Vale Jimmy Little.

I first posted this on THURSDAY, 27 JANUARY 2011

Jimmy Little, singer songwriter and gentleman, was a very important figure in race relations in Australia.

He was loved in every household, black, white and brindle while the government was still 'stealing' mixed race children from their mothers. 

He was a successful recording artist because he possessed such a pretty voice but live audiences loved him because he loved them. His mate Brendon on Radio National this afternoon talked about his stagecraft but I would have to ask him to explain what he meant. Stagecraft suggests to me some degree of manipulation of the audience but Jimmy never did that. He did not sing to them as much as sing with them. He shared the stage with his audience as if they were all at a camp fire sing along. 

His death from complications following a kidney transplant was announced this afternoon, so I hope a repeat of this post is appropriate. I played on one record with him in 1963, but we shared the stage at a hundred live performances and Jimmy, if anyone deserves for the Royal Telephone to be answered, it is you.
Jimmy was a special human being and I am honoured to have known him. Here is my tribute as it appeared on this blog for Australia day, 2011.

Australia Day 2011.

Advance Austalia Fair-go! 

(A tribute to Jimmy Little)

Into the bay the tall ships came.

Brave, desperate, driven.

God given arrogance

hidden behind social graces,

a veneer of civilisation.

Men, custodians of thirty, forty,

fifty thousand years of culture.

Older, wise, inclusive,

watched them come

to a land where none knew

coal and iron slept.

‘A land for a people,

A people for a land!’

It started then,

this short history

written by victors

as it always is.

While Biame’s people,

weakened
by European pathogens,

misunderstood,
dispossessed,

shot by Christians,

but destroyed
ultimately by despair.

This must be the year

when 'The Apology',

wrought in guilt,

delivered in hope

should be judged.

Man to man,

woman to woman,

are we succeeding?

Are we embracing

our common humanity?

Now, using wealth
gathered from 
less fortunate men,

who make

from coal and iron

the transient artefacts

so desired;

we can pay others to 'fix it',

if we want.

Or we can look
into every eye

to seek
our common heritage
as humans
with love and respect,
and return it.

But, as in ‘The greatest love of all’,

It is our children
who ‘lead the way’.

Raised in schools
where so many faces of races

have places,

our children already

live the agenda
of inclusion;

Citizens of our Accidental Multicultural Society.

Dedicated with love and appreciation to Australian Aboriginal musician and activist Jimmy Little, an 'accidental bridge builder', and his feisty wife Marge, the ‘power behind the throne’.
PS. I heard yesterday that Marge died a few months ago... and Jimmy would have wanted to go with her, so he did.

...............................


Still struggling a bit with the poem but don't we all!
Tall ships pic courtesy National Library.

Paul Gauguin meats Mr Bean (sic).

Sure I learned French for three years and actually passed my junior high exams. In those days there was no oral test, so my accent must have been atrocious. But if I am anything I am adventurous, so aboard the Paul Gauguin in December 1999, where crew members were French, practice time came again, the first since 1972. (see ‘Parlay Voo Fronsay’, posted May 11, 2010)

For such a small ship, MV Paul Gauguin offered a wonderful choice of cuisine, with three restaurants, one exclusively French, so that is where we ate. Entertainer Ian Cooper, violinist enfant terrible and his barrister wife Kellie were funny and sophisticated dinner companions to myself, the irascible Milton ‘garden gnome’ Saunders and Monsieur Laurie Bennett who, for the duration of the Millennium Cruise around the islands of Tahiti, insisted he was French and pronounced his name ‘Bennay’.

So our evening meals were long drawn out affairs with repartee and laughter, lubricated with oodles of free Coonawarra Cabernet. (We drank the entire stock of Coonawarra over the almost three weeks of the cruise, the purpose of which was to be right on the International Date Line at midnight December 31 so we were the ‘first to enter the new millennium’). For that dubious privilege, almost three hundred Americans shelled out a reported fifty thou a berth, mais apres tout, we were there all expenses paid and were denied nothing in return for playing a few leisurely two hour shows! (We were worth every penny!)

However, as is not unusual, I made a goose of myself. I had decided early on to go through the menu from top to bottom and try every dish. I have eaten kangaroo, crocodile, emu, rabbit, wild duck, witchetty grub and in Timor I once ordered Kambing, but swear I was served Anging. It tasted a bit strong as expected and was defintiely preferrable to witchetties, but I say it was probably dog on the (admittedly circumstantial) evidence of one observation.

Awoken at 4am by a scratchy tape of a mullah calling his flock to morning prayers while he snored on, I dressed and walked outside the Soe, (pronounced so-eh) Hotel. There in the gloom was a kitchen wallah carrying a carcase. I asked him what it was and he answered ‘anging’. Dogs are to Timor what cows are to India, except there is nothing sacred about the yellow curs harvested from town dumps. But I digress.

Towards the end of our Tahiti adventure, the highlight of which was a three day festival of song and dance on a mountain peak amphitheatre, where young men and women display their bodies and skills in a colourful, noisy and anarchic traditional ritual, during which mates are chosen and marriages organised, I was nearing the end of my menu cracking odyssey. There remained only one untried dish, so I gave the pronunciation my best shot and ordered. I did note Kellie’s raised eyebrow and in retrospect should have realised I had gone too far when the waiter, a cheeky Gallic charmer, laughed as he recorded my naiveté in his order book, no doubt adding in his mirth-effected scrawl; ‘Australien idiot’.

