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: PETER HUME 1940-2023
by Carola Hume
January, 2024
Peter Hume was born in Newcastle on Tyne, Northumberland, England on August 17, 1940, and died on September 28, 2023 in Oxenford, Queensland. His parents were Fred and Jean Hume. Sometime in the 1930s, several years before his marriage to Jean in 1936, Fred changed his surname by one letter, from Humm to Hume. Fred emigrated to Australia first before Jean and Peter, arriving on February 15, 1949 to join the UK company of Reckitt and Coleman’s Sydney office as a salesman. After Fred had established a home, Jean and Peter emigrated to Australia on the SS Orontes arriving in Sydney on November 18, 1949, Peter was then nine years two months old…
Chuck Yates with his dog Alice & daughter Stella
OBITUARY: CHUCK YATES 1936-2024
by Eric Myers
December 23, 2024
The jazz pianist, accompanist and teacher Chuck Yates was born in Bendigo, Victoria on February 4, 1936, and died in Sydney, New South Wales on December 19, 2024, aged 88. His father started the young Chuck on the piano, teaching him how to play a song with one finger. Subsequently Yates took some classical lessons and also some lessons with a local Bendigo musician whom Yates later described as “a hot-shot jazz piano player”. He met a drummer Alan Shuttleworth, who interested Chuck in music outside of what he was doing with scales. He and Shuttleworth jammed with a local Dixieland band. One day the trombonist in that band came in with a record and said “Listen to this funny music.” This was a group which foreshadowed the famous Australian Jazz Quartet with Errol Buddle on saxophone, Johnny Mason on bass, Jack Brokensha on vibes and Ron Loughhead, a piano player from Adelaide. “I just loved it and took to that music immediately”, Chuck told the writer Phil Sandford in 2012…
Jack Thorncraft
OBITUARY: JACK THORNCRAFT 1943-2024
by Eric Myers
January, 2025
The bassist Jack Thorncraft was born in Sydney on July 13, 1943 and died in December, 2024 in northern New South Wales. He is best-known as a freelancer in the modern jazz scene in Sydney, performing at the legendary jazz cellar El Rocco in the 1960s with musicians such as pianists Dave Levy and Tony Esterman, and also with Len Young’s quartet. From 1969-1972 he was in London working with Jon Hendricks, Ray Warleigh, Don Rendell, Stan Tracey, Humphrey Lyttelton. Back in Sydney, he was a member of Jazz Co-op, circa 1973-76, and the regular bass player with John Pochee’s hard-bop quintet The Last Straw. From the late '70s he was frequently associated with groups led by Laurie Bennett, John Hoffman (including his Big Band) and Julian Lee. He moved to Myocum, in northern NSW, in 1985…