The Paramount Jazz Band, the Sydney Jazz Club and Jazz History Writing.                                                      Daniel Hardie 

   My story begins long before the formation of the jazz club, during World War two in fact . I described this in my 2011 Lecture for the Bell Library Lecture Series- entitled Buddy Bolden and me The True Story’: 

*When I was still at high school I began building radios - starting with the inevitable crystal set and moving on to build one and two valve receivers. Before long I had a radio I could listen to, using a pair of earphones purchased at an Army Disposal Store. On occasions I listened to US Army short wave radio stations broadcasting popular music for their troops stationed around the world. I recall hearing Frank Sinatra singing with a band on station KWID SanFrancisco.But the experience I remember most was when I was listening one night to the A B C . It was a program that included what was called a Battle of the Bands and it was promoted as a duel between old and new forms of jazz. I had heard the word jazz and thought it had something to do with popular music, but here they were talking about Dixieland and Bebop. Then I heard a recording by the Graeme Bell Band for the first time. This was a revelation. I have no idea which band was representing the more modern style but the music played by the Bells spoke to me. This was a sound quite different from the popular music around at the time.” 

    It was the beginning of a hunt for recordings, joined by brother Don that  culminated in the purchase of a clarinet by me and for Don a Trombone. When I was much younger I had learned the cornet in The Manly Salvation Army Band. My cousin Jim Munro was also a cornet player in that band.. Some years later when I was just finishing University we formed a small group of local teen agers into a jazz group attached to our local Presbyterian church.This group did not break any records but kept us occupied. 

At a celebration the family conducted for my 21st birthday we were able to form a family band the three of us plus my father - who was a professional drummer, and pianist Peter Davies from the Church group on piano and played Darktown Strutters Ball.

 

 

 At that time, we were able to hear the real thing on Saturday Nights at the North Steyne (Manly) Life Saving Club where a jazz group led by Jack Parkes performed for dancing. Meeting the performers 

By this time I had attended the Annual AustralianJazz Festival at Ashfield where I had heard Bob Learmonth’s Band among others. Some time later we heard that Bob’s band was performing one Saturday Afternoon at the local Queenscliffe Surf Lifesaviong Club and our embryo band went to hear them. The discussion we had with them led to an invitation to play for them at the house of their pianist Bobby Cowle.   

We went and played Darktown Strutters Ball. After the performance Harry Harman tubist with the Learmonth band approached me and said he was considering forming a band. - I could be the clarinettist with Bob Learmonth on trombone and my brother offered to play banjo. Harry’s Band was Trevor Pepper trumpet, me clarinet and Bob Learmonth, tmb, Peter Towson piano and ingenue drummer Bobby Legatt; Don on Tenor banjo. 

We began serious rehearsals at Forresters Hall. One day Harry told me that the band would be called The Paramount Jazz Band after the name he showed me printed on the toilet fittings at the hall. After a number of performances for afficionado Ulik King in a garage in Petersham we were looking around for more a more permanent venue. 

 

The Jazz Club Format   

Around this time I had been reading about the Humphrey Lyttelton band in London and listening to their records and I noticed they used a jazz club as their regular venue. During a business trip to Melbourne I encountered the Melbourne Jazz Club and was able to attend and see their format working with membership as the basis of the operation. To attend I had to become a member.’ This would provide us with a means to establish a club if we could find a venue. I suggested this to Harry Harman who became enthusiastic and we set about looking for a venue in Sydney. We saw rooftop halls and others at 4 ground floor level but the one we were impressed with was a basement hall in Martin Place in the premisses of the Real Estate Institute .We decided on that and Harry set about forming a committee led by City record shop proprietor Fred Starkey.The hall was booked

 

                Above ; Martin Place showing the entrance for the SydneyJazz Club 

 

 Trumpet player Trevor Pepper who was a soldier was moved to Wagga and Ian Cuthbertson took on the trumpet role and Jjimmy Roach took over the piano chair from study occupied Peter Towson. Bob Learmonth returned on Trombone. 