Anyone who saw Mr Bean take himself to a posh restaurant for his pathetic birthday 'bash' will know what is coming but in my hubris, although I did see that episode, I missed the connection as did everyone except le smartarse garcon. Later, during confession, Kellie said she had admired my savoir faire as, in my improving accent, I ordered 'Boef à l'Americaine'. When the dish arrived Milton went close to throwing up and Laurie had to leave for a ‘breath of fresh air’ but I was stuck with no option but reluctant heroism.

Eventually the bottom of the dish revealed no clown face or printed ‘gotcha!’ But the real joker, the head waiter appeared by my side and smugly offered seconds.
I had succeeded in eating the disgusting mess by applying immaculate self control and kept it down with dogged determination, but like any sane mountain climber, one Everest is enough and I declined politely, while coming ever so close to advising him to ‘fuck off, you supercilious bastard!’

Mr Bean was able to secrete his ignorance in sugar bowls, vases, ash trays, under place mats and even managed to deposit some in the purse of an adjacent diner, but with cheating impossible under the unwavering surveillance of our eagle eyed barrister, I ate every last morsel of what an English menu would have listed as ‘Steak Tartare’. Minced steak with raw egg and diced onion, served raw and running with blood!

No, my face is sunburnt is all!

Peter Young is an exceptionally personable young man who sold advertising for Channel 3 Newcastle but also played drums. It was in his drumming persona that he managed to embarrass himself and give me a gift of pride and a paroxysm of laughter that multiplied his discomfort.

(This is a view of Shoal Bay near the gig we shared at Nelson Bay RSL Club, and the lower picture is of wildlife one encounters regularly wandering the beaches.)


However, our audience that day was the usual mix of retirees, old couples huddled together over their one beer of the day, a few elderly singles filling in a boring afternoon and unusually, one young couple. The man was darkly handsome with brown-grey skin that glowingly covered his muscular body. But for all his beauty, he was eclipsed by his companion.

Some girls are blessed with lucky genes and she had them all. Tall, with all her bits in the right places and of excruciatingly attractive proportions, she was dressed to leave nothing to the imagination except her phone number. I missed their entry, being engrossed in the dots and lines of a difficult bass part but Peter's eyes followed them all the way as he mumbled ‘Wow! Holy Zildjian!' and such.

Drummers have a reputation as connoisseurs of physical beauty. Actually, they are no less inhibited than the rest of us, but they do have opportunity. Drum charts contain such directions as ‘play sim 20 bars’. This gives them twenty bars to appreciate whatever else is there to be seen. So, despite his natural decency and shyness, Peter could not contain himself and had to share.

We had reached the end of the set when he jabbed me in the ribs with a drum stick and in an excited stage whisper directed my attention to the subject of his unabashed appreciation.

I looked to where he was pointing to see a spectacularly beautiful woman stand and walk away from her companion. Very short shorts and halter top were in artistic contrast to her lightly tanned and flawless skin, glowing blonde hair and dazzling smile competing with glistening hazel eyes as she swung towards us.

‘Get a look at that!’ he growled again when she approached to stand so close he could have touched her.

But it was me she was looking at and I felt Peter’s disappointment as she blessed me with her husky greeting. I stepped from the stage to take her proffered hands and gently kissed her smiling face.

‘Hello gorgeous!’ I laughed, with a glance at Peter. ‘What a surprise!’
‘Hi dad,’ she answered, correctly assessing the situation and throwing Peter a consolation flash as he turned to slink away, face red and head bowed.
‘Thought we’d surprise you.’

I called him back.
‘Come here Dopey,’ I laughed. ‘Come and meet my daughter Jessica!’
He did and she kissed his cheek too.

More Joy. (continued).

Jim McBeath’s impeccable arithmetical instruction was soon forgotten. Not many weeks after Joy Mulligan had been told her speedometer reading must be divided by six and multiplied by ten to approximate kilometres per hour, she was pulled over.

As they do, the motorcycle cop parked his shining white BMW behind her car, withdrew his booking sheets from the pannier and took down her registration number. Meanwhile, Joy, consummate jazz singer and delightfully evil little bugger, was working up a reservoir of tears behind her big blue eyes.

By the time Constable Plod arrived beside her open window, she presented a picture of devastated innocence.
‘Do you know what speed you were doing, driver?’
‘Only ninety,’ she sobbed, indicating her old MPH speedometer.
‘I clocked you at a hundred and forty five!’
‘A hundred and forty five!’ she repeated, shocked. “No way this old car can do more than ninety!’
He looked more closely and the penny dropped.
‘Ninety miles, he corrected, that’s almost a hundred and fifty. Didn’t you know?’

With a good Catholic name like Mulligan she was probably OK with a Saturday night fib that could be confessed away on Sunday.

‘How silly!’ she cried. ‘Of course it is!’
Tears flowed as those big eyes pleaded for understanding.
‘Oh, I am so sorry, Officer! I had no idea!’

He softened.
‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘No more than sixty-five on that speedo. OK?’
She swallowed hard and smiled her best winner.
‘ Sixty-five,’ she repeated as if memorising a lesson. ‘Sixty-five. Right, got it. Thanks you officer!’
His hands left her window sill.
‘Take care.’ He advised as he turned back towards his bike.

She pushed the stick into reverse in her anxiety to get away and let out the clutch.
Back the car jumped, narrowly missing the retreating officer and knocking his machine off its stand, stopping with its bumper in contact with his newly scratched paint.

