ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

JOE LANE STORIES

by Paul Pax Andrews

Extempore 2, May, 2009

According to Bruce Johnson's Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz, published in 1987, Joe Lane had 'the status of a minor legend in Sydney, a cult figure in the jazz underground’. Anecdotes abound about his eccentricities, but the legacy he left is greater than those funny stories. His music and his warmth touched many peoples' lives and he is sorely missed by his friends since he passed away in 2007…

TED NETTELBECK: HE TESTED POSITIVE FOR JAZZ

by Sylvan (Schmoe) Elhay

December 30, 2021

When May Nettelbeck (nee Ross) delivered up a baby boy in Streaky Bay on 4 January 1936 she and her husband Harry would never have imagined that 85 years later their son, Theodore John, would be Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Adelaide and one of Australia’s best-known and most respected jazz pianists. The family lore was that Harry had been a talented, small country town dance-band pianist. But he died on active service during WW II and could not have influenced young Ted all that much. But his grandmother, when Ted turned five, arranged for the aptly-named Mrs Crotchet to teach the young boy the classical approach to playing piano and some basic music theory. She taught him until, when he was about 12, he began lessons (paid for by a Repat scholarship) with a teacher who persisted for about three years but then gave up, telling Ted he was wasting his time because he never practiced...

WARREN DALY

Interviewed by Mike Williams

The Australian Jazz Explosion, 1981

The Daly-Wilson Big Band is an anachronism, for the simultaneous arrival of the Age of Electronics and the Age of Rock in the mid-1950s effectively ended the big band era… But the big bands provided more than money for musicians. They were the great training grounds and they gave their own particular kind of thrill to players and listeners alike. So a few survivors lingered, bands led by men such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Si Zentner and Buddy de Franco. There were others, too, where the musicians gathered for their own enjoyment, seldom giving public performances. These were, and are, the rehearsal bands. It was against this background that two young Sydney musicians, drummer Warren Daly and trombonist Ed Wilson, friends since their early teens, got together in 1969 to form a band which bridged the two worlds of jazz and rock…