The rest is History. We decided on a format that allowed other musicians to perform but the bulk of the program was for the newly formed Paramount Jazz Band. Dancing was encouraged and membership grew at the new Sydney Jazz Club. Here’s how the Club announces itself now: 

                                                 " Where it All Began

The Sydney Jazz Club Cooperative Ltd is a group of people who  share interest in traditional Jazz .It all began with the idea of Harry Harman, who was the leader of the Paramount Jazz Band in early 1953. The Band members each contributed two pounds making a grand total of fourteen pounds and then hired the Real Estate Institute Hall at 30A Martin Place Sydney. The Hall cost them six pounds and on Saturday 6th Augist 1953 they played for the pleasure friends and supporters.. The hall was packed with about 200 enthusiasts who for legal reasons had to become Club members. The Sydney Jazz Club was Born."

The club was a great success - steadily growing an audience of devoted members.

 A major delight for me was the evening when Robyn, my wife to be, appeared dancing in the Real Estate Hall. Soon we were engaged and eventually happily married.

 

The club continued and eventually outgrew the Martin Place basement and moved to the larger Ironworkers Hall in George street. What was initially a fortnightly event became a weekly occasion. It has survived serious challenges with a life of its own, presently conducting a series of jazz performances in a variety of locations in the city..

The Schism and a New future

My Brother and I parted company with the Paramount Band after a dispute during the Australian Jazz Convention in Wagga Wagga in 1955.

During a National radio concert one evening I made an awful hash of an exposed break. When it was played on replay the band members laughed at me and made scornful comments.I angrily responded and left the Convention returning to Sydney.

By then one LP series of recordings of the band had been made in a city recording studio.. However, a national record company, wanted a recording for its Parlophone LP series and this was set down at their studio. After the recording session Don and I were told by Harry we had to leave the band as we were performing a too vigorous form of jazz. Bob Learmonth was to take over the leadership and Harry would go to Graeme Bell’s Band. The first recording for Parlophone was not satisfactory so we had to return for another recording session performed with considerable emotional restraint. .This was not, in my opinion, as good as the version recorded before the Parlophone sessions. My own performance sounds strained.

Interestingly, commentators have listed its vigorous style as a positive feature of the PJB’s recorded performances - a feature I attribute to Harry Harman’s forceful playing that dominates the recordings.

I did not continue performing in a regular band after that, though I made some appearances with a local Skiffle Group based on Collaroy Surf Club.

What I did do was to embark on a career as a historian (my major study at university ) first visiting New Orleans and producing The Loudest Trumpet:

university ) first visiting New Orleans and producing The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz a work complementary to the biography of Buddy Bolden, the so-called inventor of jazz, by Donald Marquis (In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz) who Robyn and I met and had lunch with in the city.. He was encouraging and suggested a line of further research

Since then, I have researched and published works on Early jazz including the recently published Historically Informed Performance of Early Jazz. Here’s an adaptation of the publisher’s account of me and my work:

“ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Hardie started playing cornet in a boy's brass band at age 8, later played flute, then drum and bugle at High School, and after graduating in History and Psychology at Sydney University, played clarinet in the Paramount Jazz Band - the house band at the Sydney Jazz Club of which he was a founder member. He has a fascination for old boats and jazz history. He has been a member of the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Society of Australian Genealogists and a former member of the Australian Psychological Society. During the 1990’s he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Sydney Maritime Museum.(Now known as the Sydney Heritage Fleet).

He is the Author of

The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz, 2000.

Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style 20002

The Ancestry of Jazz: A Musical Family History, 2004.

The Birth of Jazz: Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era, 2007.

Jazz Historiography: The Story of Jazz History Writing, 2013

Jazz and the Jazz Age: Searching for Meaning in a Word.,2020

 Jazz and theBlues: A Remarkable Partnership, 2021

Historic

lally Informed Performance of Early Jazz 2026

Daniel Hardie has also published a number of works and journal articles in the field of Maritime History. He is a maritime painter and has exhibited paintings of heritage maritime subjects in Sydney and other major Australian cities.

