By Patricia Balcom
If you’re walking down Bruyère Street near King Edward, quiet strains of piano music might greet your ears. And if you step inside Ernie Cox’s home you will see the grand piano that dominates the living room. This living room became a recording studio during the lockdown, where Ernie played piano and sang over 20 songs which he recorded and posted to his “Songs from Self-Isolation” site (https://erniecox.com/)
Ernie started recording and posting his music when he and his wife came back from Florida earlier this spring and had to go into quarantine. Inspired by others who were posting music to the Internet to entertain others in lockdown, he decided to do the same. One of his sons came up with the title “Songs from Self-Isolation” and both helped with the recording, production and posting. He started by putting up one song a day, on his website and on Facebook, where he has about 250 followers.
In order to do the recordings he bought himself a good microphone, a tripod and some good apps so he could record the audio and video together. What kind of music did he perform? “Some swing songs, some blues songs, a few gospel songs”. Because Ernie sings and plays piano he “naturally” did a quite a few Ray Charles numbers, noting “I wish I could sing like Ray.”
While Ernie tried to do uplifting songs to cheer people up during their self-isolation, he said he couldn’t do that kind of song every day, and sometimes also performed blues songs. As he explained: “I couldn’t do a song that was uplifting and meet the moment every day. I tried to do upbeat songs or meaningful songs and people would respond by saying ‘That was great. That made me feel better today .’”
He started off posting a song every day, but after 17 songs he “started getting a little thinner on the material” and he needed to work harder to think of a new song. He then posted a song every couple of days, and now is doing one a week. Now that the lockdown is lifting he doesn’t feel people need the music as much.
So who is Rev. Ernie Cox? He was born and raised in Ottawa, the son of a medical doctor. He studied music at the University of Ottawa, specializing in piano and organ, and played keyboard in Sneezy Waters’ Excellent Band in the early 1970s. Ernie said it was “a fun time, but it didn’t last”. When Sneezy Waters started doing his Hank Williams show, Ernie moved on to other things. Ernie used to stage gospel performances with a full choir and back-up band at the Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre, and one year Sneezy Waters opened the concert for Ernie. They have kept in touch over the years, and Ernie thinks Sneezy is “a great entertainer”.
Ernie started studying divinity at Queen’s University’s Theological College and the Toronto School of Theology to be a United Church minister, but along the way he decided to become a Baptist minister, so ended his studies at Acadia University’s Divinity College in 1983. He assured me “I’m not that kind of Baptist.”, and has the t-shirt to prove it! His first charge was a church in Winchester, just outside Ottawa, and then he moved to Parkdale United Church in Ottawa as Minister of Music. In 1990 he was offered his own church, Fourth Avenue Baptist, where he stayed until his retirement in 2007. After he retired he did short-term Sunday preaching until he was offered a full-time position at McPhail Memorial Baptist Church on Bronson Avenue. After five years full-time, he is now working part-time, sharing the position with another minister, “a younger guy” whom he hopes will stay on full-time when Ernie retires completely. He loves his church and his congregation: as he told me “It’s a wonderful thing to end up in your last church in the best church I ever had. Amazing people, open minded, accepting, loving compassionate, caring people. It’s a wonderful place to be.”
Ernie is currently giving Sunday services on-line, with several hundred people viewing them every Sunday. He has found it is more time consuming to prepare virtual services than it is to do “live” ones. The board of the church and the two ministers have decided to continue church services on-line until at least September. He explained that because McPhail is a small church, with only 80-85 attendees every Sunday, at 30% the group would be very small. Besides that, with “everybody masked, you can’t shake hands, no coffee, no hugs and you can’t even sing hymns”. For these reasons, they have no desire to hold physical services, at least yet.
Ernie and his wife Lynda (who is the Echo’s real-estate writer) have been married for almost 47 years, and have two sons. Jordan works for the UN’s World Food Programme and lives in Rome; Jimmy works in real estate with his mother. Ernie and Lynda have been living in Lowertown since 2013, when they moved here from Sandy Hill. He said they love the Market area, elaborating that: “One of the reasons we moved here is because it is the closest thing to the feeling of downtown in Rome when you go to the markets.”
He concluded:
Some friends of ours say “You live in Lowertown? Aren’t you worried about that? “We’re not worried; we feel quite comfortable here and we just prepare ourselves when we walk downtown with a few toonies and loonies in our pockets. And we’re okay. So I think if people think more about that it’s not a problem. We’re really happy here.