He reappeared to find her slumped in the seat with more tears running down her lying little cheeks.
‘Am I under arrest now?’ she cried as he stopped safely short of her door.

‘Madam!’ he shouted. ‘You are not under arrest. I never want to see you again!’ He then stepped forward and leaned into her window to spit his anger.
‘Get the hell out of here!’

Even before he had struggled his cycle to its wheels, she was a half kilometre along the highway, speeding ahead. She could hardly wait to tell the story.

Colonoscopy three

Peter Cairns, organist, pianist, singer and entrepreneur, died four years ago from cancer of the colon, as they say, survived by his wife Suzanne and three infants, the youngest only two.

Pete was one of the toughest blokes I have ever met. His life story is one of overcoming adversity and of hard work. And in a way, it was his work ethic that killed him.

Always in a hurry, he could scoff a steak in less time than I could swallow a sprout. There was never enough time to fit everything in, but his professional preparation for gigs was always impeccable. He brought the whole box and dice and lumped it all in and set it up without help. Lighting and sound, incidental music tapes, bags of scores, one for each instrument covering every song in the repertoire and one special bag that looked like the others, but no matter which instrument you played, that bag was visited. In it was a selection of the best spirits money could buy, free with compliments from Pete, that saved us many dollars in visits to the bar!

But that was not all he did. He had a music store, repaired and hired pianos in the hundreds and in the last few years of his life started a corporate garbage disposal service, which he ran solo. He made money but he treated his body like the enemy. Pills were popped to keep going and he never complained about being sick or having too much to do. No time to be sick, he just kept on.

But the lump and what it was doing to his bowel could not be ignored. He finally deigned to take himself to a doctor who diagnosed bowel cancer and ordered him into hospital immediately. Typically, Pete said he was too busy now and could he ‘have it after Christmas’.

The doctor told him if he didn’t get it our right away he ‘wouldn’t see Christmas’ but it was all too late. They did what they could, took out the primary and many secondaries over two operations, extending his life by many months, but it spread to his lungs and eventually his brain.

Typically, he worked right up until his death, doubled over and in great pain, dulled enough by whatever Medicine could offer for his last performance to be as professional as any other.

But Pete was the mate who urged me to have my first colonoscopy. There in the hospital, with tubes going God knows where, clearly just hanging in, he was more concerned with my health than his own.

So, after visiting my GP yesterday for his verdict, I thought it important to pass on the results and urge you, despite having to drink ‘prep’ and sit on toilets every few minutes for a day or so, to get tested. If there are symptoms or even if you are merely worried, go do it.

Five polyps were removed, three pre-cancerous in this, my third colonoscopy. With ten polyps gone, I guess I am a veteran of ‘innuendo’. I have never had symptoms. So if it had not been for Pete, I would not be here either. Some people leave holes in our lives when they go but he left a crater.

Joy oh Joy! (Mulligan)

Her car was old, so old we were not surprised Joy Mulligan’s little Toyota got the blame when she always seemed to arrive late for the gig at Tuggerah Lakes Memorial. Not very late mind, just enough to cause me, the person responsible, to suffer palpitations as curtain time and her arrival seemed to happen together. For those who do not know Joy, she is a tiny (under 5ft) red headed bundle of scatty Jazz talent and one of my favourite people.

She did have a long way to come, over a hundred and fifty kilometres north from Sydney along the F3 where the speed limit was basically 110KPH, so speeds up to a hundred and twenty kept most drivers under the radar. But her constant complaint was that her old car could not get there.
‘Bloody stupid thing!’ she would rave. ‘Can’t get it over ninety!’

This went on for so long we eventually learned to relax as time ran out night after night until Jim McBeath, mate, veteran drummer and congenital smartarse, innocently asked:
‘Umm, Joy, what model Toyota is it?’
‘Sixty-five, why?’
‘I see, so what’s its top speed?’
‘Only ninety. Why?’
‘Kilometres?’
‘Of course, that’s what the signs say, dummy!’

Jim paused while he did the arithmetic.
‘Joy, old mate, your speedometer is in miles,’ he laughed. ‘You’ve been doing nearly a hundred and fifty!’
Her hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh shit!’ she said as I looked at my watch. ‘Sorry guys.’
Just in case you missed it, she was not upset because she had been seriously speeding.
She was devastated her long time excuse had passed its use by date!

Diva in a dive.

At South Sydney Leagues Club in the Will Dower Sounds band with Ricky May, late sixties, I witnessed something that was to me at once amazing and sad. Carmen is a name that has been adopted by generations of strippers, but Carmen Christie, appearing that day was unique. She was a stripper who sang or a singer who stripped depending on the eye and ear of the beholder.

Well, it was a Sunday, so I guess what happened was not totally out of place. Carmen finished her routine of sensual undressing, a garment coming off at the end of each song, bawdy ditties all, until at last, completely nude, she was chased off to thunderous applause from her appreciative audience of music lovers and pervs. But then, completely unrehearsed, she came back, placed a chart on each music stand and hurried back to stage front and the microphone.

She was no longer nude. A ring had been clipped around her neck from which hung ankle length strings of beads. Of course her pink nippled and medically enhanced breasts protruded dramatically from between the cascade of blue baubles as she moved up to thank her audience while we boggled at the title of her chosen encore.

