'Like all the Roosters in the World Crowing Together': Pioneers in the Dissemination of Jazz in 1920s New Zealand

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 42, 1 January 2009, Page 89

'Like all the Roosters in the World Crowing Together': Pioneers in the Dissemination of Jazz in 1920 s New Zealand

CHRIS BOURKE

A Note on Background and Sources

In 2006, as the National Library's Research Fellow, I embarked on a history of modern popular music in New Zealand. The idea was to show how colonial forms of music-making, entertainment and social dance changed after the First World War. I would chart the evolution of music in the following decades, which saw increasing overseas influences and technological changes, until the emergence of the popular music industry we recognise today. The story would conclude with the arrival of rock'n'roll, and consider the continuing popularity of middle-of-the-road performers in the 19505. This article comes from the research done during this time. It looks at the emergence of jazz in New Zealand from about the 1920 s and considers the careers and influence of two of its earliest proponents, Walter Smith and Bob Adams.

Although several histories of New Zealand music have been written - covering Maori music, orchestral music, art music, folk, brass and pipe bands, indigenous musicals, community music, and pop since the rock'n'roll era - information about popular music of the early-to-mid-twentieth century seemed to exist only unreliably in memory and anecdote. The researchers' saviour is Dennis Huggard, who began to donate his jazz collection to the Alexander Turnbull Library in 2007. Huggard is an Auckland archivist who became a jazz aficionado as a teenager during the Second World War. In the course of his lifetime he has assembled a staggering collection of clippings, acetates, commercial discs and tape recordings - mostly jazz, but also of other forms of popular music. He has compiled and published thorough and useful discographies of New Zealand labels such as Tanza and Stebbing. His clippings of the New Zealand columns in the Australian Music Maker & Dance Band News, later called the Music Maker, from 1932 to 1970, form the backbone of his printed papers collection. Researchers can now more easily access information from this fertile period.

For someone wanting to write a narrative history based on musicians' accounts, the oral history of Spike Donovan, an Auckland bass player from the 19205, is also invaluable. Published by Huggard as The Thoughts of Musician Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan (1998), it is a treasure trove of characters, information and stories. By introducing me to Auckland musicians Bob Adams and Walter Smith, the book provided an opening into uncharted territory.

'Clang and Clatter': The Beginnings of Jazz in New Zealand

Going to a dance in New Zealand before the First World War was to 'indulge in a sedate activity' that had changed little since colonial times. In rural halls and debutantes' balls alike, dance cards would offer the schottische, the veleta, the barn dance and, 'for the more adventurous, the lancers and quadrilles.' 1

But this cosy, chaperoned ritual began to change in 1916 with the invention of the foxtrot, which immediately became popular worldwide. In 1917 a new word - jazz - was being mentioned by visiting American entertainers. Like an imported foreign pest, jazz began to spread unchecked throughout New Zealand as the war came to an end - the word, if not the music. At first it was an all-purpose adjective that meant something modern and exciting or, in a musical context, something unfamiliar, cacophonous, abrasive and even uncivilised.

The earliest reports of jazz music were not flattering. One in particular was almost certainly inaccurate. It describes how, on 11 June 1918, Waikato police raided a Maori gathering in Mercer to arrest seven men who had failed to report for their medical examinations before being conscripted. A large group had gathered to discuss the conscription issue, and the meeting had been going for two or three weeks. 2 The police were expected. Escorting them onto the marae was 'a bevy of Maori girls, a number of whom were equipped with brass band instruments, from which they produced music of a somewhat uncertain tune.' As the police approached to arrest Te Raunganga Mahuta, a brother of the Maori king, several young Maori women surrounded him. They placed a flag on the ground, 'as if to protect him.' 3 News of the incident reached Sydney, where the Sun ran the headline, 'Maori Maids' Jazz Band!' 4

In August 1919 the Dominion newspaper announced that a group of prominent Wellington instrumentalists had formed a 'jazz' band, and a concert was imminent. Rehearsals - using sheet music imported from the United States - produced the 'weirdest effects imaginable.' 5 Four days later, there was another Wellington outbreak, during the Gay Gambols' Saturday night concert at the Grand Opera House. Under the baton of J. F. Woodward, the Wellington Performing Musicians' Orchestra 'filled the welkin [heavens] with joyous clamour' in the opening fantasia (even if 'a little more rehearsal would not have been remiss'). Then the song 'Hey,

Ruba' - 'a rural jazz' - introduced 'the clang and clatter of the modern trapdrummer's varied appurtenances in rythmical [sic] association.' 6

