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: IAN MACGREGOR 1943-2022

A personal memory of a great friend

by Garry Lee

April 20, 2022

If you were into jazz guitar it didn’t matter whether you were Joe Pass, Martin Taylor or a teenage guitarist who had only become aware of jazz guitar the day before yesterday, you were Ian’s friend. In my case it was friend for life. Ian went out of his way to provide you with information and recordings of jazz guitar. Can you imagine this? In the early 1990s Joe Pass performed in Perth and Ian and I escorted him around our city. Joe actually asked Ian to make a recording of an album from the early 1960s of Joe that he had forgotten about. On this same trip Ian has the distinction of organising the first time Joe and Martin Taylor played together – and this happening in Perth, the world’s most isolated capital city…

OBITUARY: BOB BARNARD AM 1933–2022

by Bruce Johnson

May 16, 2022

Bob Barnard’s death is of course a deeply felt loss personal to his family and friends. It is also the loss to jazz of the country’s most gifted trumpeter emerging from the primarily traditionally based style. Apart from the memories of those of us who heard his work in live performance, he has left a massive body of recorded work that began with his first recording session on his sixteenth birthday with the band of his brother Len, and with whom in later life he would record a body of work for the Swaggie record label that firmly consolidated his pre-eminence. By 1952 the early public proclamation of his command was his unseating of fellow trumpet players Roger Bell and Frank Johnson in the Australian Music Maker poll…

OBITUARY: BOB BARNARD AM 1933-2022

by Loretta Barnard

Sydney Morning Herald & The Age, May 26, 2022

There aren’t many musicians who can boast an almost 70-year career at the top of their game. Jazz trumpeter Bob Barnard was one such musician, rare because from first till last, he dazzled. An unassuming man, he was more comfortable playing trumpet or cornet than speaking, and that comfort showed the minute he walked on stage, his virtuosity immediately apparent. That golden sound. He’s long been acknowledged as a trailblazer of Australian jazz…