Since 2004 he has been Convenor and Historical Director of the Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra dedicated to performance of music of the Elemental Jazz era (1897/1907) with authentic instrumentation.”

In Search of Buddy Bolden’s Oeuvre

                      

AbovA:    The Buddy Bolden Orchestra ca 1908 

With the writing of The Birth of Jazz Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era, I established the the Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra dedicated to performance of music of the Elemental Jazz era (1897/1907) with authentic instrumentation.....

Again my publishers aptly described the work:

“Jazz is over 100 years old. Conventional histories briefly mention Buddy Bolden but the actual circumstances of its birth are rarely described. Because the only recording made by the band was lost, it has been assumed we can never know how the band sounded.The   truth is that there were many witnesses to to tell the story. How did it sound? By patiently gathering information Daniel Hardie has revived the music and the Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra was convened by him in 2004 to perform the music in concert. The story of the research and the concert performances is told in The Birth of Jazz Music of the Bolden Era. Concert recordings enable the reader to take part through internet technology.”

The Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra

Geoffrey. Bull  Cornet: Cornet and vocal  Daniel Weltlinger Violin Ldr; Paul Furniss Smple System  Clarinet:  John Bates  Valve trombone and Vocal ; Paul Finnerty, Spanish Guitar: Stan Valacos  Bowed Bass Violin ;Anthony Howe, Bass Drum Snare drum and Cymbal.

In the accounts of my works published in my Bell lecture in 2011 I described the evolution of my works after the publication of the Loudest Trumpet had revealed the amount of data available about the early form of jazz: 

"The search for that information was to lead to two more books: Exploring EarlyJazz:The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style published in 2002 that told the story of Bolden's career and the bands that followed him, and The Ancestry of Jazz: a Musical Family History published in 2004 that described the many threads of American musical history leading up to the Bolden revolution. Since then I have been looking more closely into facts surrounding the birth of jazz itself. Did jazz suddenly appear, in 

1894 at the Globe Hall in downtown New Orleans when Buddy Bolden stood up and played the first blues for dancing? What did it sound like? What is the truth about its immediate origins. I have been helped in this research by work carried out since the 1990's by other historians that has revealed much about the music of the time, at the beginning of what has been called the ragtime era. In fact we are now able to understand a lot about at the actual performers of the time and some of the influences that surrounded Bolden in the last ten years of the 19th Century.

In the accounts of my works published in my Bell lecture in 2011 I described the evolution of my works after the publication of the Loudest Trumpet had revealed the amount of data available.

“The search for that information was to lead to two more books: Exploring EarlyJazz:The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style published in 2002 that told the story of Bolden's career and the bands that followed him and The Ancestry of Jazz: a Musical Family History published in 2004 that described the many threads of American musical history leading up to the Bolden revolution. Since then I have been looking more closely into facts surrounding the birth of jazz itself. Did jazz suddenly appear in 1894 at the Globe Hall in downtown New Orleans when Buddy Bolden stood up and played the first blues for dancing? What did it sound like? What is the truth about its immediate origins. I have been helped in this research by work carried out since the 1990's by other historians that has revealed much about the music of the time, at the beginning of what has been called the ragtime era. In fact we are now able to understand a lot about at the actual performers of the time and some of the influences that surrounded Bolden in the last ten years of the 19th Century.”

With the formation of the Revival Orchestra we were able to perform the music for jazz audiences. A programme of concerts followed in Jazz clubs and other establishments in Sydney, Canberra, Noosa and country New South Wales.Concerts were recorded and video copies produced allowing the production of broadcasts via the medium of Youtube:

Two Youtube concerts are provided under the headings;

(1) The Best of Bolden: Introducing The Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra

(2)Jazz Festival at Mittagong

Individual performances are now sprinkled through the youtube channels allowing viewers access to performances of single tunes,

CD versions were issued by PaulFinnerty’s RiffRaff Jazz label.

