Lorraine Wright: Teacher. Mother. Jazz patron. Fashion icon. Born Jan. 7, 1940, in Sudbury, Ont.; died Dec. 24, 2023, in Toronto, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease; aged 83.
Lorraine Wright.Courtesy of family
For 30 years, on alternate Saturday nights (technically Sunday mornings), premiere Toronto jazz artists played post-gig gigs that were not advertised except by word-of-mouth and private e-mail. The parties were the best worst-kept secret of Toronto’s Queen Street culture – and it was all thanks to Lorraine Wright.
She was a walking, talking splash of colour (even her car was festooned with plastic flowers and costume jewellery), and widely known only by her first name. Celebrities occasionally found their way to Lorraine’s events, including Farrah Fawcett, rockers Queens of the Stone Age and Mickey Rourke (who was roundly scolded when he spilled beer on her carpet).
But it was a passionate core community of performers and patrons who kept the jazz parties going – from their inception on Queen Street West (in Kitsch Lorraine, the fashion thrift-store she ran by day), to the years in a cinder-block warehouse space on King West that she also called home, to a space just off the newly hip Ossington strip. It was, by accounts, the longest-running after-hours club in the city’s history.
Born in Sudbury as Lorraine Alice Slotek, and raised in the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona, the eldest of three siblings (two brothers, Larry and Jim), Lorraine achieved a fine arts degree from the University of Manitoba. She went on to teach at various schools in Winnipeg, from elementary to high school.
At home, she was a no-nonsense older sister, who taught Jim how to tie his shoes when he was four. “Pay attention, because I’m only going to show you this once!” she said impatiently. I complied. She also taught him Scrabble at 8, leading to a half-century of furious competition on the board and online.
Married in her 20s, divorced by her 30s in the 1970s, she raised her sons David and Dan Wright as a single mother. Lorraine, David and Dan moved to Toronto in the 1980s where she continued teaching, with an emphasis on art classes, and continued to follow her passions of music, art and attention-getting fashion.
“I will always cherish the memories of her playing her guitar and singing folk songs,” her son David Wright recalls. “She was a great cook and taught us to take of ourselves. …
“I’m not an expert on what a good parent is, but I can say she was a good mother because she always taught us to believe we could be anything we wanted growing up. If we felt bad because something didn’t go our way she never let us wallow in self-pity.”
In Winnipeg, Lorraine sang in amateur musical theatre, and indulged her personal sense of style, running Lorraine’s Cheap Chic, a successful second-hand boutique in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village. In Toronto, she opened the thrift store Kitsch Lorraine. But it was the first few musical parties she threw at the store that inspired her to create an after-hours space for musicians hungry for a stage and an audience.
Lorraine began to live two lives, with her family by day, and the jazz crowd at night. Her sons were grown men with children of their own by then. Lorraine was often the star of her show – dancing with the crowd, introducing the bands, and occasionally handling the police. Repeat artists, like saxophonist Richard Underhill, of the Shuffle Demons, and Astrogroove were like her nighttime children.
At her celebration of life, singer Laura Hubert, a favourite at the jazz parties, elicited tears and smiles with a rendition of the popular standard My Buddy, dedicated to Lorraine.
Dan, who worked the door to her late-night concerts for more than 15 years said: “In the space my mom provided, there was a mutual feedback loop of love and encouragement for the arts,” he said, adding, “She had a personal touch that invited people to believe that magic could happen.”
Jim Slotek is Lorraine Wright’s brother.
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