Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian music 1742235662, 9781742235660

Citation preview

d a ly e D

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nBlue

m o W a

ALSO BY CLINTON WALKER

BOOKS Inner City Sound (1981) The Next Thing (1984) Highway to Hell (1994) Stranded (1997) Football Life (1998) Buried Country (2000) Golden Miles (2005) History is Made at Night (2012) Wizard of Oz (2013) The Suburban Songlines (2018) CDs (as Producer) Buried Country (2000) Long Way to the Top (2001) Studio 22 (2002) Inner City Soundtrack (2005) Silver Roads (2013) Buried Country 1.5 (2015) FILM & TV (as Writer) Notes from Home (1987) Sing it in the Music (1989) Buried Country (2000) Long Way to the Top (2001) Love is in the Air (2003)

Deadly Woman Blues BLACK WOMEN & AUSTRALIAN MUSIC Written & Illustrated by Clinton Walker Colour & Collage: Earl Walker

Contents Introduction: But Beautiful, and Heroic

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PART ONE

Born Under a Bad Sign The Godmother: Georgia Lee 43 The Last Tasmanian: Fanny Cochrane Smith 44 Circus Freaks: ‘Sideshow Jenny’ and Cunningham’s 1883 Circus Troupe 47 Women’s Business: Female Music in Traditional Society 48 Born Sandy Devotional: The Hermannsburg Choir and Western Desert Gospel 49 Black Velvet: Indigenous Women in White Music 50 House Gin Blues: Bessie Flower 52 Delta Lady: Annie Koolmatrie 54 Jubilee Singers: Belle Gibbons, Claire Solly and Violet McAdoo 55 Claypan Dancing: ‘Stringband Sarah’ and mission bands 56 The Rose of the Illawarra: Queen Rosie 59 Nigger Go Home: Ivie Anderson 60 Merri Melodies: Merri Singers 63 Māori Melodies: Ana Hotu 64 Little Nell: Nellie Hetherington 67 Curly Headed Babby: Betty Fisher 68 Princess Lilardia: Margaret Tucker 71 Healing Hands: The Bangarun Orchestra 74 Moomba Blues: Joyce Johnson 75 Little Big Man: Nellie Small 79

Coolbaroo Blues: Gladys Bropho 80 Bloody Mary: Virginia Paris 81 Latin Tinge: Eileen Broderick aka ‘Monda Valdez’ 82 Jump Blues: Mabel Scott 84 Erambie Harmony: Olive & Eva 87 The Sopranos: Lorna Beulah and Nancy Ellis 88 The Good Die Young: Bettie Fisher 91 Just Barbara: Barbara Virgil 92 Black & White Rag: Winifred Atwell 93 Black Irish Blues: Candy Devine 94 Harmony Mamma: Heather Pitt 96 Prodigal Daughter: Wilma Reading 99 Prodigal Daughter No.2: Heathermae Reading 100

PART TWO

Motherless Child Words and Music: Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) 105 Murri Blues: Syvana Doolan 106 Music and Words: Mary Duroux 108 Across the Tasman: Inez Amaya 111 Truckstop Sweetheart: Auriel Andrew 112 The Queen of Koori Country: Wilga Williams 115 Going to a Go-Go: The Sapphires 116 Nigger Go Home, Part 2: Sharon Redd 119 Left Hand Like God: Dora Hunter 120 The Queen of Pop: Marcia Hines 123

Family Circle: Leila and Veronica Rankine 124 She Moves with the Wind: Essie Coffey 126 Arafura Pearls: The Mills Sisters 128 Hula Jazz: The Mills Sisters 131 One-Hit Wonder: Cherie Watkins 132 Nyoongar Country: Vi Chitty 133 Saw the Light: Robyn Green 134 Rare Grooves: Chelsea Brown, Delilah and US Disco Queens 136 Hartbeat: Kim Hart 139 Koori Blues: Carole Fraser 140 Song of Joy: Joy Yates 141 Out of Africa: Trude Aspeling 143 Country & Western Australia: Josie Boyle and Donna Atkins 146 Ladies Love Outlaws: Sharon Mann and Other Tamworth Stars 149 Beyond the Black Sorrows: Vika and Linda Bull 150 Sing Out Sisters: Tiddas 153 Don’t Take Your Love to Town: Ruby Hunter 154

PART THREE

Baby Please Don’t Go Black Swan: Maroochy Barambah 159 Black Girl Next Door: Brenda Webb 160 Saltwater Soul: Christine Anu 162 Instrumentally Hers: Brenda Gifford 164 Gumleaf Melodies: Roseina Boston 166 ‘Australiano Princesso’: Alice Haines 167 Cape Barren Bluegrass: Dorothy Murray 168 Marloo’s Blues: Marlene Cummins 171 Coolbaroo Blues, Part 2: Lois Olney 172 Sistas of Galem: The Maza Sisters 174 Kimberley Dynasties: The Coxes and the Pigrams 175