The association in the 1920 s of 'jazz' with everything from music to hair cream makes it debatable how close the music came to real jazz. Were the syncopated rhythms more emphasised than they were in ragtime? Was there more improvisation - or merely more chaos? As in Britain, New Zealand bands took their lead from gramophone records, and pianists from piano rolls, changing existing styles with unusual combinations of instruments, with the percussionist adding exotic effects from anything at hand: 'cowbells, pistol shots and other noises, musical and unmusical.' These novelty effects - especially those imitating farmyard animals - were a prominent feature of early jazz bands. 7

What was publicised as a jazz band was likely to be a dance band made up of disparate instruments, with startling percussion and, most importantly, new dances: 'Dance bands were those bands which played the newest "jazz" and popular music from America. They played the foxtrot and the quickstep, not the valetta [sic] or the polka. There were few, if any, real "jazz" bands on the American model, although there were many who called themselves such.' 8 As Spike Donovan has said: 'Not all dance music was jazz, and not all dance musicians were jazz men either. They were usually in the minority.' 9

Advertisements highlighting the scarlet word began appearing in several parts of New Zealand. In January 1921, Timaru heard the new music when local photographer and musician Havelock Williams formed a band to play at dances to celebrate the New Year. By February, the Timaru Herald was advertising 'jazz' dance lessons with a teacher visiting from London, while Williams - punning on a recent hit by Irving Berlin - touted for gigs:

EVERYBODY'S JAZZING NOW They must have the WILLIAMS PROFESSIONAL JAZZ BAND Full Jazz Effects. All Professional Players. 9th Engagement since formation in January.

Timaru readers were given an explanation elsewhere in the same edition: 'The cacophony of the American Jazz was slow in catching on in New Zealand, its peculiar syncopation, eerie effects, and tonal shocks being just not traditional enough for the Dominion ear, but now that the newness of the craze has gone the jazz has taken South Canterbury by storm, and in the words of the song, "Everybody's Doing it Now".' 10 This is an informed description. As a port town, Timaru was where cultures were introduced into New Zealand and could mingle. Havelock Williams's work as a commercial photographer often took him to the tourist areas of the South Island, or to mix socially with the smart set. Read together, the Wellington and Timaru reports suggest that the dissemination of the music happened quickly and simultaneously in various parts of the country.

Two prominent Auckland musicians, Bob Adams and Walter Smith, are attributed with founding that city's earliest jazz bands. Light-classical pianist Henry Shirley remembered live jazz appearing in Auckland in the winter of 1922, when local vaudeville drummer Bob Adams formed a group. Shirley was a member of the group briefly that year, and had just written '1921,' a film-music overture. However, the blurring of memory and fact make the actual date uncertain. Late in life, Adams said he formed the band when aged 17, which would put the date at 1916 or 1917. More reliable is the recollection of Spike Donovan, who had the keenest interest in history among his dance-band peers. He said Adams formed the band 'about the end of World War One,' and that it performed often at Government House, Auckland, when Lord Jellicoe was Governor-General (192024). 11 However, the significance is not in the timing, but in the more convincing evidence that the music they played was in fact jazz.

The world's first jazz recording - by the white New Orleans group the Original Dixieland Jazz Band - was released in the US in March 1917. Two years later the group arrived in Britain to a 'tumultuous reception' and a nine-month residency at the Hammersmith Palais. 12

Shirley points out that Original Dixieland Jazz Band albums arrived in New Zealand shortly after Adams formed his band, giving a clue to the date. In 1922 Shirley worked in the warehouse of A. H. Nathan's, the agents for Columbia Records, where he could listen to the latest records while they were being packed. Because the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was such a hit in the US, a large shipment had been sent to Nathan's. But Shirley recalls:

But no one would buy them. Customers recoiled from this first impact of the hideous noise from New Orleans. To amuse visitors we would sometimes play them 'Barnyard Blues' - it was like all the roosters in the world crowing together. 13

'Magic, Mirth & Melody': Walter Smith

In Auckland, teacher and songwriter Walter Smith would have the most influence on the city's popular music-making. George Snow, who was making guitars in Auckland in the 19205, said that Smith did more for jazz and for popularising stringed instruments than anyone else in the city: 'He claimed that jazz music of the 1920 s and 1930 s was the greatest music of the era and that it taught young people rhythm.' 14

Smith was born in Nuhaka, a small town in northern Hawke's Bay, on 11 May 1883. When he was 10 years old he accompanied his uncle and aunt to Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of a contingent of nine Maori Mormon missionaries. While attending school there he showed an aptitude for music, and took lessons in guitar, banjo and mandolin. According to his niece Dinah Greening, the church authorities wanted to send him to Germany to study the violin, but an interim stint as a shepherd at Rexburg, Idaho, changed his musical direction. He contracted rheumatism, and returned to Utah to study music at Brigham Young University.

