda Fitzpatrick

Bones:
Stan Clark
Keith Honeywell

Arrangements by Eddie Graf, Brian Rudolf, Earle Marek, and Bobby Edwards
Recorded at Sounds Interchange
Engineered by Jim Morgan
Mixed by Ed Stone

Liner notes:
Big band jazz has undergone a lot of changes over the past forty years. It flared brightly in the forties, when Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington and hundreds of lesser lights had the entire civilized world bopping, unself- consciously to the sound of the big beat. It practically went into hiding in the fifties and sixties, kindled and nurtured by a few stalwarts who comprised a small but intense cult following.

But come the seventies, the sound of massed horns, reeds and the big back beat hit the airwaves once more, as people like Isaac Hayes, Chase, Blood, Sweat and Tears and even Chicago pressed revitalized big band jazz to a fresh, young and eager audience.

During this decade, Pete Schofield was one of the few musicians keeping Big Band jazz alive in Canada. And here in the late seventies, he is still there, riding the crest of a rekindled interest in his kind of music. This is Pete Schofield and the Canadians’ twelfth album, and if you believe in the old adage that practice makes perfect, then you’ll know what you’re holding in your sweaty palms is indeed the real thing.

Trip number twelve finds Pete leading his youthful charges through another set of sizzling band originals, torchy ballads (featuring the demure Jenny Moyle on lead vocal) and a couple of new standards done in Pete’s own aggressively arranged style. With band “veterans” like Bob McAlpine and Miss Moyle back again, and a number of own talented sons in tow (listen to the late night moodiness of son Glenn Schofield on Glenn’s Tune) Pete Schofield and the Canadians have come up with another all-star Canuck package with an international feel.

If you’re standing in a record store contemplating a purchase, and you’ve read this far without the store manager giving you the eye and indicating the side-walk, then obviously you’re interested. So why not shoot the buck and give this latest Schofield package a try. But be forewarned. This kind of music can be very addictive stuff, and you’ll probably be back for another dose in pretty short order.

Alan Nister
Toronto Free Lance Music Critic
Toronto, March, 1979

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