Under the Clocks: Alice Ashley 176 Twenty Feet from Stardom: Venetta Fields 178 Deep Soul: Tina Harrod 181 Old School: Theresa Creed and Cindy Drummond 182 The Jewel of the North: Toni Janke 185 Opera Snob: Deborah Cheetham 186 Sistas in Rhyme: MC Trey and other Femcees 188 Voices in the Wind: Shakaya 190 Prison Songs: Music Behind Bars 193 … And Then There Were Two: Stiff Gins 194 Aboriginal Idol: Casey Donovan 197 Dreamtime Opera: Delmae Barton 198 Bluestone Blues: Liz Cavanagh 201 Out of Africa, Part II: Connie Mitchell 202 Darwin Calling: Jessica Mauboy 205 Funky Daughter: Jade Macrae 206 Swept Away: Shellie Morris 207 Bluestone Blues, Part 2: Deline Briscoe 208 Magpie Blues: Ursula Yovich 210 Cut-offs and a Ukulele: Leah Flanagan 213 Housewife Superstar: Kylie Auldist and Melbourne Nu Funk 214 Ethnopostmodern Tribalism: Borroloola Songwomen 217 Bird of Paradise: Ngaire Joseph 218 Devil’s Music: Olive Knight 221 Femcee Guttamouth: Sky’High 222 Gail Force: Gail Page 225 Crystal Method: Crystal Mercy/Lady Lash 226 Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Dizzy Doolan 229 Discography Author biography

231 247

But Beautiful and Heroic

‘The Music Lesson’ by Sydney Long, 1904, featuring a supposedly Aboriginal girl

For a long time, black women were, at best, a spectral presence in Australian music, barely breaking through the invisible barrier that prevented them from being seen as human beings, let alone stars. Mostly, they just hovered on the fringes as exotic visitors from elsewhere or unwanted reminders of a blight all too close to home. But since the 1990s, black women have risen up to become a more vital component of Australia’s musical landscape. The 2012 feature film The Sapphires, which hit a feel-good chord as the story of a 1960s Aboriginal girl group touring Vietnam to entertain the troops, is but the highly polished tip of the proverbial iceberg. This book is the story—the secret history—of black women in Australian music. It starts pretty much the day before the whitefella arrived and comes right up to the present day, or yesterday. It is not so much a sequel as a companion piece, or better still sister volume, to Buried Country, my book/film/CD on Aboriginal hillbilly music. ‘Australia should be ashamed of its treatment of women and especially the disgusting treatment of Aboriginal women’, Janis Koolmatrie wrote in We Are Bosses Ourselves, in 1983, ‘ […] our bodies and minds have been raped, battered and damaged’. It is remarkable enough, then, that Aboriginal women have survived at all, let alone even broached the achievements outlined in this book. When Buried Country came out in 2000, the germ of the idea for Deadly Woman Blues was already in my mind. In Buried Country, I shoehorned in a chapter called ‘Deep North Blues’; I say ‘shoehorned in’ because in the narrative of Aboriginal country music, I could only pass off such a structural digression—on mainly women, mainly from the Deep North, mainly singing jazz and blues—as a sort of counterpoint, a nod to the flipside of the dominant tradition that cast that A-side in sharper relief. I couldn’t resist putting in something because, like so much of the rest of Buried Country, it was history in danger of disappearing. But even then it was apparent to me what I would have to do: expand that chapter out into a whole other book on its own.

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The way we weren’t: Aboriginal women as postcard, pyrography, painting (on velvet, signed ‘Martinus’) and even a pin-up (by Eric Joliffe)

It was only when that imperative collided with a way to actually do it that the book you now hold in your hands became possible. Deadly Woman Blues exists only as a consequence of its graphic format. As I came to appreciate the full extent of the story after nearly two decades of on-and-off research, I realised that the best way to tell it was to present it as it is here: a series of illustrations, a gallery of portraits, accompanied by the briefest of biographical notes. Like an album of old-fashioned cigarette cards, or set of bubblegum cards. Like a variation on the now highly collectible Popswops cards that Scanlens put out in Australia in the mid-1970s (a recasting of whose wrapper opens Part 2). Deadly Woman Blues isn’t oral history like Buried Country, it’s graphic history. Not investigative but impressionistic. Based not on interviews but images.

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One of the urgencies of Buried Country was to talk to ageing artists before it was too late, and these interviews gave Buried Country its narrative backbone. But Deadly Woman Blues could never be oral history. There are too many characters, too spread out, too many long gone. So much is already lost. This is history barely noted by the wider world even at its brightest flickering. It became a salvage job just to remember half these women, certainly those in the first two parts of the book, let alone offer more than the barest sketch of them. Sometimes, quite literally. As an art school dropout who’s spent the last 40 years writing, I have found myself increasingly drawn back to drawing, where I started out in the first place. Only in the late 2000s, after I’d begun doing more than the odd sketch again for fun, I realised that I had the perfect opportunity, the perfect vehicle,

to revive my long-dormant skill and press it into the service of this story. Obviously I owe a debt to Robert Crumb and his three beautiful sets of postcards from the 1980s, Heroes of Blues, Early Jazz Greats and Pioneers of Country Music, collected in book form in 2006 as Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country. I am unashamed in my admiration for this great master, before whom I am unworthy. But I also felt many other inspirations and influences, not least Rock Dreams, Nik Cohn and Guy Peallart’s classic 1974 book, and the work of Jon Langford. I thought maybe if I could find an image on which to base an illustration of every woman who warranted coverage, I could pull it off. That was easier said than done. It became an all-consuming obsession, first of all to track down something— anything!—on more than a hundred women. This was not something I could

research through orthodox secondary sources. A vague myth or a whisper was enough to trigger me off. Even if there was no biographical data anywhere on the public record, an image alone was enough to start an entry: everything follows the image. Sometimes, mostly for more recent artists, I had multiple choices. But often all I had was a single old photo and a scratchy old recording if I was lucky. I was reminded of a story, probably apocryphal, that writer Nick Tosches told about his obsessive research into the 1920s blackface hillbilly singer Emmett Miller, and how the one photo he ever saw of him was promptly lost, gone forever, fluttering away on the metaphorical wind … Beyond Melbourne DJ/blogger Hannah Donnelly, there are no other Indigenous Australian writers that I’m aware of, male or female, who specialise in music, unlike the large number

