Born in Philadelphia. My mother Laura taught classical and jazz piano and worked as a secretary for a scientist who developed the world’s first polio vaccine. I wanted to play like her, but was better at picking out tunes myself rather than working out rhythms and notes from sheet music. So I wired my ears to the keyboard directly. My first lessons had been prenatal. Mom told me I had perfect pitch but I didn’t know what that meant. I soon had a set of tv themes and commercials to show off with secretly convinced I wasn’t a real musican.
Mom got offered a job in Edmonton to work for the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Alberta. So in the winter in 1961 we moved to Canada. That winter set records of minus 50 and we got off the plane in a blizzard without coats. The next day we bought parkas at Hudson’s Bay that looked like their famous wool blankets. In 1967 we became Canadian citizens and my dad changed his middle name to Edmonton.
My first concert was in Grade 7 student in the gym of Garneau Jr. High. I played Bumble Boogie and an improvisation on Dave Brubeck’s “Take 5” with my hands shaking and sweating so badly water dripped off the keys. Two years later I bought an organ at the Bay for $50 with money I had earned delivering papers. I started a rock band singing covers of Top 40 songs like Midnight Hour and LIght My Fire. Our PA was a 50 watt amp driving a big dented bull horn with a 20 pound magnet that had been retired from a local hockey rink. We could make ears bleed.
Strathcona Composite High School had a few other garage bands that merged together in Grade 12 to form Manna. We played all original songs and worked out five part harmonies. On graduation in 1970 we joined a North American concert tour with local orchestras featuring songs from Jesus Christ Superstar and two of our songs. . Our style was blues influenced folk rock heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell and The Band. We were famous in Edmonton, but I quit after a year to become a Biochemist.
But my mother and friends encouraged me to quit science and switch my major to music. I auditioned and was accepted as a Composition and Theory major without letting on that I still couldn’t read music and would never had made it without the help of some incredible teachers including Violet Archer, Malcolm Forsyth, Sandra Munn and Isobelle Rolston. By 1975 I graduated and received the BMI Canada Prize with a scholarship to study at the Banff School of Fine Arts. . A year later I was composing for orchestras and studying jazz and band arranging at North Texas State University .
In 1980 I joined Second City as Music Director and it was the perfect job for me. I was writing comedy songs and improvising music for live theatre. I made enough money to build a home studio and over the next thirty years scored hundreds of television shows with original themes. My comedy work continued with live performances including Mike Myers, Catherine O’Hara, Richard Kind, Ryan Stiles, Eugene Levy and Ron James.
My comedy work came to include the Banff Television Festival where I performed with Bob Newhart, John Cleese, Dame Edna, Martin Short, Steve Allen, and Kelsey Grammer. After this I wrote and performed over 50 original songs on live radio for CBC’s The Irrelevant Show.
I now live in Victoria B.C. where I continue to record and perform my songs. Please check out my Upcoming Shows page for info.
JAN RANDALL 
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