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.

ALL WHAT JAZZ?

by Kevin Jones

The Australian, October 6, 1995

The most important date in the postwar resurgence of jazz among the public was Sunday, December 8, 1957. It marked the television screening of the program The Sound of Jazz in the United States, part of the CBS series The Seven Lively Arts. It was the music form's most important step towards the public consciousness since television had replaced radio as the medium of mass entertainment. Nearly 38 years later, in a completely different world of popular music, pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky told me we were "in the golden era of Australian improvised music". Maybe, but is anybody listening?

ALL WHAT JAZZ? SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY?

by Bruce Johnson & Kieran Stafford

JazzChord, Oct/Nov, 1995

Kevin Jones's recent piece ‘All What Jazz?' (The Australian, 6/10 /95) presented a bleak and depressing picture of jazz in general, and jazz in Australia. Many working in jazz found it unrecognisable: the alleged decline of the jazz scene since Kevin's high period of 1958-1962; the disappearance of jazz from commercial radio; the failure of jazz CDs to sell; and the gloom of the Sydney scene, with out-of-work musicians and lack of venues. A number of Kevin's claims were demonstrably or apparently false…

AFTERWORD TO BLACK ROOTS WHITE FLOWERS: JAZZ THROUGH TO THE 1980s

by Bruce Johnson

Revised edition of “Black Roots White Flowers: A History of Jazz in Australia”, 1979

Reading Andrew Bisset's concluding comments to Black Roots White Flowers nearly ten years later I am struck by two things: on the one hand, how apposite certain of those comments were in the late seventies; and on the other, how the general picture he describes has altered during the intervening period. He refers to the momentum of Australian jazz, and in retrospect it seems clear that from the mid-seventies the music enjoyed what Ron Morey in Perth in 1977 had already called a ‘renaissance’, the biggest resurgence in activity for more than a decade. It is also true, however, that the general effect of this resurgence was progressively to modify the stylistic mixture of jazz in Australia. In 1979 Andrew noted the conspicuous vigour of traditional styles of jazz in this country. With due allowance for the flexibility of the notion of 'traditional' jazz, I think it has to be said that the 'renaissance' of the last decade has generally tended to alter the balance of things in favour of more progressive styles…