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involved in art history and criticism. The bibliographies say there have been more than 100 books about Aboriginal art published, but only a bare handful about music. There is a gaping hole in the knowledge base. Three white academics, Karl Neuenfeldt, Peter Dunbar-Hall and Katelyn Barney, have explored the field, and I salute their endeavours. But the literature is otherwise extremely piecemeal, and incomplete, hardly less so than when Buried Country first came out nearly 20 years ago. Recently, it’s stage shows rather than books that have at least aspired to addressing the history. But for every show that makes a fair fist of it—Jessie Lloyd’s recent Mission Songs as well as, I daresay, Buried Country, as it stepped up onto the stage in 2016—there are others that continue to distort the picture. Even before 2017’s Music in the Key of Yes failed to resonate precisely because its repertoire was so random and banal, there was the Queensland Theatre Company’s Country Song, which got it so wrong it got shut down! Deadly Woman Blues hopes to act as a corrective to the misinformation. As mythic as its format can’t help make it, these are the real singers, the true songs. Not made-up. It wasn’t till 2010, when Georgia Lee died, that I was finally tipped over into starting work in earnest. Lee, nee Dulcie Pitt, was the star of the ‘Deep North Blues’ chapter I mentioned from Buried Country. I was surprised that when she passed away, it was me— alongside her niece Wilma Reading—that media outlets came to for comment. Aztec Music had got me to write the liner notes for its 2009 CD reissue of her seminal 1962 album Blues Down Under, which was then inducted into the National Film & Sound Archive’s registry of historic recordings. I thought, well, if no-one else is going to do it, I suppose I’ll have to. That may sound disingenuous, but I’ve always been driven by a certain amount of serendipity, the organic way for things that are meant to happen. Without wishing to get too cosmic about it, it really did seem as if my hand was simply guided by the muse.

To start with semantics, or definitions, Deadly Woman Blues is subtitled ‘Black Women in Australian Music’ because unlike Buried Country, it’s not just about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artists, but all kinds of black women in Australian music. I made this decision early on. Even the most casual reader is aware of the

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success in Australia of black American emigré Marcia Hines, and she is only the most successful of many. Māori women too have long been a fixture on the Australian music scene, and in the same way their white Kiwi rock brethren like Dragon or Split Enz/ Crowded House have been virtually re-branded as Australian. Some suggest that the success of African-American women in Australia has been at the expense of Aboriginal women, and I think it’s true that old-fashioned White Australian racism was always capable of double and even triple standards. It was racism that said black Americans are all right, in fact any black person other than an Aborigine might be all right. Even Torres Strait Islanders weren’t so bad! But still, I concluded it would be unjust and misleading to exclude non-Indigenous people, especially when it was at nobody else’s expense. Even more than Marcia Hines, it was Nellie Small who tipped me over on this point. Nellie Small was an Australian-born Jamaican. Most Australians today have no idea who Nellie Small was, but in the decades either side of World War Two she was a big star—a black star—on the vaudeville circuit. If this is a book about gender, race and genre, then Nellie Small makes a meal of so many of our preconceptions. Which I love! She was born in Sydney in 1900, the daughter of West Indian parents, and lived her whole life in Sydney, where she died. She was Australian and black. A jazz singer and actor, she is a seminal if marginalised figure in the history of Australian music and show business.

Where else was her story going to get told? That she also happened to be a cross-dresser, or male impersonator as they used to say, gave me even more pause for thought. But I think I made the right decision in including the be-suited soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham in, and leaving Mama Alto and Constantina Bush out, as fabulous as Ms Bush’s drag act may be. Australian music history is actually full of non-white faces, especially non-white women, though it’s true—or at least true up to a certain time—that many of these women of colour came from outside Australia. But even if it was a double or triple standard that made the Sri Lankan-born Kamahl, say, the biggest male soloist in the country for the entire 1970s, can he be held responsible for the fact that it wasn’t Vic Sabrino or Vic Simms instead? Or, for that matter, Johnny Farnham or Jon English? How could Nellie Small be denied here? How could Winifred Atwell—from Trinidad via the UK—be excluded? She moved here to live and took citizenship, recorded a string of albums here, died here and is buried here. She was a great friend and role model to Aboriginal musicians, like pianist Dora Hunter and country singer Auriel Andrew. How could Marcia Hines be excluded when she too has lived most of her life—40 of her 60 years—in Sydney? When she gave birth to her daughter Deni here, and has been a successful and intrinsic part of the local music scene for all that time? To exclude these women would be to deny the full extent of the story, where immigration is as

