LEN DOBBIN, GUARDIAN ANGEL OF JAZZ IN MONTREAL DEAD AT 74

By on July 10, 2009

By Alan Hustak

Few in Montreal could match Len Dobbin's enthusiasm for jazz or his encylopediac knowledge of the musicians who made the music.

It's perhaps ironic and only fitting that the gravel-voiced disc jockey and veteran music critic suffered a fatal stroke during the Montreal International Jazz Festival Wednesday while sitting on a bar stool, sipping Diet Coke, listening to jazz. He was 74.

“He was a great chronicler, a great musical archivist, and an excellent photographer,” said veteran bandleader, Vic Vogel, “He had one of the best record collections around. He was a recovering alcoholic with a bulbous nose bigger than W.C. Fields’. And like Fields, he always had a joke in his belly.” Singer Dorothy Berryman, who hired him as a researcher for her Radio-Canada jazz program Espace Musique six years ago referred to him as “The guardian angel of the music.”

Leonard Montgomery Ross Dobbin was born in Montreal Feb. 23, 1935 and grew up listening to be-bop, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. When he was 14 he won a disc jockey contest and began learning about the music first-hand. He joined the New Jazz Society, and began sneaking into bars along Stanley St. where he became something of a teen-aged mascot for the many of the great jazz musicians who came to town. He heard Billie Holiday sing at Newport in 1954, then was hired by the CBC to host the program Jazz at Its Best. Dobbin worked as an accountant to support his jazz habit. He wrote for Coda, did liner notes for record albums, and began broadcasting Jazz on Sunday Nights on CJFM, which became Mix 96. His heavy drinking took its toll and in 1982 Dobbin was felled by a bleeding ulcer and had two thirds of his stomach removed. He joined AA, and worked as a critic at the Gazette for seven years in the 1980s, and in began broadcasting FOR Radio McGill, providing commentary, spiced with personal anecdotes, about the musicians he knew on a first name basis that he featured on the program. His vast record collection, of more than 5,000 albums and CD’S fuelled the program.

In 2007 he received the Masterworks Award for his contribution to culture.

His marriage ended in divorce in 1992. He leaves three daughters.