Jazz in Tasmania

My map seems to treat Tasmania as a separate country, rather than as an Australian state, so I thought I’d take the opportunity of drawing attention to a few locally specific jazz connections.

In the Jazzchord obituary he wrote for his friend and bandmate, clarinetist Tom Pickering (1921-2001), pianist Ian Pearce (1921-2012) identifies their mid-1930s ‘mucking about’ on clarinet and piano, as the first uncertain steps of an important collaboration in Tasmanian Jazz History. Pickering was born in Burra, but his family moved to Tasmania when he was 12, and he found himself a near neigbour of Pearce. The two friends were inspired by the sounds of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman they heard on the radio, as well as British dance bands. At school, they founded the Barrelhouse Four with Rex Green playing piano, Pearce on cornet, while his brother Cedric was on drums. The Second World War inevitably interrupted their musical careers, but the band reformed in 1946, in time to make their first recording, and to visit the Australian Jazz Convention in Melbourne. By the 1950s, the ‘trad jazz’ scene in Tasmania was vibrant, and it was around this time that the Hobart Jazz Club came into being (it still exists some 70-odd years). Hobart’s City Hall was one of the venues hosting jazz in post-war Tasmania. Ian Pearce spent a number of years in the UK, where he concentrated on piano, playing with Mick Mulligan among others. In the 1960s, Pearce having returned to Australia, he and Pickering started the Pearce-Pickering Ragtime Five and then the Barrelhouse Jazz Band for residencies at Tattersall Hotel, and at the Wrest Point Casino. Pearce continued playing until shortly before his death, including a 90th birthday concert for the Hobart Jazz Club.

Saxophonist Alan Brinkman (1917-2001) was a member of the Pearce-Pickering groups in the 1980s. Being a little older than than Brinkman he had started his career playing in dance bands in Hobart in the 1930s, and in the jam sessions at the Stage Door night club, which were the focal point of a jazz scene in the early days. Pearce and Pickering were dominant figures in jazz in Tasmania, but there are other Tasmanian jazz musicians, who built their careers in other parts of Australia. Hobart-born Bryce Rohde (1923-2016) was pianist with the modern jazz group, the Australian Jazz Quartet. One of the most successful bands in Australian jazz, albeit they were based in North America, the group appeared on American TV, as well as playing at Carnegie Hall and Birdland Jazz Club in New York. They recorded numberous albums for the Bethlehem label between 1953 and 1958, before finishing up with a tour of Australia. Inspired by George Russell, Rohde stayed in Australia, leading his own bands until 1965, when he moved to San Francisco. Trumpeter Benny Featherstone (1912-1977), who was a colourful figure in early Australian jazz, was born in Brown’s Creek, but was a child when his family moved to Australia.

I’m quite sure there is much more to be said, so check back with this page (and site) for updates.