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much a part of multiculturalism as indigeneity, where absence is as defining a quality as presence. My rule of thumb was that black women not born in Australia had to have done more than merely visited or toured here. And to clarify further, by non-Australian-born black women I mean women of Islander (including Māori) and African descent—and not brown women from Asia, the sub-continent or the Middle East (unless they also have Aboriginal blood, like Jessica Mauboy). I had to draw a line somewhere. If merely visiting here was all it took, the list would contain practically all the great black female singers bar only Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin, two who conspicuously never toured Australia. They had to have at least based themselves here for an extended period, and/or recorded here. The discography is one of the few quantitative yardsticks I had—crate-digging is the anthropology of popular music scholarship. So of course there is a full discography at the back of the book, where you’ll find that the number of recordings made in Australia by non-Australian-born black women is surprisingly large. So large, in fact, that there are plenty who don’t get a standalone portrait. But for every Joanne Jackson, Barbara Morrison or Margie Evans who doesn’t get a guernsey, or even Eartha Kitt, who did cut recordings here (yes, Eartha Kitt made a single in 1963 called ‘You’re My Man’ for RCA in Australia!), there are so many others like Mabel Scott, Barbara Virgil, Alison Ashley and Venetta Fields who do, given their deeper purchase and significance here. (And I

The second coming of Tina Turner as a 1980s solo superstar was a very Australian-driven phenomenon. Even before I saw the Ike and Tina Revue play Brisbane Festival Hall in 1976 off the back of ‘Nutbush City Limits’, she’d signed a solo deal direct with Australia’s own Festival Records, through its international arm in London called Interfusion, whose roster also boasted Neil Sedaka and Janis Ian. After starring as the Acid Queen in expat Australian producer Robert Stigwood’s 1975 film version of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, Tina released her second solo

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album Acid Queen, which Interfusion/ Festival licensed to United Artists for US release. In 1977, Tina toured Australia again, this time without Ike, and now signed to EMI. But she kept up the Australian connection when, after appearing on an Olivia Newton-John TV special in the US, she took on an Australian manager, Roger Davies, originally manager of Sherbet, who was working at the time with Olivia before also taking over management of Tony Joe White and Sade. Davies roped in producers and songwriters in his Gumleaf Mafia orbit, including Terry

didn’t know what to do with Tina Turner, which is why she gets her own footnote.)* I concluded that neither activist/blues-folkie Odetta nor cabaret singer Leslie Uggams make the cut, even though both of them married Australian men in the 1960s, performed extensively throughout the country, and shot films and TV specials here. But neither cut a recording here, and that, to me, is the bottom-line criteria that even Tina Turner satisfies. All those black American or African women who at least made a record in Australia, however, no matter how brief their sojourn here, are given an entry in the discography. Likewise, there are many other Aboriginal women and women from the Torres Strait who may not have earned a portrait in their own right but are listed in the discography. The discography is presented in chronological rather than the more usual alphabetical order to better

illustrate the music’s progression through time. But even then, despite a cut-off point it had to reach in 2013 (for reasons of sheer practicability), it still can’t be the final, comprehensive record. For a long time, for example, it looked like Marlene Cummins would never get a record out. Cummins is an important figure, a singer, songwriter and sax player from Queensland, the Deep North, mother of the classic ‘Pension Day Blues’, who started out performing in Brisbane in the 1970s but had to wait the best part of three decades before finally releasing an EP in 2008. Franny Peters-Little, sadly, never did make a recording of her own, at least not yet. Another couple of women, Theresa Creed and Cindy Drummond, had to wait just as long before belatedly releasing debuts in the 2000s. And then there are those, like Syvana Doolan and Carole Fraser, who never released a recording under their

Britten, formerly of the Twilights. On Tina’s huge breakout album of 1984, Private Dancer, Britten wrote and produced the monster single ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ (an Australian and American Number One) and Mike Chapman, Australian former-half of the Chinnichap bubblegum production team, co-wrote the next biggest single off the album, ‘Better Be Good to Me’. Australian band the Triffids mimed as her backing musicians in the video for ‘Private Dancer’. Tina came back to Australia in 1985, to tour and to shoot a starring role in Beyond Thunderdome,

the third Mad Max movie; she also sang the film’s title song, again written by Britten, and another worldwide Number One, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’. In 1989, her seventh album Foreign Affair contained another track co-written by Mike Chapman, ‘The Best’, which would become a sporting anthem here and all round the world. In 1993, she re-recorded it as a duet with Jimmy Barnes and it became a hit all over again as the theme song for Australia’s National Rugby League. Jimmy and Tina sang it at the NRL Grand Final. How much more Australian could she get?

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own names and so don’t get a discographical entry per se, but are granted prominent portraits. They appear alongside other such great losses, like Bettie Fisher, Cheryl Bracken, Lorna Beulah and so many others, because their low vinyl profile is out of proportion to the full magnitude of their under-exploited talent. If Deadly Woman Blues gets its way, it might even yet recover unreleased recordings that would themselves add to the discography. But then this is a story as much as anything about opportunities not given, promise not fulfilled, success not enjoyed. Less about superstars than shooting stars.

