Jack Wasserman – Tuesday December 29, 1964

There'll be many maudlin words written and said about the star-crossed genius that was Chris Gage, probably welling up from the sense of guilt shared by all who knew him. He was not “of us”- he was by virtue of his talent above us. And none could reach him to help even though his every gesture was a reaching out for help. In retrospect it's easy to pick out the signs along the road that led to the tragic scene in the hotel room Sunday. Months, even years back, Chris needed help. But there was nobody who cared enough when it mattered to follow through or who knew enough, the casual doctor who dismissed the illness as all in his mind, the boss who begged him to go to the hospital a few days for a rest, the newspaperman who made an appointment with a psychiatrist and didn't follow up when Chris failed to keep it, the close associates who rescued him once before; we all share the guilt in our hearts. Couldn't we have done more? But who is to say if anyone or anything could have helped? Who can say from where spring the genius and the devils that made it impossible for him to be the thing he wanted most, a normal family man? He was Peter Pan rushing headlong toward disaster; a man-boy, superficially easy going with a prodigious capacity for work, absent minded yet on occasion coolly calculating, sensitive and yet a zany practical joker, a gregarious one of the boys who was essentially a loner, in his own words “only happy playing the piano”. Above all Chris Gage was a talent, he didn't play music he made music. In his field he has to be ranked with the greats. Whether tinkling on an out of tune spinet in a friend's basement, pumping on a portable organ or stroking the keys of a concert grand, Chris first felt then delivered the fitting sound, a sound that was distinctive of Chris. All the harmony he felt poured out through his stubby fingers. It took no particular genius to recognize that the sound he created was special. It is our tragedy that Chris couldn't find enough harmony left with in himself to make life endurable. What he created brought happiness to others, it couldn't bring happiness to him. Rest, rest perturbed spirit.

FOOTNOTES
In the room where Chris Gage died there was no piano. But he spent hours arranging music in his head and transcribing it on lined score sheets. The last note he wrote, the messages he left behind were written on the music paper.

In 1954 Chris was the house pianist at the Palomar, one of the major stars at the time was Frankie Laine. Laine's accompanist and arranger was the immensely talented Carl Fischer, who died suddenly after Laine had played here. Laine spent thousands of dollars in the next few months trying to convince the mop haired young pianist from the Palomar to join him. At the time Chris was also doubling at the Quadra Club which had just introduced live music. He also had a bag full of CBC jobs. Although he was tempted, he was already making within a very few thousand what Laine promised him for traveling in the big time … Two years later he spent a short period on the road with Arthur Lee Simpkins. He returned to Vancouver because life on the road was too lonely … Chris's genius was not unrecognized. He was one of the most financially successful musicians in the country.