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.

CHRIS McNULTY: VOCALIST

by Winthrop Bedford

Jazz Improv, Vol 7 Number 1, Winter 2007

Chris McNulty: Coming from a family of six, my folks were only able to provide the very basics. I used whatever tools I could access: imagination, pen, and paper — that was it. Reading the Bronte sisters and all those English classics were inspiring, lots of imagination there, some rich visual textures too. I'd heard very little jazz as a kid growing up except for singers like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. I was mesmerized by both. Still, in a way it was a great time to be young…

PHIL SLATER: MEDITATIONS ON SOUND

by Ian Muldoon

November 6, 2019

In the film Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980) the psychopathologist Edward Jessup experiments with sensory deprivation using a flotation tank. When immersed and external normal stimulae are removed - sounds, smells, touch, sight and taste - the mind seems to become extremely sensitive and expand outwards as if in search of stimulation. Similar sensitivity can be achieved by anyone, at least to a heightened degree, by the bushwalker, by the dawn surfer, the yoga practitioner, and by the quiet reader in Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. To these individuals such meditative states sometimes achieve a spiritual dimension described as “being in touch with Nature”…

JIMMY SHAW & THE GAIETY SWING BAND

by Max R Harris

Australian Jazz & Blues, Volume 1, No 2 Summer Edition, 1993-1994, and Volume 1, No 3, 1994

As a 14-year-old lad, it was almost impossible to contain my excitement whenever I arrived at the Gaiety Milk Bar in Oxford Street, Sydney. I would almost break into a run as I hurried to the back of the milk bar and pushed through the swinging doors to enter the sprung floor dance hall at the rear. It was 1948, and at that time nowhere in Australia could one hear a band that played the modern arrangements of Kenton, Herman, Ellington and Krupa et al with such conviction and fire. Run as a dance 'club' to overcome the strict licensing laws that prohibited profit-making on a Sunday, the Gaiety was a meeting place for the culturally progressive musicians, dancers and the fashion-conscious young people of Sydney…