Of course, women in Australian music in general, at least up until 20 or 30 years ago, never enjoyed much beyond second-class citizenship status. Until the 1970s, the Australian women who achieved enduring success in music had to go overseas to do it, from Diana Trask in the 1950s to Helen Reddy and Olivia Newton-John— and Wilma Reading, it has to be said—in the 1960s and into the 1970s. Back home, while there were exceptions to the Little Pattie-style girl-next-door archetype, wearing kneesocks and pigtails, the more earthy or assertive talents faced a difficult struggle. Think of such non-household names as Betty McQuade, Del Juliana, Judy Cannon, Toni McCann, Margie Mills, Wendy Saddington, Jeannie Lewis, Alison MacCallum or Margret RoadKnight, Judy Jacques or Kate Dunbar. It wasn’t till the mid-1970s, after Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’ and Olivia’s country-lite hits (before her Grease/‘Physical’ makeover), that the likes of Renée Geyer and Marcia Hines proved it was possible for women in Australian music to sustain a career, if only just, by selling albums, which is what professional acts in the vinyl age had to do to survive. It wasn’t until the 1980s, a time of post-everything whether modern, punk or feminism, with multiculturalism about to be enshrined in legislation, that there was an increasing number of women writing their own songs, and playing and producing as well as singing them. There were still archetypal front-women like Kate Ceberano or Wendy Matthews, both conspicuously with roots outside Australia— Ceberano with a part-Filipina heritage and Matthews from Canada—but there were also the likes of Janie Conway, Carol

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Lloyd, Sharon O’Neill, Chrissie Amphlett, Deborah Conway and others who broke the mould. Not to mention Lindy Morrison or Helen Carter, who as instrumentalists rather than front-women sidestepped the mould altogether. But for black women, there was a double whammy at work, a paradox that immediately rears its head. Because if there is one designated role, one stereotype that black women have ever been allowed to fulfil, alongside domestic help and sex slavery, it is as singers. If black people could do anything, conventional white wisdom said, it was music. The false start black women made in Australian music in the 1950s was due, as much as anything, to positive discrimination based on this stereotype. In the 1950s, traditional jazz revivalists

Indigenous men in jazz: Johnny Nicol (left) … and George Assang aka Vic Sabrino

like Graeme Bell and the Port Jackson Band and local modern R&B pioneer Les Welch alike sought out singers of colour to authenticate their sound, whether Georgia Lee, Nellie Small or Vic Sabrino, or even the Filipina Georgina de Leon. Welch was so hip his nickname was ‘Spade’! Sabrino, aka George Assang, was, like guitarist Johnny Nicol, one of the few black Australian men involved in jazz and blues, both from the Deep North. I offer them here, again, as an illustration by way of casting a flipside to the dominant female tradition, lest they slip between the cracks. Like the rest of the white world, Australia loved black American music,

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and got a special injection of it during World War Two with the large number of African-American servicemen based in Queensland especially. Its influence on all music in this country remains enormous. From the first, Australians were voracious consumers of what were really the first stirrings of modern American popular music, the form that would eat up everything in its path across the 20th century. Australia was one of the first places in the world outside the US to see so many of the first generation of rock’n’rollers perform. So in the late 1950s we saw a woman like pioneer R&B belter LaVern Baker in her prime alongside Chuck Berry, and we saw Buddy Holly and practically everyone else except Elvis. There was history: ‘nigger minstrel’ shows toured here in the 19th century as soon as there was enough gold rush money to pay for them. Whether spirituals, plantation melodies, Ethiopian airs, ‘coon songs’, blackface (when whites did it), whatever euphemistic appellation it went by, Australia fell for this music the same way the whole world did. It had perhaps an even more profound effect on black Australia. Henry Reynolds wrote in The Other Side of the Frontier, ‘A settler from the Hume River told a government enquiry in 1849 that local blacks punctuated their songs with calls of “Halleluyah” and “Oh be joyful”$’. It happens that by the 1870s there were two African-American troupes going by the same name, the Georgia Minstrels, touring Australia at the same time! This was another reason I was drawn to Deadly Woman Blues: I was

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becoming increasingly interested in this once virtually taboo field. I’m not the only one; scholars in the US, black and white alike, are digging back into ‘coon songs’ and Ethiopian airs. It’s no place for the faint-hearted, nor is it, for all the privilege I know I enjoy as a white male, something from which I can avert my gaze. It’s the same reason why I’ve refused to shy away from sometimes using odious period terminology—because glossing over or airbrushing out these markers of historic travesty brings us closer to forgetting the history itself. In the decades either side of 1900, a time when the White Australia policy was a bipartisan article of faith, Australia was a hotbed of black American music. With troupes and star performers like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Irving Sales, Ernest Hogan and Belle Gibbons virtually setting up shop here, not to mention both sets of Georgia Minstrels, there were ‘nearly as many first-rate black acts in Australia at this time as there were back in the States’, as Lyn Abbott and Doug Seroff put it in their book Out of Sight, a history of turn-of-the-century black American music. The Fisk Jubilee Singers might be now recognised as the original AfricanAmerican minstrels, but it’s a curious fact that Orpheus McAdoo’s well-known incarnation of the important troupe never performed in its native US, instead playing out its career mostly in Australia and New Zealand. This troupe planted some of the deepest roots for modern Australian music and it offered up as stars a number of

