OBITUARIES

This folder includes obituaries for jazz musicians or persons of significance to the Australian jazz community, written by several contributors. Click on the INDEX box to access a list of obituaries contained in this folder.

OBITUARY: GRAEME BELL 1914-2012

by Bill Haesler OAM

Jazz In Australia Website, 2012

Pianist/bandleader/composer/artist Graeme [Gay] Emerson Bell AO, was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 7 September 1914, and died in Sydney NSW on 13 June 2012. Graeme studied classical piano as a child and was introduced to jazz by his younger brother Roger. They formed a dance band in 1935, played for local dances and functions until jazz took precedence and, in 1941, with like-minded friends, formed Graeme Bell’s Jazz Gang…

OBITUARY: BILLIE HOLIDAY 1915-1959

by Martin Chilton

The Independent, 17 July 2019

Billie Holiday was a true one-off: a wild, outspoken and forceful woman, who also happened to be one of the greatest singers that ever lived. It makes it all the sadder that her final days were so painful and that she died in such degrading circumstances in the early hours of 17 July 1959, at Harlem’s Metropolitan Hospital. She had been under arrest in her hospital bed for the previous five weeks. She was weak, underweight, bed-ridden and trying to fight off heart and liver failure…

OBITUARY: ERIC CHILD 1910-1995

by Dick Hughes

Australian Jazz And Blues, Vol 2, No 3, 1995

Eric Child, the ABC's man in jazz for more than 30 years, has died. He would have been 85 on April 27, 1995. An expert announcer (news, features, instant reporting, such as the arrival in Sydney of the Queen in 1963), Eric Child was 17 when he bought his first record, Buddy's Habit, by Red Nichols and His Five Pennies - the same Red Nichols who crops up most irregularly on late-hour television, improbably portrayed by Danny Kaye in the film called The Five Pennies…