He taught music at the university for three years before turning professional. One of his first gigs with his Hawaii-Maorian Quintette was at the Utah Hotel in Salt Lake City. They then travelled across the United States, performing the Hawaiian music in vogue. During the tour he met Ida Mae Haley of Oakland, California, and married her in Salt Lake City on 11 May 1910. He also wrote and published his song 'My Beautiful Isle of the Sea.' 15

The Church called Smith back to New Zealand in 1913 to take up a mission at the Maori Agricultural College, a Mormon institution near Hastings. Among his pupils was the accomplished saxophonist Sydney David Kamau (also known as Sid David). While teaching there Smith formed a string orchestra, brass band and choirs. At special parades he would conduct the brass band while mounted on a white Arab horse. After five years he moved with his wife to Auckland, buying a home at 16 Turner Street, opposite Myers Park on Queen Street.

Smith began a long and successful career as a stringed-instrument teacher. The business quickly outgrew his home, and he began to teach from a studio in the Lewis Eady building, further down Queen Street. He also bought a saxophone and taught himself how to play - becoming only the second man to own one in New Zealand; Bert Kingsley was the first. 16

Auckland nightlife in the early 1920 s offered silent movies, theatre, vaudeville and dance halls. Frederick Charles Rush-Munro - later famous as a boutique icecream manufacturer in Hastings - opened a milkbar/cabaret on Karangahape Road, and Walter Smith supplied the five-piece jazz band, which included Rush-Munro's son Lew on piano. 17 From 8 p.m. until midnight, six nights a week, patrons at Rush-Munro's milkbar were entertained by tunes including 'Dardanella,' 'Say It With Music,' 'Avalon' and 'Margie.' This band also played at dance halls, the university and the Town Hall. 18

With his Click-Clack Band, Smith did a long stint at the Click-Clack Cabaret, above the Rialto cinema in Newmarket (radio station IYA broadcast the band performing in a live, Saturday-night relay from the club on 20 August 1927). 19 An

invitation to hear Walter Smith's Aloha Jazz Band at the Click-Clack for a function later that year in honour of his pupil Sid David is inscribed, 'Come along to a big tangi ... plenty eat'un, plenty drink'un - go home - plenty sleep'un.' 20

Smith was proficient on the mandolin, Spanish and steel guitar, ukulele, cello banjo, harp, saxophone, clarinet and bass. The many musical combinations he formed testifies to his versatility, as the advertising flyer on page 94 proclaims.

Smith organised large string bands, featuring his pupils on guitars, mandolins, banjos and ukuleles, performing his arrangements of overtures such as William Tell and Poet and Peasant. As the Aloha Orchestra, 60 players took the stage for charity in the Auckland Town Hall. 'Every time they played there, the place was packed,' said former pupil Jimmy Higgot. 21 The entire band dressed in white, and a musician in the front row had a giant bass banjo on his knee. This massive instrument - the drumhead had a diameter of almost a metre - was especially made for Smith, using a bass drum and the fingerboard and tuning pegs from a double bass. It helped balance the treble-dominant sound of the orchestra. There were also 10-stringed 'harp guitars,' which had the strings away from the body of the guitar; but the lead instruments were mandolin and steel guitar. 22

Smith bought his niece Marge Greening a saxophone and clarinet, and she became the first female saxophonist in New Zealand. (Elsie Nixon, whose father ran a tearooms/outdoor cabaret in Mission Bay, was the second.) Her sister Dinah Greening, who played banjo and violin, recalled that: 'Uncle Walter was a very lovable character, generous [although] he could have been a wealthy man.' 23 Both Dinah and Marge were proficient players and joined their uncle's jazz band (Marge's first instrument was piano), as well as the all-woman band he formed, the Gala Girls. Another woman musician he nurtured was Pearl Gibbs, who for 13 years was his 'pupil, professional artist and assistant teacher.' 24