Les Dempsey on piano offered an arpeggio to give her the key. She paused for effect then started low and built the tension while the room hushed, first in surprise and then in awe as her voice swelled to fill the room. We were all caught up in the totally unexpected as she emotionally, dramatically and sweetly seduced us into her story of the semi-classical and totally religious song, Jerusalem.

It was bizarre. But at the end, with the audience ignoring her semi-nudity and applauding her musical talent, I watched her leave, round undulating buttocks peeping proudly between swirls of tinkling glass and wondered what might have been.

Samurai in Cooma

When I was just old enough to understand, Great Uncle Owen told us he had been driving his T model Ford along Church Street Parramatta, when a red faced copper jumped onto the running board and demanded he ‘follow that car’!
I mean, didn’t every boy dream of the day? And Great Uncle Owen, at least sixty, still a boy at heart, excitedly told us how he depressed the second pedal. The second pedal was the one that got Henry into the higher of her two gears. Then, despite his terror, he put the pedal to the metal and raced in pursuit of the offender at over twenty miles an hour!

So, with that bit of family lore stowed away, imagine my surprise when I saw it re-enacted in 1970 in Cooma. We were there with Tokyo by Night, a sophisticated show with an all Japanese cast. ‘Sophisticated’ back in the early seventies meant nudity and we did have topless dancers. To round out the show in the age of Shintaro the Samurai, two young men performed acrobatic sword fights worthy of Iga Ninja Tombei the Mist and the evil Kooga Ninja!

Into this mix came our piano player, a single and normal red blooded young man, tormented nightly by beguiling smiles and the tantalising proximity of a cornucopia of secondary sexual characteristics! Well, he began paying attention to one of the girls, sitting beside her on the bus, helping with her English-Japanese phrase book and basically flirting, as you do.

What our young piano player did not know was that one of the young acrobatic swordsmen was enamoured of the same topless dancer. So when the warrior entered her room early one afternoon, he found the master of the keyboard there, in the process of liberating her chesty lumps to get a closer look, or maybe perform a digital examination. The Japanese lad took one look and let out a cry that could have been surprise, anger, or embarrassment and took off.

Digital Dave continued his attempt to undress the patient while she gesticulated in the direction of her departed colleague and tried to pull out of the clinch. Eventually, she regained control of her shirt and pushed him away, convincing him it was not a good time and he should leave. He was almost to the door when Shintaro burst through, sword raised, yelling an ancient Japanese battle cry which, roughly translated, meant ‘fuck off you mongrel bastard’ and brought the sword down where Busy Fingers had been a moment earlier

By the time Shintaro had jerked his sword free of the door jamb, Liberace was diving head first through the window, taking the fly screen with him into the garden shrubs. He rolled to his feet and was up and running just as his assailant came through the door and the race was on.

Meanwhile, Barry Stewart, legendary Sydney drummer and I were enjoying a quiet lunch together at nice Cooma restaurant, happily relaxing over a bottle of Chablis when we saw a blur of presto piano flashing by the picture window, then a long curved blade, a screaming Japanese warrior and last of all our leader, Gerry Goodwin, trumpet player, and President of the Musicians Union Sydney Branch, in hot pursuit!

Samurai was gaining and Gerry was fading as a Police F100 Black Maria came abreast. By the time Barry and I had reached the street, glasses of white in hand, Gerry had veered into the traffic, leapt onto the running board of the police vehicle and frighted the shit out of two young constables, as he yelled through the open window ‘follow that samurai!’

Cameras should have been running as the Keystone Cop sequence continued. The startled driver jammed on his brakes, throwing Gerry to the ground where he lay until the two Plods rushed up to see if the mad man was OK. Meanwhile, Lothario and Tojo had disappeared up the hill and around a corner.

Epilogue: Barry and I returned to our meal and our wine, realising there was nothing we could do and left it to fate. Fate was kind. Hirohito must have calmed down because the whole cast turned up that night with no sign of injury and all seemed to have returned to normal. Well, not quite.

From then on, the seat beside Tokyo Rose remained vacant all the way to Canberra and beyond.

Pic courtesy http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=2&oq=Keystone+cops&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSAU_enAU376AU378&q=keystone+cops+pictures
Well worth a visit.

Delltones, take two.

Donald Mills was the last of the original Mills Brothers, the four part harmony group that set the standard in the thirties. Unlike their contemporaries, the Ink Spots, they really were brothers.
Through his later years, despite losing part of a leg (a cruel penalty for smoking), Donald kept performing and his rich velvet voice never faltered.

He toured Australia with his son John for G’day Hollywood Productions in 1999 and fortunately, I was chosen to be in his backing band. Over eighty then, he sang, conducted and imitated his way through lovely 'trombone' solos in their jazz hit Opus One, an antidote to their saccharine Paper Doll and kept the energy flowing through the hour long show.

He died later that year, but the legacy had passed to younger groups and for a time in the sixties, singing groups multiplied. We had the Lettermen, Hi-lows, Beach Boys, The Supremes, Howard Morrison from NZ and many more but in Oz, the Delltones were our favourites, identified by the tall, long faced Pee Wee Wilson. I last saw Pee Wee in 2006, heading out of Rosslyn Harbour near Proserpine, Queensland on his big fishing boat when he yelled across the water, directing me to the fuel wharf.

He didn’t recognise me of course. Forthy years earliker, I was a young and faceless studio musician at Festival Records doing the best I could to make my way, anxious, determined and in the end, relieved to have survived in a world where one bad session and the phone stops ringing. That recording, Get a Little Dirt on Your Hands, became their best seller to date..