significant black women, including Belle Gibbons, Claire Solly and Violet McAdoo. The Fisks first visited Australia in the late 1880s and spent more than two years on the road here, playing every city theatre and rural church hall in the country. They were a sensation. As FJ Loudin, who led the troupe on this tour, wrote of the audiences they performed for: ‘The singing seemed to touch their hearts, and, indeed, wherever we went through Australia, flowers were strewn across our pathway’. During this first tour of many, in 1886 the Fisks paid a visit to the Maloga (later Cummeragunja) Aboriginal mission on the Murray River. There they planted seeds that flowed directly into the songlines, flowering not only in singers that came from Cummera like the Merri Sisters, Jimmy Little, the Sapphires, Tiddas and Stiff Gins, but in Aboriginal and Australian music more broadly. Life ‘on the mish’ was a day-to-day reality for most Aboriginal people in the south-east of the continent and up along the east coast to the Deep North, where the largest white settlements took root and pushed the frontier outwards. Rounding up Aboriginal people onto either church-run missions or government-run reserves was a way of getting them out of sight, if not slowly killing them. But if a bit of traditional music and language survived through the corroborees that were still sometimes allowed—had to be allowed short of outright insurrection—it was the universal language of music, specifically African-American spirituals, that brought the two cultures together, bridging old and new. Around the country, it was the sad but beautiful strains of singing like the Fisks’ that penetrated Aboriginal life most pervasively. FJ Loudin remembered going to Maloga-cum-Cummera, where the people seemed wary at first, but melted as soon as his charges started singing. ‘When we had finished’, he wrote, ‘they gathered about us, and, with tears flowing, they clasped our hands and in broken accents exclaimed, Oh! God bless you! We have never heard anything like that before!’ The Fisks left songbooks behind at Maloga, and the missionary there, Daniel Matthews, was happy to encourage this new music because like so many white Australians, he too was swept up in its rapture—but perhaps because it was still singing praise to the lord. It’s a measure of the depth of its impact that in 2012, when Jessica Mauboy recorded a song for the soundtrack of The Sapphires movie called ‘Ngarra Burra Ferra’, it was, in a nod to deep truth, a version of an old Yorta Yorta language translation of the hymn ‘Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned’ that the Maloga people got straight out of the Fisks’ songbook over a hundred years earlier.

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American imports, in the 1930s … and 2011, poster designed by artist Emek using dot painting-stylings to suggest Australia

The Fisks themselves, with Belle Gibbons their star attraction, toured white Australia constantly all the way up to the 1920s. Around the turn of the century, when Maud Fanning was a big star on the Tivoli circuit as Australia’s leading blackface ‘coon impersonator’—a time when legendary black American boxer Jack Johnson pulled 20 000 people to Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay stadium to watch him retain his world championship over Tommy Burns—Belle Gibbons was winning encores for songs like ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and ‘Valley of Yesterday’.

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But if the White Australia policy finally caught up with black music, and even if there were still AfricanAmerican performers like Nina Mae McKinney, the Mills Brothers and Ada Brown who snuck through in the 1930s after the infamous deportation of Sonny Clay’s jazz band in 1927, it wasn’t till after the World War Two American ‘invasion’ of Australia that the floodgates reopened. It was then that actual black Australians broke through the colour bar too. In the 1930s, there had been successful Aboriginal women in Australia, circus performers like trapeze artist Winnie Colleano and rodeo rough-rider Kitty West, but their Aboriginality was obscured. In the 1950s, pre-rock’n’roll, Australia enjoyed a steady stream of

once-in-a-lifetime touring black acts: from Louis Armstrong to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan, and Britons like Winifred Atwell and Shirley Bassey. And even as Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Bassey most notoriously suffered semi-official prejudice and admonishment from bureaucrats and posh hotels, the response from rank-and-file audiences outside the intractable halls of authority—white Australian jazz lovers, of which there were a great many—was as effusive and warm as it had been for the minstrel shows half a century earlier. This groundswell surely contributed to the eventual downfall of the official White Australia policy. During the war, it was the influx of black American servicemen, especially north of the Brisbane Line (conveniently out of the view of more populous south-eastern Australia and closer to the action in the Pacific), that gave music another powerful shot in the arm. In that crucial ‘Deep North Blues’ chapter in Buried Country, Heather Pitt, sister of Georgia Lee, remembered when she was growing up in Cairns and starting out on stage, she had never heard jazz or blues before the Americans arrived. Torres Strait songman Seaman Dan tells Karl Neuenfeldt of wartime Cairns in their book Steady, Steady, ‘There was a young uncle of mine, Fred Sailor, his mother [Louise] was one of the [Pitt] sisters, sisters of my grandmother Maryann Pitt. And they used to live in Malay Town [the coloured quarter of Cairns] and Fred used to play the guitar. He played jazz guitar, followed the

American style. The American Negroes [soldiers] had a camp out at Redlynch. When they’d get their liberty they’d come into Cairns. They used to jive. They had good parties. They’d sing their blues and the jazz songs and they’d do jitterbug. And I kept on watching them and I thought to myself, Gee, I’d like to play like those fellows […] and that’s how I got into jazz and blues. Just watching the American Negroes play, listening to them sing, you soon pick it up’. Marlene Cummins will contend, quite reasonably I think, that it was only because Aboriginal people didn’t get to hear more blues that country music, which they did hear plenty of, became the dominant black tradition in Australia. As well as bands and dance steps, the Americans also brought with them V-Disks during the war: records, shellac 78s, that the US military distributed to keep up the troops’ morale. Containing a bit of everything then selling in America—classical

