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.
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
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
“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 OrchestraGeoffrey. 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, in1894 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.
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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. .
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