About then, their manager approached Dennis Wong, owner of Chequers, the most famous night club in Sydney and the place to establish credentials. Dennis had no experience of singing groups and I got the impresssion he was guided more by overseas fame than his own judgment but he agreed to an audition.

So, there we were at rehearsal with the four young singers along stage front and sitting at the nearest table were Dennis and Bill Watson, their manager. We launched into the repertoire and they did sing well. But they were not the famous Mills Brothers or Ink Spots so Dennis was not sure what to make of it all. He was clearly impressed, but his verdict floored us.

He got up from the table giving every impressison he would hire them, smilingly nodding his approval as he looked over each of the four, then turned to Bill.

‘Velly nize!’ he said in his Chinese accented English. ‘How much you wan?’
The fee was quoted and Denis thought for a bit then pointed to Pee Wee and Noel.

‘I take two!’

The sounds of silencer.

Tony Brady became a very successful Sydney based theatrical agent but before that, he had a short life as young Frank Sinatra. He certainly looked like him and sang well enough, but unfortunately he peaked before tribute shows became fashionable. Needing a good backing band, he approached me to put together a jazz group to support his show.

At the time, I worked at Elim, the wedding reception house at Croydon in Sydney with John Speight, pianist and long time director of the Manly Jazz Festival. One night when our regular bass player was away, he booked Ron Martin. Ron was the best I had heard. His strong harmonic framework and feel made such an impression that I asked him to join the Tony Brady show group. He accepted, then recommended Loretta Lawson for piano and Laurie Watkins on drums. We had a band.


Frank Sinatra Pictures

It exceeded my expectations. It had life, it swung, we all shared a common feel and all read well. Unfortunately Tony’s show didn’t attract enough work for my band to become a permanent unit but we all kept in contact and did gigs together as often as possible. So it was that Ron and I found ourselves playing together in the late night band at Chequers Nightclub.

Ron always parked his Kombi in a vacant lot right opposite Chequers back door and often invited me in for a coffee or a drink before I faced the long drive home to Cabramatta. From the back lane, a passage led past the kitchen, ending back stage at the dressing rooms where international stars like Shirley Bassey and many more, including the outrageously gay Francis Faye put on their finery.

Ron’s Kombi was also his home and where he kept his impressive arsenal. Within easy reach were a Bowie knife, a high powered rifle with scope, a Luger pistol and a 22 Browning automatic rifle. I assure you he had no criminal intent, but as he said; ‘there’s no point owning the bloody things unless they’re there when you need them!’ It makes sense, but only if you owned them. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me now but seemed OK back then.

On this occasion, in the early hours after work, as we drank our way through half a flagon of claret, he produced his latest toy, just received from a gunsmith in Adelaide. Out came a beautifully crafted wooden box about eight inches long by three by three, dovetail jointed with a sliding lid, handmade by a master.

With great ceremony, he opened it to reveal, packed in tissue paper, a brand new silencer, steel blue and, he said, ready to go. I had no idea why he needed a silencer and didn’t think to ask. I was a country boy, given my first pea-rifle at thirteen, then the legal age to carry firearms. So I was more interested in the function of the thing. How it worked was not obvious. I doubted it would work and said so. Then, like a pair of naughty little boys, we slid back the side door, taking the assembled 22 with silencer and stood in the lane wondering how we could safely try it out.

I pointed out the kerbside drain that came from under the night club, so Ron stuck the barrel up and let it off. We had no idea a silencer needs space around it to work and up a drain pipe, it didn’t work at all. His faster than sound ammo didn’t help either, so the result was an almighty ka-boon that echoed through the building and off every wall for miles.

Inside the kitchen, where the drain started as a floor vent, the sound must have been deafening. After our ears recovered from the blast, we heard falling crockery, screaming Chinese ladies and terrified chefs, waiters and washer-uppers. Cacophony erupted inside and we ran.

Within five seconds we were in the Kombi and off. By the time somebody appeared at the door, Ron’s number plate was unreadable through a screen of blue and black exhaust smoke. I can still see his bearded bony face, dentures clamped in fear and determination as he pushed his little clapped out engine to maximum acceleration, staring ahead, lumbering up the lane, lights off, until we disappeared into the Sydney night, in urgent need of a laundry.

Fools rush in…

Herbert Khaury arrived for rehearsal looking normal. His alter ego, Tiny Tim was well dressed, tall, normal build and spoke in a normal voice. The rehearsal was perfunctory, just the songs. No gags, no problems!

TT rarely closed the door unless he was actually dressing so it was that just before the show I saw him in his dressing room, stuffing wads of newspaper into the pockets of his suit. As I watched, he transformed himself from neat and trim to crumpled and pear shaped. That should have told me something but as you know, I can be a bit thick

I liked his one liners, like: ‘Never hit your grandma with a shovel. It makes a bad impression on her mind!’ But his signature song, ‘Tip Toe Through the Tulips’, was a bit infra dig for an aspiring jazz guitarist like myself, backing up pop stars while waiting for the big jazz gig that visited but never moved in.

During his first show, as he falsettoed through the repertoire, tossing his curls and casting his one-liners, I noticed his ukulele was out of tune. Not a lot, mind you, just enough to offend my precious jazz trained ears. So, during intermission I tuned it.