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music, hillbilly, jazz, pop, show tunes, religious music, novelty songs—the V-Diskography was a non-segregated ear-opener for many Australians, way beyond what EMI’s monopoly made available. Its jazz component—blues then was a sub-set of jazz—substantiated the roots already growing out of spirituals. A song like ‘Motherless Child’, for example, which stretched all the way back to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and which for black Australia was doubly meaningful, was offered in a couple of different versions in the V-Disk catalogue in 1944. This was a song that blurred the lines between spiritual and secular, and it became a standard sung by countless jazz, blues, folk and gospel performers, including Aboriginal ones. The most common images of the blues today are probably either urban electric blues (from raw Chicago blues like Muddy Waters to the black-tie BB King) or acoustic rural delta blues (sometimes called country-blues, like Robert Johnson). Either way, it’s guitar-based and male. But the classic blues born in the 1920s was a female form, backed by piano and/or brass instruments. It has been written out of the history for reasons, as far as I can tell, of sexism alone. After the war, the revival of traditional (Dixieland or New Orleans) jazz in Australia, as in Europe, made stars of local bandleaders like Graeme Bell, who performed a standard repertoire of songs like ‘St Louis Blues’, ‘Darktown Strutters Ball’ and ‘Gin House Blues’— all classic blues. And so when black Australian women like Georgia Lee

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Maud Fanning, Australia’s leading blackface ‘coon impersonator’ at the turn of the last century

rose up nationally after the war singing these songs with these white bands, it made sense even to squares who thought Glenn Miller had it all over Duke Ellington. Jazz, jive and jitterbug boomed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. While there were white women like Marie

Harriott (later Benson) and Kate Dunbar who sang this new style well, it was black women like Lee, Nellie Small or expatriate American Virginia Paris who excelled at singing spirituals and blues, songs like those in Graeme Bell’s book, as well as ‘Motherless Child’ or ‘Snatch and Grab It’, and ‘Stormy Weather’, or the two Nobody Knows songs, ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ and ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’. Along the way, a few new swing standards and show tunes crept in, and the Pitt women (Georgia Lee and her sister Heather Pitt) were always wont to throw in a few of their own Island songs as well. As Music Maker magazine said of Nellie Small, she was ‘often reminiscent of the Negro blues artists of the 20s’, adding that ‘she had a great shouting vaudeville style, and a great stage presence’.

Most of this music was not going on record. What was going on record? Songs like ‘Pub with No Beer’, ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ and ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’. Perhaps the biggest cultural breakthrough for Aboriginal people, after the famous Moomba stage show in Melbourne in 1951, was the 1955 film Jedda. Directed by Australian screen legend Ken Hall, Jedda marked a number of firsts: the first Australian feature film in colour, the first to go to Cannes, and the first to star Aboriginal people playing Aboriginal roles. If nothing else, it humanised Aboriginal people, made them something more than a mere unwanted idea or anthropological curio, even if it still patronised them as child-like. Still, as late as the early 1960s, the most popular black woman in Australia

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was probably a white woman, singer Helen Lorrain, who ‘blacked up’, as the expression went, to play the role of ‘Miss Carolina’—‘Australia’s greatest Exponent of Negro Spirituals’—in Hal Lashwood’s long-running and enormously popular minstrel show. This was Maud Fanning all over again, even when actual black artists like Heather Pitt were regular guests on the show! The mind boggles to think what Paul Robeson must have thought when he finally toured Australia in 1960, his records having been banned here in the 1950s, and he made a guest appearance on Lashwood’s TV Christmas special. But these songlines become extremely tangled, which is why it’s so necessary to try and untangle them: the Lashwood troupe might not have survived the 1960s, but the BBC’s Black & White Minstrel Show lived on and was immensely popular on Australian TV till the late 1970s. Around then, in 1976, rock band the Ted Mulry Gang scored a huge hit with a version of ‘Darktown Strutter’s Ball’; as we’ve seen, a song sung in Australia for over 50 years. But then as recently as 2010, Ali Mills, formerly of Darwin’s legendary Mills Sisters, released a mash-up of ‘Little Alabama Coon’ on her debut solo CD, a ragtime standard written over 100 years earlier. The veteran Mills recorded the track as a tribute to her legendary late uncle, Val McGuinness, the granddaddy of Aboriginal music in Darwin. In the US at this very moment, there are young black string bands like the Carolina Chocolate Drops reclaiming this same heritage, with as much love as irony.

