When my father was still playing Saturday night dance band jobs, Sundays could be quiet days around our house. If Dad had played a job the night before, not getting home until the early hours of the morning, he often spent the rest of Sunday recovering and we would keep quiet and out of his way.
He would tell me about trying to get through a dance band job with bad players, or missing key players, trying to please an audience of various ages and tastes, and then finally trying to get paid. At the end of the night, he would ask for his fee, often only to be told “the committee treasurer has your cheque and he’s left.”
At one point in the 1970’s, probably after a particularly bad night, he decided to stop playing in dance bands altogether. He would still get calls from people asking him to come out “just this once,” but he’d hung his bow tie for good and instead enjoyed reforming his first band “The Darktown Strutters” and playing at jazz festivals and at the “Jazz the Way It Used To Be – R40” concerts he organized in Wellington
In the early 1980’s, my father began writing a dance band diary which included jottings about his experiences playing for dance jobs and in jazz concerts, The Darktown Strutters, and comments on the general New Zealand jazz scene. He passed away suddenly in 1983 before he was able to complete a final version. In any event, there was no interest in this material from anyone he had shown the drafts to, neither in book publishing nor radio.
I have arranged his notes, together with the photos and clippings he assembled. I have left in more material than a practiced editor with an eye to a commercial venture might, but my intention was to get as many names and stories down as possible for the surviving jazz musicians to enjoy. Therefore there is some repetition and the material is not presented in a strict narrative.
I cannot vouch for all the facts, dates and names herein and apologise for any unintended omissions. It is presented solely as my father’s personal reminiscence of a bygone era.
Clare Avery