In the second show, his in-tune ukulele melded into the sound of Billy Burton's orchestra. He did cast me a glance so I smiled my acceptance of imagined gratitude.
After the show we were having a drink with the cast when his manager drew me aside. Expecting a thank you for tuning the ukulele, I was floored by what he said.

“Did you tune TT’s uke?”
He wasn’t smiling, so I put my face back into neutral and admitted I had.
“I know you meant well, but don’t do it again. He likes it out of tune!”

It’s a roach old cock!

It is comforting to know our Customs Service is alert and thorough. Arriving home from our South Sea Island odyssey, Oriana docked at the International Terminal and we were subjected to the full monty. I don’t know what they were looking for, but they peered into everything except our body cavities. In my bag I had a new camera, an electric typewriter and my electric watch that had worked for about ten hours, all bought in Suva. Apparently I had exceeded the limit and was required to pay import duty. If the watch had been working, I would have worn the useless thing and been spared.

So I was a bit miffed, more so knowing that the young man getting the once over from the adjacent officer had left Sydney with a derelict guitar in a good case and came back with a duty free Stratocaster, the old guitar now bobbing around mid Pacific. But my problem was nothing compared to Peter’s.

Attention was drawn to his raised voice as he protested. The officer’s gloved hand held a tiny dirty looking scrap of something, so tiny I couldn’t make out what it was. But it was generating grave concern among the protectors of our borders who gathered around, handcuffs at the ready.

“What’s this?”
“It’s a roach, innit!”
“I see, so its marijuana and you admit it is your property.”
“Waddaya mean ‘my property’?”
“You knew it was there. Right?”
“A course not!”
“But it was in your luggage so you must have known.”
“Listen mate,” he concluded with impeccable logic,
“If I’d a known it was there, I would a smoked it wouldn’t I!”

Mellow Yellow in Suva.

In the music industry, the busier we became the less we saw of other players and tended to become insulated within our own little circles. So when Peter Power turned up for the Oriana gig with Renee Geyer, although I knew the name, I was surprised and delighted by his energetic and competent guitar playing.

Coming up in music through R and R exposed young musicians to some nasty drugs, so if a pot habit was the limit of its legacy, you were lucky. It is a fallacy that marijuana helps musicians play better and there is no way Warren Daly would tolerate a drug taker. So Peter never let on he liked a smoke and I was not aware of it until Fiji.

Craig Kerchner, our piano player and I were wandering around Suva when we heard a kerfuffle and saw Peter, red faced and angry clutching a brown paper bag, yelling and pointing up the street. His Cockney accented spluttering was almost intelligible but we got the essentials.

He had been asking among the local likely lads where he could buy some pot. Of course where there is a need there is a merchant, so a young Indian told him to wait, disappeared and reappeared within minutes to exchange a bulging brown paper bag for Peter’s ten dollars. Then, not waiting for Peter to examine the merchandise, he headed off at a brisk walk.

Peter’s cry of anger coincided with the appearance of a navy blue beskirted constable, who took in the tableau and sprinted after the alleged thief yelling for the lad to stop. We arrived in time to be treated to a Road Runner replay as pursued and pursuer disappeared into the distance.

Peter was still carrying on so we looked into the bag. Our amusement did not assuage his anger and neither did our insistence that he come with us, taking an arm each and hurrying him away.

Ten dollars might be too much to pay for a few old banana skins, but we judged it an appropriate penalty for attempting to procure a prohibited drug.

Parlay voo Fronsay

Despite her astonishingly rich hormone saturated voice, huge sad eyes and generous body, to me she seemed oddly insecure, a little girl seeking reassurance and support. So we older band members, Warren and I basically, rostered ourselves to chaperone her when she went ashore.

We were billed as Renee Geyer and the Daly Wilson Small Band on the Oriana in 1972. My first cruise and an adventure that was at once fun and a revelation. It shattered any expectation I had of the mythical South Sea Island Paradise but the band was good and Renee was sensational.

In Numea, I was rostered on as Renee searched for denim and French perfume. We found a denim shop and she started. An attendant hovered as vests and jeans were ripped from racks, tried then discarded. Several times she asked for help from the Frenchman, who seemed to have no English. He shrugged at each question and occasionally spoke to her in French. Some I understood from my very limited schoolboy French but did not have the confidence to translate.

His agitation grew in proportion to the height of the pile of discarded garments. Renee’s disappointment expressed itself as ‘What a heap of crap’ or ‘I wouldn’t wear any of this shit’, until it became too much for the Frenchman, who demanded in impeccable English:
“Get out of my shop!”

Well, that was that for denim, so it was down to the old town for perfume where she chose enough to last a decade and it was time to pay. She had no cash and with no EFTPOS or ATM, it was off to the bank. We had no idea where we would find a bank on a Saturday afternoon in Numea, so I accosted the first person we saw, a little old lady, and asked for directions.

“Ou est le…” Shit! I couldn’t remember the word for bank, if I had ever known it.
My teacher, Old Scotty, WWI veteran of many battles in France, probably learnt his French from locals with whom he needed to communicate for whatever reason, spent more time telling us of his wartime exploits than the intricacies of French Grammar.

However, we did do a lot of work on tables and chairs, doors and windows and I did pass my exams. But I swear Scotty did not mention banks. I was at a loss. Maybe money would give her a clue, so I showed her an Australian twenty while repeating my question.