As the banjo went out of favour, US guitar-makers eased the transition by making four-string guitars with banjo tuning. But, in the days before amplification, acoustic guitars could not cut through the sound of a big swing band. Eventually, recalled Donovan, 'Smith's reign was over. He kept on teaching but he was less active. He'd had a good run with his dance band, his radio band and so forth, and he was getting on in years ... but he did everything that was worthwhile for a while around town.' 25

Among Smith's songs are 'Maori Eyes,' 'Kia Ngawari,' 'Let There Be Light' and 'On!! New Zealand' (dedicated to the 1924 All Blacks, with a melody said to be borrowed from 'On Wisconsin'). 26 But his most famous song is 'Beneath the Maori Moon.' It was recorded in 1936 by former All Black fullback George Nepia for Decca in England, when he was playing rugby league there. (Nepia was Smith's cousin, and although not a Mormon, had attended the Maori Agricultural College.) 27 IZB's Maori announcer Lou Paul also recorded it in the 19305, backed

by Ted Croad's band ('and His Maori Maidens'). Smith himself recorded the song in the early 1950 s with his Aloha Orchestra and Nuhaka Trio, and it was revived in 1992, dance band style, by Don McGlashan for the film Absent Without Leave.

When a reporter called on Smith in 1952, he was practising arias and overtures on his favourite instrument, the Spanish guitar. 'The robust body, the clear eyes and strong voice belied his 68 years. Still with a trace of American accent he said, "I sure wish I could find a pupil interested enough to tackle this work. But it's cowboy and boogie today".' 28

'Biff, Bang and Wallop': Bob Adams

Bob Adams was the doyen of New Zealand percussionists. He became a professional musician from the age of 15, playing for silent movies. Nearly 70 years later he was still performing, in the orchestra for a Christmas pantomime.

He was born in 1899 to an Auckland family respected in music circles. His father, Samuel, played many instruments, taught music, and had an instrument shop on Symonds Street. Every year his pupils would give a concert in the Auckland Town Hall concert chamber. At these, Bob would play xylophone, although drums were his passion.

At 15 he joined the silent-film orchestra at the Princess Theatre, Queen Street, earning £3.10s a week. In the early 1920 s he formed a jazz band that was popular at balls, including those at Government House. Donovan gave Adams, rather than Walter Smith, the credit for having the first jazz band in Auckland, though trumpeter Vern Wilson also puts in a bid for the band he was playing in at the Dixieland Ballroom on Queen Street from April 1922. 29 'lt depends on what you call jazz,' said Donovan, '[but] it seems pretty clear that jazz hit Auckland very early in the 1920 s and we never recovered from it.' 30

Adams's jazz band had seven players, including two women, pianist Rita Sullivan and violinist Freda Hunter. Donovan describes the band's sound: 'Like most of the original jazz bands they went in heavily for noise - and rather coarse noises at that.' 31 Looking back in 1971, Adams concurred: 'We used to give a bit of biff, bang, wallop, and the dancers were in their element.' 32

Adams was also one of the first to take up the saxophone, though his fellow musicians joked he could only play one tune with it, 'Oh By Jingo! Oh By Gee! (You're the Only Girl for Me),' from the 1919 musical Linger Longer Letty . 'When Bob played it as an entree act the crowd went mad,' said Chips Healy, later the band leader at the Civic Wintergarden. 33

In 1920 Fullers Vaudeville hired Adams for its orchestra pit at the Opera House; he played there until it burnt down five years later. Tickets were 2/6 in the dress circle, or one shilling in the gallery. No expense was spared on the

production, with lavish costumes and scenery, and up to 50 showgirls on stage. 'We had some fun in those days,' Adams said, 'The management was a bit straight about audience participation, but on certain nights we used to invite anyone who thought he had a talent to come up on the stage. ... Well, jeering and booing - and cabbages thrown on the stage - it was real fun.' 34

Fullers built the St James Theatre to replace the Opera House, but to Adams the atmosphere was never the same. Fullers persisted with vaudeville until talkies took over. In 1930 the film Gold Diggers of Broadway 1929 was 'the death knell of the vaudeville era,' according to Adams. 35

But he stayed with musical theatre, based at His Majesty's working in J. C. Williamson productions, and playing in dance bands. He was in demand as an all-rounder, a master of the drums, but was also adept at the xylophone, vibes and marimba. His equipment took up much of the orchestra pit, but he was an accomplished performer on tuned percussion and special aural effects, in everything from musicals to grand opera. After the war he declined a seat in the nascent National Orchestra, not wanting to leave Auckland. 'He was very versatile ... and he wasn't a musical snob,' said Donovan, who remembered Adams as the only musician he played with who never made a mistake. 36 Adams died in 1981.

