Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high-profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to gain a high profile in the international jazz arena.
Jazz is an American musical genre 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, modeled 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, with 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, as it did in most other countries, there was a marked resurgence of interest in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties as a new generation of musicians came to the fore.
As in the popular field, it is also important to acknowledge the role of New Zealand musicians on the Australian jazz scene – in the view of jazz historian Andrew Bisset, 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 Judy Bailey, Mike Nock and Dave MacRae, and vocalist Ricky May.
Jazz precursors in Australia White American and British 'black face' bards (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 Greene (the Emperor of Ragtime). Greene in particular taught many Australian artists how to 'rag' (improvise in ragtime style).
Early 20th century
Belle Sylvia and Her Jazz Band were billed as "Australia’s first jazz band" when they performed at Ben Fuller's National Theatre in Sydney in 1918, though they were a band imported from England.
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' or 'jass' (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.
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. 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 musicians began to hear and absorb the work of black artists and leaders like Duke Ellington and Armstrong as well as 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.
Australian jazz musician Bert Howell toured the world in 1933 playing compositions like "Wabash Moon" by Australian composer Reginald Stoneham.
Trombonist and bandleader Frank Coughlan (1904–1979) has been called "The Father of Australian Jazz". He had an illustrious career that lasted from the early 1920s to the 1970s. He was chosen to lead the famous jazz orchestra that was put together for the opening in 1936 of the Sydney Trocadero, which became the city's leading dance venue for the next 35 years, and Coughlan led the orchestra at "The Troc" until its closure in 1971.
Post–World War II jazz After the end of World War II 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
Graeme Bell was an important contributor to Melbourne's 1940s traditional jazz boom and in 1947 his band, with the support of Harry Stein, was a great success when they played at the World Youth Festival in Prague, Czechoslovakia, going on to tour Europe and finally basing themselves in England where they are said to have exerted a strong influence on the European traditional jazz revival of that era. On returning to Australia Graeme Bell's Jazz Band worked successfully on the local club circuit, as well as recording and touring extensively.
The Australian Jazz Quartet/Quintet was a contemporary Australian jazz group that did very well in the US at that time. In the early 1950s pianist Bryce Rohde along with Errol Buddle (reeds) and Jack Brokensha (vibes and drums) moved from Australia to Windsor in Canada. An agent heard them play locally and asked if they would come across the border to back female vocalist Chris Connor at a nightclub in Detroit. This started the ball rolling, and in 1953, along with American saxophonist and bassist Dick Healey, they formed the Australian Jazz Quartet.
This very successful unit recorded ten albums and worked at most major US jazz venues. Sometimes a bass player and drummer would be hired to complement the group during recording sessions, and when they ultimately added a permanent bass player they renamed themselves the Australian Jazz Quintet (AJQ). American bassist Ed Gaston joined the AJQ while they were touring the US in 1958 and he later married and settled down in Australia, becoming an important contributor to the local jazz scene in the ensuing years. Drummer Colin Bailey played with the AJQ from 1958–60.
The AJQ was highly rated in polls run by US jazz magazines such as Down Beat. They worked on the same bill as names like Miles Davis, Count Basie, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck and the Modern Jazz Quartet; backed singers Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae; and played at top venues such as Carnegie Hall and Birdland.
Another Australian jazz musician, bassist Bruce Cale, was an early collaborator with Bryce Rohde in Sydney, and subsequently moved to London where he worked with the famous Tubby Hayes Quartet and other jazz groups before relocating to the US in 1966. He went on to play in bands led by John Handy, Ernie Watts, John Klemmer and Jack Walrath, to name just a few. Based in the US for several years, Cale also worked with Zoot Sims, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Mose Allison, James Zitro, ContraBand, Phil Woods, Alan Dawson ... Back in Australia in the late 1970s he worked with most of Australia's leading musicians and in particular his own quartet with Dale Barlow, Roger Frampton and Phil Treloar. In the 1980s he concentrated on composition, working on specially commissioned pieces and also studied with George Russell. In the intervening years he has performed with many of his favourite jazz musicians in Australia including Julian Lee, Kevin Hunt, Mike Nock, Bob Bertles, John Sangster, Sandy Evans and many more. His bass sound has been heard by anyone who ever listened to Jim McLeods JazzTrack on ABC Radio as the memorable signature music for many years was Windows of Arquez which he recorded with Bryce Rhode.
The El Rocco became a legend in Australian jazz history and in the 1980s a documentary movie Beyond The El Rocco was made about the club. Many of Sydney's top musicians worked there early in their careers including John Sangster, John Pochee, Don Burrows, George Golla, Alan Turnbull and Judy Bailey.
The Three Out trio with Mike Nock (Piano), Freddy Logan (Bass), and Chris Karan (Drums) attracted some of the largest crowds at Sydney's El Rocco, a small cellar club situated in Kings Cross. Originally from New Zealand, Mike Nock came to Sydney in the late 1950s and almost immediately scored a regular spot at the El Rocco. Bassist Freddy Logan hailed from the Netherlands and had already been very active in the Sydney jazz scene both as a player and a promoter of jazz, and in later years drummer Chris Karan would gain international recognition as a member of the Dudley Moore Trio.
The members of the Three Out Trio first got together as part of a group that Sydney alto saxophonist Frank Smith put together as the house band at "The Embers", a very successful jazz club in Melbourne that also featured top international jazz artists such as the Oscar Peterson Trio and Benny Carter. Before he left for Melbourne Frank Smith had made a big impression in Sydney, he worked with most of the top professional bands and could often be found playing at the El Rocco in its earlier years. A handful of Sydney jazz musicians including John Pochee, Barry Woods, Dave MacRae, Andy Brown and Bernie McGann also travelled south around that time, finding work in venues such as "The Fat Black Pussycat", another Melbourne jazz club that provided an outlet for those intent on playing uncompromising forms of jazz. The most successful group to appear at Sydney's Mocambo Restaurant in King St Newtown was the Mocambo Four, with Sid Edwards (Vibraphone), Tony Esterman (Piano), Winston Sterling (Bass) and Laurie Kennedy (Drums). The piano chair was also filled by Tony Curby or Bob Dunn over the band's stint of around 4 years during the early 1960s. This venue was very well attended, with people often lined up in the street waiting to get in.