“Ou est le…” She looked horrified. Well! I don’t know what she thought but it was not nice.
“Non! Non!” She objected. “Non! Non!” Her vehemence hinted at some sinister interpretation of my intentions so it was my turn to object.
“Non! Non! Excusez-mois,” says me. “Je chercher le … bank, le bank.”

The franc dropped.
“Sacre bleu! Le banc! Le banc!” She threw her hands in the air in true Gallic manner and took off. She walked so fast we struggled to keep up, as she led for at least a kilometre, stopping outside a squat granite building where she smiled and indicated its closed doors.

“Le banc est ferme!”
“Merci.” I thanked her as she turned away, her duty done.

Renee was disappointed and I was laughing.
“Le banc est ferme”, I repeated.

If there was one thing old Scotty taught well, it was the difference between ferme and ouvert.
For a young man in a foreign country, they were very useful words indeed.
But in 1914 France, I guess it wasn’t a bank Scotty needed.

Marriage and other snags.

When Ricky May discovered the lead skater in the Pat Gregory Ice Show dead from heart failure back stage at Souths Leagues, you would have thought the message would have gotten through but an addict is an addict and food was his downfall.

He might have been in dodgy company, hanging around with Irko and his mates, but it wasn’t loose women that kept him out late. However, Ricky’s wife Colleen wasn’t to know that and worried.

Coming home at dawn was nothing new, but unlike the old days when Colleen was a soubrette at Sydney’s top night spots and he would meet her after work, she now had her gorgeous little brown skinned blue eyed baby Shaney and was grounded. So now, after his gigs he hung out with other entertainers. At first he came straight home but after a while his pattern went back to staying out late and she became suspicious enough to have him followed.

Now, anyone who has ever seen Colleen knows any man who cheated on her must be totally insane. A natural blonde with blue eyes, a face so perfect she could have been used as a template by cosmetic surgeons and a body, well, let’s say she made Miss Universes, all of them, look frumpy. But we don’t always see ourselves as others see us. After a week the detective agency report arrived.

‘Mr May departed South Sydney Leagues Club at one AM, proceeded to Harry’s Café de Wheels and was joined by a Mr Norman Erskine. They had coffee and a floater. (Pie and peas). They then drove to the Royal Motor Club. They watched the late show there, and were joined by two other men, leaving at 3.15.

'That group of four caught a cab to Kings Cross where they entered the Hasty Tasty Restaurant and Mr May had Beef Stroganoff and a beer.
At 4.30, they left the Hasty Tasty, catching a cab to Chequers Night Club where they met with the late night band and had a drink with them, then they all went to an all night hamburger joint where Mr May had hamburgers with chips and a milk shake. From there, Mr May was dropped off at Souths Leagues where he collected his car and drove home, arriving at your door at 5.55 AM.'

Every day for a week a similar pattern was reported. Col was devastated. Where others might have been relieved, she was seething.
“He wants food more than he wants me!” she shouted at the report and decided to undress the problem. That night after Rick left for work, she took Shaney to a friend’s house and prepared her trap. Early next morning she was ready.

Half an hour before his arrival, she prepared her herself for battle. Ricky was worth fighting for, so she showered and did her hair just the way he liked it. She made up her face, not that it needed making up, perfumed herself with his favourite and then totally nude except for her highest heels, she waited. As the garage door closed she rose, went to the fridge and pulled out a three metre string of sausages and draped them strategically around her faultless body, being sure not to obscure her best assets.

He came through the door and stopped in amazement, eyes wandering over the sausages.
“Rick! I’ve had enough. It’s the food or me. Your call!”
He took her hand tenderly and kissed her on the lips before turning her away from the door.
“Coll, I love you so much”, he breathed into her ear, removing the sausages. “I can hardly wait. Let’s do it now!”
Then, hurrying her through the house, he grabbed a large pan from the rack and stopped at the stove, dropping in the sausages.
“Let’s cook the snags!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej-HL5B7tBg

Epilogue: She did leave for a short while, but they were soon back together and as predicted, she and Shaney lost him to a heart attack in 1988, aged 44 years young.
Sadly missed by his family, his mates, his fans and his golf club. A great talent and a gentle man.

Eyes on the pies.

I would wager my golden tooth caps that no tailor had ever heard such a strange request. But as we are talking of Ricky May, nobody should have been surprised. Ricky loved his wife Colleen, his daughter Shaney, entertaining, rugby league and golf more or less in that order if you exclude food.

So in season, he could be found standing with thousands of other football tragics, squashed together, rain hail or shine on a miserable Sydney Sunday, bellowing his encouragement at eleven of his favorite mud splattered and blood encrusted gladiators. However, those blissful afternoons of escape were being ruined by a problem he had yet to solve.

There was no way Ricky could stand out in the cold for the full eighty minutes and not eat. Drink? No, he could tolerate parch to the point of perish but he had to have food. So what to do? Snack bars were always too far and pushing through the crowd to the food outlet was too stressful. He was terrified there might be a vital try or even a biff-up while he wasn’t looking, so he went to his tailor.

I swear I am not making this up! Imagine the surprise on the face of the snack bar attendant that first time, when he found Ricky at the front of the queue asking for a dozen hot pies. Then imagine the utter amazement as he watched twelve steaming pies disappear one at a time into the twelve cunningly concealed and insulated pockets of Ricky’s new tailor-made and purpose-built ‘pie coat’!

http://www.evri.com/person/ricky-may-0x1ce7e

(Here you can see Ricky singing at the opening an AFL game in Adelaide.)
PS. Stories of Ricky May are told with love. He was not only a great entertainer but a warm and generous human being. Watching the video brought him back to me for a moment, nice but sad.