The Legacy of Adams and Smith

As a performer and bandleader, Bob Adams was a pivotal figure in the diffusion of jazz in Auckland. But Walter Smith's influence is still apparent today, through his hundreds of pupils who taught their children, and the others who became professional teachers themselves. Two pupils who later became national stars on the electric guitar - although their time with Smith was brief - were Peter Posa and Bob Paris. Smith is still a star within the Church of the Latter Day Saints. When I telephoned Church College in Hamilton - New Zealand's Mormon university - to speak to a librarian about research material, the receptionist was able to give me a well-informed potted biography before putting me through.

Adams and Smith were central to the change in popular music in the 19205, performing jazz before it became a 'dance craze,' and before the crucial visits of overseas acts such as Linn Smith's Royal Jazz Band (1923), Bert Ralton's Savoy Havana Band (1924), and the bands that came with the second US 'great white fleet' (1925). The influence of Adams and Smith was domestic, while many of those who followed them went on to be leading players in Australia, a point generously acknowledged by their music historians. 37

ENDNOTES 1 Brian Salkeld, 'The Dancing Decade, 1920-1930,' Stout Centre Review (August 1992): 3. 2 Among Maori, conscription had been imposed on Waikato-Maniapoto tribes only. See Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand Illustrated (Auckland: Penguin, 2007), p. 264. 2 New Zealand Herald, 12 June 1918, p. 6. 3 Sun [Sydney], 30 June 1918 [unpaginated]. 4 Dominion, 14 Aug 1919, p. 4. 5 Dominion, 18 Aug 1919, p. 5. 6 John Whiteoak, 'Across the Big Pond.' In Jazz Aotearoa: Notes Towards a New Zealand History, ed. by Richard Hardie and Allan Thomas (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2009), p. 28.

7 James J. Nott, Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 129. 9 Dennis 0. Huggard, The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan (Henderson: Dennis O. Huggard, 1998), p. 26. 10 Timaru Herald, 8 February 1921. The Williams dates and quotes are from Diana Rhodes, With My Camera for Company (Christchurch: Hazard, 2003), p. 143. 11 Sandra Potter, 'The Man Who Formed Auckland's First Jazz Band!', NZ Women's Weekly 15 November 1971: 19; The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 8. 12 Music for the People, p. 128. 13 Henry Shirley, Just a Bloody Piano Player (Auckland: Price, 1971), p. 53. 14 George Whitnall Snow quoted in The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 23.

15 Walter Smith, 'From the Leaves of an Old Family Bible.' Te Karere (May 1941): 659. 16 Taina W. Josephs (formerly Diane [s/'c] Greening), letter to Spike Donovan, MS 1451 85/29, Auckland War Memorial Museum. 17 The band were: Walter Smith, leader, saxophone, mandolin and guitar; Thompson Yandall Snr, banjo; Lew Munro, piano; Arthur Adams, drums; Sid David, saxophone. 18 Gus Sorenson, 'Strings Are His Business.' NZ Women's Weekly [ca 1952]: 14. 19 NZ Radio Record, 12 Aug 1927, p. 8. 20 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 21. 21 Jimmy Higgot interviewed by Geoffrey Totton, 27 April 1987, MS-Group-0664, ATL. 22 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 24; Higgot interviewed by Totton, 27 April 1987. Auckland War Memorial Museum. 23 Taina W. Josephs, letter to Spike Donovan, MS 1451 85/29, Auckland War Memorial Museum. 24 'Strings Are His Business', p. 14. 25 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 24.

26 Max Cryer, New Zealand Herald, 12 October 1989, p. 2. 27 Radio NZ, Spectrum documentary on dancebands, #582, And Jim Played Banjo. 28 'Strings Are His Business', p. 14. 29 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, pp. 46, 49. 30 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 51. 31 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 47. 32 'The Man Who Formed Auckland First Jazz Band!', p. 19. 33 Owen Shaw, 'A Pioneer Among the Music Makers,' NZ Herald, 13 May 1981, p. 81. 34 'The Man Who Formed Auckland First Jazz Band!', p. 19. 35 Ibid. 36 The Thoughts of Musician Desmond 'Spike' Donovan, p. 51. 37 Andrew Bisset, Black Roots White Flowers: A History of Jazz in Australia, 2nd edn (Sydney: ABC, 1987), p. 49; Don Burrows's Forward to Black Roots White Flowers, p. v; Jazz Aotearoa, p. 14.