Australian jazz
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Jazz is an American musical genre largely originated by African Americans but the style was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by musicians all over the world, including Australia. Jazz and jazz-influenced syncopated dance music was being performed in Australia within a year of the emergence of jazz as a definable musical genre in the United States.
Until the 1950s the primary form of accompaniment at Australian public dances was jazz-based dance music, modelled on the leading white British and American jazz bands, and this style enjoyed wide popularity.
It was not until after World War II that Australian jazz scene began to diversify as local musicians were finally able to get access to recordings by leading African-American jazz musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and bebop, cool jazz and free jazz exerting a strong influence on Australian musicians in the late 1950s and beyond.
Although jazz in Australia suffered a significant drop in popularity during the Sixties and Seventies, as it did in most other countries, there was a marked resurgence of interest in the Eighties and Nineties as a new generation of musicians came to the fore. The best Australian jazz performers are now regarded as equal to the best in the world, although, as in other forms of popular music, they still suffer from a lack of music industry support.
It is also important to acknowledge the role of New Zealand musicians in the Australian jazz scene, and as jazz historian Andrew Bissett has noted, it is impossible to properly discuss the subject of Australian jazz without reference to New Zealand. Many of the leading "Australian" jazz playing musicians of the last 80 years have come from New Zealand, beginning with figures like reeds player Abe Romaine in the 1920s and later including renowned pianist-composers Mike Nock and Dave McRae and Judy Bailey, and vocalists Ricky May and Kerrie Biddell.
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[edit] Jazz precursors in Australia
White American and British 'black-face' minstrels (musician/actors in make-up) brought imitations of slave plantation music (and dance) to Australia by the 1840s, featuring characteristics that later became associated with jazz, such as polyrhythmic 'breaks'. From the 1850s, full minstrel shows with minstrel 'orchestras', including locally formed troupes, toured the major capital cities and smaller, boom towns like Ballarat and Bendigo. Visits by American vaudeville troupes became much more common after the introduction of regular steamship services between America and Australia in the 1870s. Some genuine African-American minstrel troupes and jubilee singers (black chamber choirs) toured from the 1870s.
Ragtime reached Australia in the 1890s in the form of syncopated cakewalk march music and syncopated "coon-song" and many white and black ragtime artists of repute toured Australia, including the black ragtime vocalist, Ernest Hogan, and white artists Ben Harney (the self-proclaimed 'originator' of ragtime) and Gene Green (the Emperor of Ragtime). Greene in particular taught many Australian artists how to 'rag' (improvise in ragtime style).
[edit] Early 20th century
Thanks to close Australian links with American theatrical entertainment circuits , and Tin Pan Alley marketing of American music to Australia via phonograph records, modern dance arrangements, piano rolls and visiting jazz acts, Australians developed a strong interest in jazz influenced dance music and its related forms. 'Jazz'(hot dance music) was well established by the mid-1920s. Jazz was recorded on piano-rolls in Australia before 1923 and disc recordings like "Red Hot Mamma" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Ray Tellier's San Francisco Orchestra were also being recorded by 1925.
Local exposure to current trends in American jazz in the Twenties was moderated by Australian popular taste which favoured the polished white style of American jazz (dance) orchestra music, particularly the symphonic jazz style typified by Paul Whiteman. Public dancing entered a boom period from 1919 with the opening of numerous 'jazz palais' with some in the large cities being able to hold thousands of patrons.
The biggest musical influence in the period 1923-1928 was a succession of visiting white American jazz (or dance) orchestras, mainly from the West Coast. Frank Ellis and his Californians, who arrived in 1923, were probably the most influential and popular of these groups. Thousands of dance fans regularly flocked to see them at Sydney's largest dance hall, the Palais Royale (the Royal Hall of Industries at Moore Park, which still stands today). American bands and individual imported 'jazz specialists'continued to be imported by Australian theatrical entrepreneurs until the end of the 1920s. Australians could study the performance and presentation style of these bands first-hand and talented local musicians were soon offered places in some of them.
Restrictions on touring American bands after 1928, resulting from the forced departure of the visiting African-American band Sonny Clay's Plantation Orchestra meant that Australian dance musician usually had to learn about jazz from recorded or written sources. These included imported recordings, dance arrangements, jazz on film (after 1929), patent 'how to jazz courses', individual visiting artists (most of whom were white) and literature such as Australian Dance Band News (1932-with subsequent title changes). However, from the early 1930s, Australian dance musician began to listen to and appreciate the work of black artists and leaders like Elligton and Armstrong as well as absorbing English jazz influences. Notable swing bands of the 1930s included Jim Davidson & His New Palais Royal Orchestra, Frank Coughlan & His Trocadero Orchestra, Dudley Cantrell & His Grace Grenadiers, and numerous others and many were recorded.
A few big bands from America (including Artie Shaw's Orchestra) toured Australia during WWII, as entertainment units but local exposure was limited because their concerts were mostly restricted to American military personnel.
[edit] Post-World War II jazz
After the end of WWII Australian jazz began to diverge into two major strands: dixieland or 'traditional jazz'(early jazz) and modern styles like progressive swing boogie-woogie and bop as exemplified by the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie
By the late 195Os modern players were widely influenced by the more restrained cool or West Coast style but some were also influenced by the more aggressive and polyrhythmic 'hard bop' style. Leading modern jazz venues by 1960 included Jazz Centre 44 in Melbourne and El Rocco in Sydney.
