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Australian JazzJazz is an American musical genre, created by African Americans who brought their music to Australia with the gold rush in the 19th century. They toured across the continent, both the major capital cities and smaller, boom towns like Ballarat and Bendigo. Early 20th century Thanks to this early contact, and the later increase in the flow of American music to Australia after the invention of the phonograph, Australians developed a strong interest in jazz and its related forms. Jazz was quickly picked up by local musicians, mainly from phonograph records, and was well established by the 1920s. The first Australian jazz recording, "Yes Sir That's My Baby" by Ray Tellier's San Francisco Orchestra, was issued in 1925. From the mid 1930s onwards, the popularity of jazz, principally "swing" music, increased significantly. Notable bands of the inter-war era included Ray Tellier's San Francisco Orchestra, Sidney Simpson & His Wentworth Cafe Orchestra, The Palais Royal Californians, Al Hammett & His Ambassadors Orchestra, Jim Davidson & His New Palais Royal Orchestra, Frank Coughlan & His Trocadero Orchestra and Dudley Cantrell & His Grace Grenadiers. A number of important big bands from America (including Artie Shaw's Orchestra) toured Australia during WWII, although access was often limited because such entertainment was usually restricted to American military personnel, although some local musicians went to extraordinary lengths to get into the concerts. Tours by top American groups were further hampered by Australia's racist immigration policies; jazz bands with black or "mixed-race" were regularly refused entry and in one of the rare cases when a black band was allowed to tour, they were forced to leave prematurely after some of the musicians were caught partying in their hotel rooms with white women. Post-World War II jazz After the end of WWII Australian jazz began to diverge into two major strands. The more popular strand was variously described as 'dixieland' or 'trad' or 'revivalist'. It exerted a significant influence on popular music over the next two decades, and also had an ongoing (if less direct) effect on the popular music of the Sixties and Seventies, through performers such as Judith Durham of The Seekers, Margret RoadKnight and members of The Loved Ones, all of whom had started their musical careers in the "trad" genre. The Australian Jazz Convention was founded in 1946 and has continued ever since, making it the world's oldest continuous jazz festival. One of the most sigificant figures of postwar Australian jazz, and the figurehead of the 'trad' movement, is Graeme Bell (b. 1914), whose All Stars band was the first Australian jazz group to tour overseas and attain wide international recognition. The All Stars' groundbreaking visit to war-ravaged Czechoslovakia in 1947 to perform at the World Youth Festival in Prague in 1947 was a landmark event. As jazz historian Bruce Johnston notes, this was a daring undertaking for the time – the band members left jobs and sold businesses and possessions to help pay for the venture. Moreover, there were none of the support systems now available to travellers or touring performers, and these problems were complicated by the chaotic conditions prevailing in Eastern Europe in the immediate postwar period. So precarious was the venture that by the time they left, the band had only been able to raise enough for one way tickets. Nevertheless, their appearance at the Prague Festival was a triumph and a planned two-week stay extended to a rapturously received nationwide tour lasting four months. This was followed by an arduous but ultimately successful eight-month tour of the United Kingdom, becoming the first jazz band to tour the UK for some 20 years. The Bell UK tour was later recognised as being a major influence on the development of postwar British jazz, particularly in terms of the All Stars' dance-oriented style which was crucial in transforming British jazz from an intellectual, purist past-time into a popular social event centred on dance and audience participation. Melbourne became the centre of the post-WWII revival of Australian jazz, and the bands of Graeme Bell, Frank Johnson, Len Barnard and Bob Barnard, Frank Traynor and The Red Onions had a strong influence on the direction of Australian jazz. In the 1950s, and again principally through the inportation of records, a number of jazz musicians became passionately devoted to the new modern style, variously known as "bop" or "Bebop" and exemplified by the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, as well as "jump" exponents like Louis Jordan, whose music was a direct presursor of early rock'n'roll. There were two important centres of activity for this newer strand of Australian bebop. Jazz Centre 44 in St Kilda, Melbourne was founded in the Fifties by entrepreneur Horst Liepolt, who later founded the Sweet Basil's club in New York). This venue fostered many leading talents including Brian Brown, Keith Stirling, Alan Turnbull, and Stewie Speer. Around the same time a group of Sydney musicians opened the El Rocco Jazz Cellar in Kings Cross, Sydney, a venue that jazz historian John Clare (aka Gail Brennan) counts as a crucial formative influence on the later direction of much of the Australian jazz scene. 1960s and 1970s The onslaught of "beat" music in the 1960s decimated the popularity of both strands of Australian jazz, with many trad fans drawn away first to folk and later to pop and rock. However, many of the players who emerged from the Australian bebop strand including Bob Bertles, John Sangster, Derek Fairbrass, Stewie Speer, Bernie McGann and Bobby Gebert, joined or performed with rock bands and many of these "modern" players also became sought-after session musicians. During the 1960s a broad new division formed in the 'modern' strand. Under the influence of so-called "cool" or "West Coast" style typified by Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan, leading soloists such as Don Burrows and George Golla gravitated to this more accessible form, while others such as Bernie McGann, John Sangster and John Pochee remained passionately devoted to the more aggressive and progressive directions of bop, as well as absorbing the radical influences of the "free jazz" experimenters of the Sixties such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. It is interesting to note that during the 1960s Bernie McGann was criticised for being an Ornette Coleman imitator -- even though he had never heard Coleman's work at the time the claim was made! In the 1970s there was a return to the 'big band' format and groups such the Daly Wilson Big Band enjoyed considerable popularity, as did Galapagos Duck, who were part owners of and regular performers at Sydney's longest-running jazz venue, The Basement. 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. 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. 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. 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), was notable for its hour-long jams of jazz and ambient music textures, 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. Jazz of Australia
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