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.

AN AUSTRALIAN SOUND: JAZZ IN MELBOURNE AND ADELAIDE 1941-51

by Bruce Clunies-Ross

Essay in book Australian Popular Culture, 1979

During the 1940s a distinct strain of jazz developed in Australia which was not simply attributable to the individual style of particular musicians or the sound of certain bands, but to the combination of these things with certain conventions of performance and composition into a genuinely expressive regional idiom. It was not the beginning of an interest in jazz in Australia. That goes back at least as far as 1924, only a year after the famous recordings of the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band and before the electrical recordings of masters like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, when Percy Grainger added to his already well-founded reputation for eccentricity by commenting favourably upon the music during his lecture-recital tour of the country…

DAVE DALLWITZ: THE CREATION OF A MYTH

by Norm Linehan

Jazz Magazine, January/February, 1983

Some months ago my attention was drawn to a book Australian Popular Culture, edited by Peter Spearritt and David Walker, published in 1979. It included a chapter by Bruce Clunies-Ross called “An Australian Sound: Jazz in Melbourne and Adelaide 1941-51.” While not actually awarding the title to Dallwitz, Clunies-Ross did purport to establish that between 1945 and 1950, with some assistance from Ade Monsbourgh, Dallwitz created the definitive sound of Australian jazz. This chapter is a farrago of errors of fact, misconceptions and wrong conclusions…

DAVE DALLWITZ & AUSTRALIAN JAZZ: A REPLY TO MR LINEHAN

by Bruce Clunies-Ross

Jazz Magazine, May/June, 1983

Mr Norm Linehan does not cite a shred of evidence to substantiate his attack on my contribution to Australian Popular Culture. His unmannerly accusation can therefore be dismissed as baseless prejudice. It appears Mr Linehan did not even bother to read my essay very carefully, since he implicates me in an argument I did not address at all. I did not try to define the sound of Australian jazz; I claimed there was an Australian sound, which is an entirely different thing. My title (“An Australian Sound”) was deliberately chosen to indicate this distinction, which I clarified in the opening paragraphs and elsewhere in my essay, conceding that it was not the only sound in Australian jazz at the time…