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.

THE BEST AUSTRALIAN JAZZ VOCALIST

by Ian Muldoon

November 28, 2023

Who’s the finest Australian jazz voice, of any gender, presently performing in Australia? Chris McNulty that’s who. Who’s the finest Australian jazz singer ever? Chris McNulty (I’m 84 and there may have been someone from the 1920s or 1930s or 1940’s better, but I doubt it.) Australian jazz voices like Michelle Nicolle, Vince Jones, Gian Slater, Joe Bebop Lane, Kristin Berardi, and Jo Lawry, may stir us too, but McNulty has a refined musical intelligence, deep understanding, leadership and communication skills, mastery of the bebop idiom after the likes of Vaughan, O’Day, and Carter, diction that rivals Sinatra’s and a warm sweet tone sans any sign of nasal intrusion which seems to affect female singers, and complete control of the ballad with an emotional wallop of lived experience…

FOREWORD TO JOHN BUCHANAN’S “EMPEROR NORTON’S HUNCH”

by Peter J F Newton

October, 1996

John Buchanan had a dream. I don't know just when he decided to translate dream into reality. What I do know is that about four years ago he presented to a large audience at Sydney Town Hall the first of several well-organised tributes to Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. He uses the finest traditional jazz performers locally available and some brought from interstate. These concerts, these well-rehearsed bands, are clearly imbued with the Lu Watters' spirit. But what exactly is that spirit? Let us examine the claim that his band was one of the most influential jazz bands in the history of jazz…

REVIEW OF 1948 MEMORIAL JAZZ CONCERT

by Dick Hughes

Sydney Review, December 1990

I'm far from being an inveterate concertgoer at the Sydney Town Hall and wouldn't be surprised if I had given more performances there (the first on Christmas Eve, 1955) than I have attended as observer and listener (the earliest I can remember was as a representative of the Daily Telegraph on 25 April, 1955). As a concert venue, the Town Hall is going dark for some time, and I believe it will be November 1992 before I can go again to such a concert as I attended there last month. Presented by John Buchanan and compered by Graeme Bell, it was called the 1948 Memorial Jazz Concert and was a tribute to the San Francisco revivalist musicians Lu Watters and Turk Murphy…