I must say I am impressed by the ability of television to disseminate performance cross international boundaries allowing viewers to participate in concert performances - to hear the music as it might have been performed in Bolden’s day and see the performances live.

At the end of 2005 I reviewed the evolution of the Bolden Revival Orchestra and wrote what was probably my last book with the title Historically Informed Performance of Early Jazz including new information about the evolution of early jazz.

Was Buddy Bolden the inventor of jazz or did it come from the West Coast or Cuba? or Chicago? What did the Cuban Contradanza add to the development of jazz?

I had hoped to launch the work at the Sydney Jazz Club but was not able to arrange it despite encouragement from the club officers. Sadly valve trombonist John Bates has passed away and a number of other members of the orchestra had moved away from Sydney.. We do have some options for replacement, so we may be able to perform again some time.

                     ___________________

While writing the above I was able to consult the excellent History of the Sydney Jazz Club by Bruce Johnson. My recollections of the formation of the club differ in some respects from his account. My own absence from the activities of the club after the Wagga Jazz convention has meant that my own role in the establishment of the club has been underestimated in subsequent histories as Harry Harman assumed sole responsibility for its foundation and structure. My own recollection is that I played a significant part in the choice of the Club setup as the format for the development of a market for our music and the selection of the venue. My own sudden disappearance from the scene has not been noted or explained in later histories of the club. Recordings demonstrate that The Paramount Jazz Band was henceforth a different vehicle and Johnson describes Harry Harman’s growing disinterest in its future. As I recall it he was already taking an interest in the historically significant Bell group as Graeme Bell moved his operation to Sydney. The historian in me laments that my own concentration on other aspects of jazz history and absence from Sydney for a time has limited my understanding of the later history of the band that had meant so much for me and my brother. By the time I was working with the Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra that was all in a dim past. I am grateful for those members and officers of the Sydney Jazz Club who have contributed to its survival. .

                                                                       _________.__   

At the end of 2005 I reviewed the evolution of the Bolden Revival Orchestra and wrote what is probably my last book with the title Historically Informed Performance of Early Jazz including new information about the evolution of early jazz.. Was Buddy Bolden the inventor of jazz or did it come from the West Coast, or Cuba? or Chicago? What did the Cuban Contradanza add to the development of jazz?

 

I had hoped to launch the work at the Sydney Jazz Club but was not able to arrange it despite encouragement from the club officers. Sadly valve trombonist John Bates has passed away and a number of other members of the orchestra had moved away from Sydney.. We do have some options for replacement, so we may be able to perform again some time.  

 

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My Fifth Book -Jazz Historiography - the Story of Jazz History Writing

The appearance of something called jass or jazz around 1915 caused a flurry of commentary in the press and musical journals seeking to define the music and explain its roots. In 1917 Herbert Osgood wrote the first history of Jazz.

Throughout the period of research and publication that led to the publication of my four works on early jazz history I was frequently confronted with the inadequacy of many accounts of jazz history and their distorting influence on perceptions of jazz during some 100 years of its existence. In the last chapter of The Birth of Jazz: Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era I expressed concern that there appeared to be a lack of interest among jazz historian critics in jazz historiography and its limitations, and noted that a number of recent writers had expressed similar sentiments. I was prompted to investigate why this was so.

A brief exposure to much of what has been written reveals deep divisions among jazz historians about the course of jazz history and even the nature of jazz itself. It is this tangled web of controversies that has formed our popular appreciation of jazz history. Untangling this web and identifying the threads that made up its conventional history is the business of Jazz Historiography - the history of writing jazz history.

My attempts to untangle this story led to the publication of Jazz Historiography: The Story of Jazz History Writing in 2013.

It is available at internet sites like Amazon. com in eBook and print formats

 

    Introducing my second book : 

Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style

  

                                                                                          Writer’s Club Press 2002 

During the research for   my first book The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz it became apparent that there was a need for a more comprehensive study of the musical environment in which jazz was born and the musicians and bands that contributed to its development. 