Tocka-tocka-tocka-tocka

Maybe it is saxophone players, but they are definitely the champs of absent mindedness and of those, Dave Rutledge was the best. Dagwood, so named because of his personality is a really nice bloke, very capable musician but dangerously forgetful. He told me this story himself so I suspect it was watered down somewhat. It all started when he bought a new runabout to go fishing outside.

Dagwood picked up his three mates, who dumped their rods, bait and slabs of VB into the boat and climbed into his Vee Dub. At the boat ramp, she was launched and held while Dave parked the car and trailer.

It was a great day. They caught enough fish to justify being out there and were approaching the ramp with the sun in their eyes, beer in their veins and joy in their hearts when Dagwood destroyed the mood. He could not find his car keys.

They searched their pockets. Tackle boxes were upturned, spilling the detritus of decades onto Dave’s new floor. Rusty hooks, loose sinkers and old bits of prawn shells were revealed, but no keys. Eventually in desperation they tipped their fish out of the Esky but when the bow touched the beach, they still had no keys and no more hiding places. Eventually after a period of reflection Boof came up with an idea.

‘Come on up to the car Dags,’ offered Boof. ‘I reckon I can hot wire it, get you home at least.’
So, while the others tidied up the mess, Boof grabbed pliers, some wire trace and with Dave in tow, headed for the car. A few metres short they stopped, listened then ran the last few strides to the driver’s door.

‘Tocka-tocka-tocka-tocka…..’
There were the keys, hanging in the ignition. And there was his little VW, doors unlocked and engine idling, ready to go home!

Colouring in his Musicians.

The comment about music and colour reminded me of a George Shearing quip, but before I tell you that, it was a fact that Dave Brubeck could not tour segrated high schools and universities in the South because his bass player, Eugene Wright was an African American, as was George Shearing’s bass player.
However, George had been blind from birth so when his agent complained he was missing out on a lot of work on the university circuit because he had coloured players in his band, acted totally shocked and enquired anxiously;
‘Coloured? Really! What colours are they?’

Vale Herb Ellis

Herb Ellis, master guitarist, passed away last Sunday 28th March.

He wasn’t my all time favourite player, but he was one of the greats. Along with Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Johnny Smith he developed jazz guitar from where Charlie Christian, innovator and star of early Benny Goodman ensembles, had left off. From the late forties but mainly in the fifties, those leaders, later followed by Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, influenced the next generation of guitarists including my friend George Golla, Lennie Hutchinson and most of our contemporaries all around the world including George Benson. Herb Ellis developed a unique rhythm technique I tried to emulate. That gave me a skill that had its reward in scores of studio engagements.

In 1961, as I remember, my friend Barry Stewart, drummer and legend in his own right, put my name forward for a six month stint as guitarist in the house band at Griff House, Castlereigh St Sydney. For those who remember, that was the home of the Professional Musicians Club and although I wasn’t really ready to be exposed to the best musicians in town, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So I took the job and worked my bum off practicing, transcribing solos and studying arranging. I had bought two of Herb’s albums including Ellis in Wonderland, at that time his most recent and had studied every note.

Our bandleader, Nat O’Toole, threw me a lot of solos. I guess he thought I needed the practice. But so it was that I was battling with the changes of an Elmer Bernstein theme, trying to emulate Barney Kessel, when I looked up and almost dropped my pick.

We all knew Ella Fitzgerald was in town on tour with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis as her backing group, but nobody could have expected to see what I saw. There, not two metres away, sitting alone at a table right in front of me, watching and listening, was Herb Ellis.

Luckily it was the last tune of the set, so I was spared more scrutiny, not that I had any idea how long he had been there. Of course I hurried off to introduce myself and he graciously invited me to join him. I expected a consolation compliment only, and did get that, but he started talking guitar. Given a nod of approval from Nat, I stayed put and listened to the great man as he offered a respectful lecture on all things guitar as they related to what he had seen of my playing. He must have recognized some talent to bother, or maybe he was just a nice bloke. He certainly was that. RIP Herb.

Hubris anyone?

There are some things we would rather forget that others would rather remember.
In another life I was in Graham (Fatty) Lyle’s band at Channel 10 Sydney, where we tried to help amateur entertainers sound as good as possible. New comedians were rare but we had one. His patter was just about as bad as an amateur can be and with no music required we all sat there, cringing at the lines. I’m sure we all agreed he would disappear into the distance, the fate of most talent quest competitors.
At the end of the sequence we were all walking out together. I found myself just in front of the band, beside the comedian.
He said ‘G’day’, so I said, with body language and voice, in apparent awe of his amazing talent:
‘You write your own material do you?’
He seemed to not hear the suppressed guffaws behind us as the boys dropped back out of hearing.
‘Yes, I write it myself.’
I managed to keep a straight face as I came back with:
‘I thought so, nice work!’
As he passed out of the studio, a glance back at the musicians found them hiding behind each other almost out of control so I turned back to be welcomed with a well earned ‘You bastard!’ as we all collapses into laughter.
Of course the gum-booted, sleeveless-shirted larrikin was the young Paul Hogan. Thank goodness Strop took over his management and guided the career that brought us Crocodile Dundee! Hubris anyone?