A "FRAME-UP”?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 1

A "FRAME-UP”?

NEGRO BAND DEPORTED MELBOURNE SENSATION That the recent raid on members of the Sonny Clay negro band in a Melbourne flat was nothing but a deliberate “frame up,” was the opinion of Mr. W. A. Hann, director of the Emperors of Harmony, another combination of coloured performers which has been playing in Australia, who arrived in Auckland to-day by the N iagara. Mr. Hann and his company had already been in Australia for many months prior to the arrival of the Sonny Clay band, so that the publicity that followed the recent deportation of the latter combination did not interfere with their work. Yet, at the same time, Mr. Hann says that it must have a serious effect on the future activities of coloured performers in Australia. The instigators of the “move” against the Sonny Clay performers, he said, were members of the musicians’ industrial organisation. A certain amount of resentment had been shown owing to the treatment of the Commonwealth band in the United States, and it was Mr. Hann’s contention that the Sonny Band combination had been made to suffer unduly as a result. “It is public opinion that, after all, rules, and there was nothing for it but to withdraw the act, and send it back to,America on the first available ship!” The Niagara’s party includes Mr. George Jones, Jnr., and his wife, Mr. E. C. Caldwell (who was a lieutenant in the negro battalion in France), and Mr. F. G. Graden.