I soon found  that a considerable amount  of data was potentially available about the development of early jazz in the twenty years before the first jazzrecordings were published in 1917. This was to lead to the publication of Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style—a chronological account of the first 30 years of early jazz—2002.

The purpose of this work was to flesh out the story of the development of New Orleans Jazz between 1897 and 1927 and show how it related to the Traditional Jazz of 2001.

·        Part I describes the composition and activities of many New Orleans bands 

of the first thirty years of jazz in approximate chronological sequence. 

·        Part II comprises interpretive and analytic material about early bands and their musical performance derived from information in the sequential account. It also depicts, and evaluates, the events that shaped the life of New Orleans jazz, in order to describe, and recreate for contemporary readers, the musical and other elements that went into its development.

Here’s part of what reviewer Dick Pointon writing for the New Orleans Magazine had to say about Exploring Early Jazz:

“Unlike many so-called 'new' histories of jazz, this book gives an in-depth coverage of the roots of the music with reference to the many musicians and groups that are overlooked by the more superficial researchers and Hardie is to be commended for his assiduity…

It also provides the ideal primer for those unfamiliar with New Orleans jazz and explains how often fact versus fable can confuse one's view of the music, even though oral histories have been of the utmost importance in documenting it.” 

Exploring Early Jazz still sells and has been converted for eBook readers. It is available from most on-line booksellers including Amazon.com

 For More detail go to the Website:

 http://members.ozemail.com.au/~darnhard/EarlyJazz1.html

 

 

 

My First Book - The Loudest Trumpet

I intend to post information about my published works here  for the benefit of new viewers. Here’s the story of my first jazz history publication as posted on the Jazz History Writing Facebook group page -

 

 The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz

Although I had been a lover of history, and jazz, and had been a jazz musician, it was not until the late 1990’s that I began to take  an interest in jazz history research. 

What inspired me was the discovery in a local bookshop of a fascinating book - In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz by New Orleans writer Don Marquis. I was fascinated by Mr. Marquis’ diligent research into the history of a fabled figure I had long known as the first leader of a jazz orchestra. I decided to look further into the story, particularly Mr. Marquis’ account of the music played by Bolden and his contemporaries. 

I read what I could find on the subject but there was not enough I needed to know about it in local libraries. In 1997 my wife and I visited New Orleans and spent some time looking at the records at the Jazz Archive at Tulane University. With the assistance of Curator Bruce Raeburn and Alma Freeman, we looked into the information available about Buddy Bolden and his music. Mr. Marquis was kind enough to have lunch with us and made some suggestions about further research into the music.

I found that there was a lot information that needed to be assembled to make an account of the musical side of the story. By 1997 I had a manuscript I thought ready for publication but decided that I would be unlikely find a publisher for such a work.  A friend told me about the on-line publisher Writer’s Club Press, (now renamed iUniverse) that would publish your work internationally for a small charge, and market it.

I submitted the manuscript and it was published in 2000. Surprisingly It began to sell in small numbers and it continues to do so.

            

  “The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz summarizes Marquis work and gives an extended account of the music of Bolden and his contemporaries.

Here’s part of what reviewer, Joe Bebco, said about it in the Syncopated Times, after reviewing Don Marquis’ book:

 … “To get the rest of the story you’ll need to read The Loudest Trumpet by Daniel Hardie. The book can be seen as a sequel to or expansion of In Search of Buddy Bolden. The first chapters refresh the reader on the biographical details unearthed by Marquis, but the bulk of 220 pages are devoted to a richly detailed investigation of the musical environment around him, and an attempt to identify his true place in the history of jazz.

             …If you find the preceding paragraphs fascinating The Loudest Trumpet is a must-read book for you. Hardie has done his homework, he is familiar with all of the writers that have approached these topics in the past and cognizant of their biases and controversies. To put his own ideas in perspective, he discusses the ideas of Rudi Blesh, Gunther Schuller, Frank Tirro, and others. As a non-academic discussion of what makes New Orleans jazz what it is this book is hard to top.

