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.
L-R, Gerry Gardiner,Col Nolan, John Sangster
THE EL ROCCO: AN ERA IN SYDNEY JAZZ
by Bruce Johnson
Jazz Magazine, Jan/Feb, 1983, March/April 1983, May/June 1983
At the top of William Street the last block on your left as you enter the Cross is an apartment building which, in the fifties, also had a room below street level, functioning somewhat listlessly as a plumber’s workshop and boiler room. When the owners decided to turn it into a more profitable space, the combination of its situation (on the edge of Sydney’s bohemian quarter), and the times (known retrospectively as the Beat Generation), made their decision relatively easy. Fashionable intellectual rebellion in the late fifties found its social forum in the Coffee Lounge…
Ade Monsbourgh
IS THERE AN AUSTRALIAN JAZZ?
by Bruce Johnson
Jazz Magazine, December 1981 and January/February, 1982
The debate on whether or not there is a distinctively Australian jazz rumbles like a perennially empty stomach, and with occasional bursts of flatulence. On both sides of the question there’s an abundance of simple-minded vigour, desperately romantic affirmations opposed to humourless and impatient denials. It was probably first suggested that there is such a thing as an Australian jazz spirit by the English when they heard the Bell band in 1947. But since then there has been little or no attempt to argue the point with any sustained attention to the evidence of the music itself…
Dave Dallwitz
DAVE DALLWITZ & THE SOUTHERN JAZZ GROUP
by Bruce Johnson
Jazz Magazine, 1982
This began with a request for some articles on Dave Dallwitz and traditional jazz in South Australia. It happened that at the time the request was made I was shortly to spend a few days in Adelaide, so I took the opportunity of interviewing not only Dave but also a number of musicians who had been associated with him during the days of the Southern Jazz Group (SJG), as well as several other individuals who were well placed to witness the events of that period…