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.

GRAEME BELL AT SEVENTY

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, Winter/Spring, 1984

On the occasion of Graeme Emerson Bell’s 70th birthday, it is appropriate to remind ourselves of his great contribution to jazz. The list of his achievements is formidable: national and international tours, recordings, concerts, significant residencies, television series, radio broadcasts, a study tour of the US, and awards like the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977 and the MBE in 1978...

PAUL FURNISS: MORE THAN A TRAD PLAYER

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, Winter, 1986

Paul Anthony Furniss was born in Sydney on 2 November, 1944. The first memories he has of instrumental experience of music go back to early childhood when someone gave him a kazoo, prophetically shaped like a saxophone. Things got a bit more serious when he began the descant recorder under the tutelage of Victor McMahon whose long teaching career also benefited players like Mal Cunningham and Don Burrows...

THE SYDNEY JAZZ CLUB: 30 YEARS ON

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, July/August and Spring, 1983

The Australian Jazz Conventions have been crucial in the development of our traditional jazz. It is amply documented that they provided both a musical forum and an inspirational sense of community for the early Melbourne, Adelaide, and Hobart musicians. The proposition also holds good, a little later, for Sydney. For many formative years, the nucleus of traditional jazz in that city was the Sydney Jazz Club...