Further details of the book and its content can be accessed at: 

  http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Edarnhard/BuddyBolden.html

 

 

Jazz and the Jazz Age

New Publication by Daniel Hardie

Jazz and the Jazz Age: Searching for Meaning in a  Word

     iUniverse

     Bloomington 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9849-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9850-5 (e)

                      

Daniel Hardie’s new work - Jazz and the Jazz Age: Searching for Meaning in a  Word, the latest in his series of works on early jazz history, is now available at on-line booksellers.

     In this work Daniel Hardie traces the passage of a new form of music from beginnings in New Orleans to Chicago and New York during the heady years of the Roaring Twenties.

      A new word entered the language - Jazz -  a word that gave a new name to the decade - The Jazz Age. Audiences were dazzled by the new music that rapidly began to  dominate popular music in the US and moved on to conquer the world.

     It had an appealing sound, bringing with it this strange new  and powerful word that seemed to come from nowhere and survived the music of the Jazz Age. What did it mean?

You can get your print copy  or eBook of Jazz and the Jazz Age: Searching for Meaning in a  Word at:

https://www.iuniverse.com/en/bookstore

                  or on-line booksellers including: www.Amazon.com.

                         and   https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

      

      Daniel Hardie is the author of five previous works on jazz history:

The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz. 2000

Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style. 2002

The Ancestry of Jazz: A Musical Family History.2004

The Birth of Jazz: Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era.2006

Jazz Historiography: The Story of Jazz History Writing.2013

Author’s Website: http://tinyurl.com/nqaup

Early Jazz History in the Works of Daniel Hardie

Early Jazz History in the Works of Daniel Hardie

 Daniel Hardie started playing cornet in a boy's brass band at age 8, later played flute, then drum and bugle at High School, and after graduating in History and Psychology at Sydney University, played clarinet in the Paramount Jazz Band - the house band at the Sydney Jazz Club, of which was a founder member. He has a fascination for old boats and jazz recordings. Since retiring from the Australian Civil Service he has devoted himself to historical research and painting. He is a member of the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Society of Australian Genealogists and a former member of the Australian Psychological Society. During the 1990’s he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Sydney Maritime Museum. 

Daniel Hardie is the Convenor and Historical Director of The Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra dedicated to performance of music of the Elemental Jazz Era (1897-1907) with authentic instrumentation. 

 Recorded performances by the Buddy Bolden Orchestra may be heard at Daniel Hardie’s youtube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/HardieDan 

Daniel Hardie  also the founder and Moderator of the Facebook Jazz History Writing Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/150009498503017/?pnref=lhc 

Books by Daniel Hardie

•  Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style, - 2002 iUniverse. 
•  Jazz Historiography: The Story of Jazz History Writing, -published 2013 iUniverse. 
•  The Ancestry of Jazz: A Musical Family History, - published in 2004 iUniverse. 
•  The Birth of Jazz: Reviving the Music of the Bolden Era, - published 2007 iUniverse.
•  The Loudest Trumpet: Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz, the story of the music of Buddy Bolden the first jazz musician, - published in 2000 Writer's Club Press.
•  Jazz and the Jazz Age:Searching for Meaning  in a Word - published iUniverse 2020.

Daniel Hardie’s four books above, about the history of Elemental Jazz, portray its ancestry, beginnings, creators and development in the first twenty years of the 20th Century. 
In Jazz Historiography: The Story of Jazz History Writing the author tells of the efforts of historians to establish a reliable account of its origins and progress.  These publications are available a Amazon.com and Barns and Noble webpage.
Jazz and the Jazz Age: Searching for Meaning in a Word unravels the history  of jazz in the Roaring Twenties, and the strange history of the word jazz. 

 
Details of the above and other writings can be found at the following sites (best viewed with Safari): 

Authors website: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~darnhard/EarlyJazzHistory.html 

Daniel Hardie’s Jazz Blog: http://darnhard.blogspot.com/ 

The Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra Web Page: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~darnhard/Bolden-orchestra.html