BRUCE JOHNSON

This folder is dedicated to the writings of Professor A J B (Bruce) Johnson, perhaps best-known as the author of the Oxford Companion to Australian jazz (1987). A prolific writer on Australian jazz, his articles on this website already appear in many folders, and in the fulness of time they will hopefully be uploaded to this folder. Click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

OBITUARY: WALLY WICKHAM 1924-1996

by Bruce Johnson

JazzChord, Mar/Apr, 1996

Wally Wickham was born in Sydney on February 10, 1924, and died in Sydney on March 17, 1996, of cancer, aged 72. This is not a subjective ‘appreciation’ of Wally. I could write that, and it would be warm with respect and affection, based on numerous gigs with him over the years including what I think was probably his last. Apart from the musical gratifications of working with him, if I were writing a eulogy, it would include reference to the sense of privilege and excitement I experienced when I began doing gigs with him and his colleagues in the 70s...

OBITUARY: ROGER HUDSON 1934-1986

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, Winter 1986

Although born in Richmond, Melbourne, on January 1, 1934,  Roger Hudson had moved to Adelaide before he began playing piano. Early bands with which he worked were John Pickering’s Cross Road Jazz Band, the Adelaide University Four, and the first of his own Baron Hudson’s Eumenthol Jazz Jubes. He was a vigorous proselytiser for the music before the fashionable boom of the early 60s, and was co-founder of the Adelaide Jazz Society in 1956, remaining Secretary until 1961…

OBITUARY: JACK ALLAN 1929—1995

by Bruce Johnson

JazzChord, Aug/Sep, 1995

One of the most important visits to  Australia by an American jazz musician was that undertaken on the initiative  of Graeme Bell by the cornetist Rex Stewart in 1949. This was the first direct contact for  the general public with ‘the source’ since the ‘Coloured Idea’ tour of 1928. Apart from  the Bell band, one of the few groups selected to work with the American was the  Sydney 6, an arrangement so mutually congenial as to result in a number of recordings for Wilco. The leader of the Australian group was the pianist Jack Allan…