MONTREAL — For decades, if you went to a wedding, bar mitzvah or party in town and saw that the Nat Raider Orchestra was playing, you knew you were in for something special.
As was noted by many following his death from cancer on July 24, just 10 days shy of his 81st birthday, Raider was more than just a Montreal or Jewish community institution. He was also an accomplished musician in his own right, a devoted family man and soft-spoken gentleman of the highest order, and a man who lived an “amazing, joyous” life, his daughter, Barbara Teplitsky, said.
Raider also showed prescient business acumen as the driving force behind Nat Raider Productions, which grew from the mid-1960s onward into a leading all-inclusive “special event” coordinating company.
During his orchestra’s heyday before it disbanded more than a decade ago, the dashing Raider, an imposing six-foot- three and sporting trademark whiskers, was instantly recognizable, deftly wielding his baton or playing his trumpet before hundreds at both Jewish and non-Jewish events.
He liked to refer to himself as “Bandleader to the Stars,” a 1989 CJN profile said, for producing show music and accompanying countless performers and singers over the decades.
Raider, who was semi-retired for the last number of years, was “one of the most recognized and appreciated bandleaders of his time,” noted veteran Jewish community chronicler Joe King.
According to the CJN profile, Raider, born in Montreal to parents, Annie and Harry, began to play trumpet as a child and had already formed his first dance band for parties while in high school in the mid-1940s.
Business was brisk, and by 1960, the profile noted, Raider and his band of five players were gigging at almost 250 functions a year – to a significant degree the Jewish wedding and bar mitzvah circuit.
“We were overwhelmed,” he recalled to The CJN at the time. “I formed several more bands to meet the demand, and that’s the way the Nat Raider Orchestra began.”
Music always remained the closest thing to Raider’s heart. As a younger man, Teplitsky noted, he had a scholarship at Tanglewood with the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein as his mentor, adding that as her father’s career began he played trumpet in the orchestra cruising the Saguenay River, and played in bands on radio and television shows, nightclubs, social events and concerts.
Raider’s band, she noted, also accompanied classical and contemporary artists and vocalists, producing music for Broadway and variety shows, and serving as musical backup for comedians. Raider and his musicians even performed in the Canadian film Bethune. He recorded five albums for the Canadian Talent Library, and even dabbled in acting and modelling.
Teplitsky, in an interview the day before her father’s interment last Wednesday, recalled that he came to become one of the biggest suppliers of work for musicians in the city, sometimes even furnishing backup musicians for rock bands.
As well, for decades Raider was musical director at the iconic home of the Montreal Canadiens – the Forum – and was responsible for all the shows put on there, from the Ice Capades to the Shrine Circus, as well as furnishing the organist and singers for hockey games and other sporting events.
Raider also once served as musical co-ordinator for productions put on at Place des Arts by impresario Donald K. Donald.
Nat Raider Productions began around 1965 when Raider helped the Canadian Lumbermen’s Association and Pulp and Paper Canada prepare for a major convention of some 2,000 people. His other daughter, Cindy Woolman, is now mostly involved in the company.
“We do it all from start to finish,” Raider said of his company in 1989, “hosts, hostesses, décor, props, music, entertainment, casts and personalities, sound, lights.”
During the 1970s, Raider even became entertainment director of the Federation of Auto Dealers Association, in charge of producing conventions and autos shows for car dealers.
But Raider always seemed most at home and in his element, his family seemed to suggest, on the bandstand itself, conducting, blowing his horn or sitting in for a set with other musicians.
For the occasion of his 80th birthday, the family produced a book – A Man and His Trumpet – in his honour, and gave away dozens of copies.
Raider is survived by his wife of 57 years, Beatrice Mager, daughters Barbara Teplitsky and Cindy Woolman, and siblings Rennie and Alec.
