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.

PETER BOOTHMAN: GROWTH & BALANCE

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, Summer/Autumn, 1984

Feature articles dealing with musicians frequently ooze a rather oily complacency, as though the subject has now completed the growth process, answered all the questions (… got his shit together … found out where his head is at…). The finished, self-congratulatory tone of such interviews causes one to squirm. It is a relief to find that such a style is not always appropriate. As in the present instance, the picture is not finished; the account remains ambiguous and open-ended, it finishes with “… er…”

MELBOURNE

by Bruce Johnson

Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz, 1987

As in Sydney, the magnitude of jazz activity in Melbourne requires its own book. Melbourne has been a crucial centre of Australian jazz, in particular its more traditional styles. The contribution made by Melbourne to attitudes regarding the music has been sketched in some of the major essays in this volume. More detailed aspects of the subject are incorporated in the relevant shorter entries on individual musicians and bands. The purpose of this essay is to deal with matters which fall somewhere between the general and the particular, and which have been distinctive to or unusually important in Melbourne…

BERNIE McGANN

by Bruce Johnson

2MBS-FM Stereo FM Radio Programme Guide, June, 1985

Bernie McGann was born in Sydney on June 22, 1937. His father, a drummer, used to have musicians over on Sundays to listen to jazz records, including those of Ellington, Goodman, Garner, Teddy Wilson and Waller. The young McGann became hooked and started playing drums, deputising occasionally for his father. Perhaps it was this early experience which has made him so surefooted throughout the most perilous cross-rhythms. Before he bought his own drum kit, however, he heard some saxophone on record that particularly appealed to him, and at the age of 18 he became a budding alto player…