TV was an important source of work for jazz musicians in the early-mid 1960s, with programs like Graham Kennedy's In Melbourne Tonight employing regular house bands that comprised many of best players on the Melbourne jazz/session scene. Melbourne musicians like Bruce Clarke and Frank Smith also worked extensively on soundtracks and advertising music, and Clarkes' Jingle Workshop studio in St Kilda, which produced much important music in these genres, was a significant focus, not merely for its commercial work, but also because it was the venue for regular Sunday jam sessions, many of which Clarke recorded.
Rock 'n' roll had dominated the youth music scene from the mid-1950s and pop and rock continued to dominate in the sixties and beyond. Many leading jazz performers like Graeme Lyall, Stewie Speer and John Sangster worked with rock groups and absorbed important stylistic influences from the Motown, soul music and funk genres. The influx of thousands of visiting American servicemen during the Vietnam war provided further impetus for local interest in these styles. Jazz maintained a low if consistent profile, with performers including Burrows making regular appearances on TV. Both in Sydney and Melbourne, jazz players also worked extensively on music for live TV and advertisements.
From the late 1960s there was a revival to the 'big band' format, partly fuelled by the popularity of "big band" rock ensembles like Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago. The most notable local modern big band was the highly acclaimed but shortlived Daly Wilson Big Band, which enjoyed considerable popularity and which was the first Australian musical act to tour the former Soviet Union. Another very popular larger band was Galapagos Duck, who exerted a huge influence on the Sydney jazz scene as part-owners of and regular performers at Sydney's longest-running jazz venue, The Basement, which opened in 1973.
A very significant development in 1973 was the inception of the Jazz Studies course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the first jazz course to be offered by an Australian tertiary institution.
Jazz fusion, as typified by groups like Return to Forever, largely passed Australia by, although the group Crossfire was probably the best and best-known Australian act to work in this area.
[edit] 1980s and later
Through the 1980s and 1990s jazz remained a small but vibrant sector of the Australian music industry. Despite its relative lack of visibility in the mass market, Australian jazz continued to develop to a high level of creativity and professionalism that, for the most part, has been inversely proportional to its low level of public and industry recognition and acceptance.
Players who were more influenced by "traditional" or cool jazz streams tended to dominate public attention and some moved successfully into academia. Multi-instrumentalist Don Burrows was for several decades a regular presence on television and radio, as well as being a prolific session musician. Although Burrows made no secret of his dislike for the bebop and free jazz strands, he became a senior teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and has exerted a strong influence on Australian jazz through his recordings, performances and teaching.
His protege, trumpeter James Morrison, who was heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, has carved out a very successful career playing a style not unlike that of Wynton Marsalis, that blended some modern elements (e.g. the crowd-pleasing high-register technical bravura of Dizzy Gillespie) with the accessible structures and melodies of 'trad' and 'cool' jazz.
Multi-instrumental wind player Dale Barlow emerged in the late 1970s as one of the most promising new talents on the Australian scene, and after stints in the Young Northside Big Band and a formative period in the David Martin Quintet (with James Morrison), he moved to New York, where he was a member of two famed groups, the Cedar Walton Quartet and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Barlow has also toured and recorded with many other jazz greats including Sonny Stitt, Chet Baker, Gil Evans, Jackie McLean, Billy Cobham, Curtis Fuller, Eddie Palmieri, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, Lee Konitz, Sonny Stitt, Helen Merryl, Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Baron.
Many "second generation" bebop-influenced performers like New Zealand born pianist Mike Nock, bassist Lloyd Swanton, saxophonist Dale Barlow, pianist Chris Abrahams, saxophonist Sandy Evans and pianist Roger Frampton (who died in 2000) rose to prominence in this period, alongside their older contemporaries, led by the illustrious Bernie McGann and John Pochee, whose long-running group The Last Straw (founded in 1974) has carried the torch for this stream of jazz for many years.
New Zealand-born pianist-composer Dave McRae established himself as a performer of note in Australia in the 1960s before moving overseas, where he branched out into a diverse range of activities including a stint as the keyboard player in the British 1970s progressive rock group Matching Mole and collaborating with Bill Oddie of The Goodies on music for their TV series.
The trio of Tony Buck (drums), and the aforementioned Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Chris Abrahams (piano), known together as The Necks since forming in 1987 (see 1987 in music), have been particularly notable for hypnotic hour-long jazz, ambient and otherwise widely influenced spontaneous compositions, gaining widespread attention both in Australia and internationally. Their album Drive-By, which consists of a single 60-minute track, was named Jazz Album of the Year in the 2004 ARIA Awards.
During the early twenty-first century, there was also noticeable trend back towards jazz by many popular performers who had been associated with the rock genre. Most notable amongst these were Kate Ceberano, Danielle Gaha and The Whitlams who all released traditional jazz or jazz-influenced albums within a very short space of time. Whether this trend comes to dominate Australian popular music is yet to be determined.
[edit] Australian jazz players and ensembles
[edit] Ensembles
- Galapagos Duck
- Goose
- Swing City
- Dan Barnett Big Band
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