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The songlines snake ever onwards, twisting and tangling in unexpected and confounding ways. Back at the turn into the 1960s, there was every kind of black woman and other women of colour in Australian show business. The first album released by a woman in Australia, after all, in 1960, was by Filipina singer Pilita (the Filipina presence in Australian music extends all the way from Pilita and Georgina de Leon-cum-Lucy Brown to Marilyn Mendez through Kate Ceberano to soulstress Florelie Escano today, a presence as significant as that of women from India and Sri Lanka). There were black Americans on sojourn here too, like Barbara Virgil, Gloria Smyth, Helen Humes and Hadda Brooks. Also appearing in the clubs and on TV and in recordings were Māori and Pacific Islander women like Inez Amaya, Joy Yates, Carmita and Mona Wiki. There were Torres Strait Islanders like Candy Devine and all the Pitt women (now including Wilma Reading and soon Heathermae Reading too). There were even a few Aboriginal women like Bettie Fisher, Cheryl Bracken, Christine Aslett and others, who somehow managed to get off the ‘mish’ and on to the circuit. Other black stars like Winifred Atwell and Shirley Bassey seemed like they lived here, so often did they tour. In fact, according to a survey I’ve made of National Film & Sound Archive discographies, black women were more prevalent than you might think, at least from the raw numbers. If there were around 400 debut artists on vinyl in Australia in the 1950s, 20 black

artists amounts to around 5 per cent of that figure, which is higher than the proportion of the population that’s black today. At a time when black men like Jimmy Little, Vic Sabrino, Harold Blair, George Bracken, Candy Williams and Vic Simms were releasing records, black women doing the same were almost as numerous. This sort of data analysis, again, is one of the few quantitative measures I’ve been able to rely on, and in a milieu where even birthdates are sometimes hard to ascertain, the discography establishes some fixed points in what is otherwise an uncharted sea. As the 1960s became an unprecedented boom time for the popular music industry around the world, Indigenous Australians tended to drop off the bottom of the discography. Wilma Reading would go on to cut a lot of recordings, but like her white sisters Shirley Abicair, Diana Trask, Lana Cantrell, Olivia Newtown-John, Patsy Ann Noble and Maggie Fitzgibbon, she had to go overseas to do it. The problem was just as likely sexism as racism. Georgia Lee became the first Indigenous Australian to release an album—Georgia Lee Sings Blues Down Under, in 1962; the only other Aboriginal people on vinyl during the 1960s were Jimmy Little and bush balladeer Dougie Young. It wasn’t till Auriel Andrew cut her debut EP in Adelaide in 1970 that an Indigenous woman returned to record. At a time when Aboriginal Australia was on the march to the 1967 Referendum, which finally acknowledged this people as citizens

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and human beings in their own land, it’s still hard to account for this. No doubt it had something to do with the Beatles, the way white English boy bands took over global pop. Black America’s response to this British Invasion was to stride past the blues and R&B that inspired it and invent soul. Young black Australia—indeed the whole country—had limited exposure to soul. It’s true that Australia enjoyed many of the seminal soul hits of the 1960s—Motown, the Supremes, Aretha Franklin—but to a much lesser degree than the rest of the world. As Jon Stratton pointed out in a 2015 article about The Sapphires, an act like the Supremes, for example, enjoyed Number One hits in the US and the UK in 1964 with ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ and ‘Baby Love’, but in Australia those singles climbed only as high as #16 and #26 respectively. Marvin Gaye’s ‘Heard It Through the Grapevine’, another song included on The Sapphires soundtrack and a US/UK Number One, only got to #40 in Australia. While this was admittedly enough to inspire the real-life Sapphires, it’s equally true record companies and radio resisted soul music on the basis that there was no market for black music here. I can remember the late, legendary Australian rock writer Ritchie Yorke telling me about starting out as a DJ in Brisbane in the early 1960s, and how he once spun a Stevie Wonder disc on air and was severely reprimanded and told not to play that ‘nigger shit’ ever again. (He did and was sacked.) In 2003, when I was working on the ABC-TV series Love Is in the Air, I interviewed Norm Erskine,

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Australia’s ‘Big Boy of Song’ in the 1950s, and he told me a story that says a lot about the circuit and post-war Australia generally. It was a Sunday morning show at a Sydney RSL club in the 1960s, and after the crowd had booed off stage ‘flamboyant’ (in other words, gay) local singer Edwin Duff, it started booing visiting African-American singer Lovelace Watkins. Which prompted an intervention from the club’s secretarymanager who, as Erskine recalled, ‘pulled the mic off Lovelace Watkins and—I hate this word—he says, listen you team of bastards, this coon cost a stack of money, so if you don’t shut up, I’ll bring the poof back!’ At the same time, it should also be said, there were DJs such as Stan ‘the Man’ Rofe in Melbourne, who at risk of being branded a ‘nigger-lover’ was outspoken in his love and promotion of black music. By spinning the latest American records supplied to him by (gay) friends who were Qantas stewards, he helped shape a generation of Australian music people from Molly Meldrum, our most eternal queen of pop, to Daddy Cool’s Ross Wilson. The only reason Australia heard, say, radical black stars like Miles Davis or Sly and the Family Stone in the late 1960s was because they were on CBS Records, and CBS was one of the biggest labels in the world and at that time was aggressively establishing an Australian branch office. At least Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye with their radical album-oriented reinvention of soul got their records released here, thanks to Motown’s Commonwealth distribution deal with EMI; we never heard Curtis Mayfield

until later, or Betty Davis, because they released their records on independent labels that didn’t have local licensing affiliates in Australia. Like local acid rock, which was largely ignored by record companies in favour of bubblegum, local black music went underground too where it also re-started the cycle of bubbling up again. Horns and pianos were superseded by electric guitars, the defining new texture of rock, country, blues and soul. A fondness emerged for particular songs that held special meaning. Songs that should have been featured in Music in the Key of Yes like Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’, or ‘Motherless Child’, what writer James Baldwin called ‘the sorrow songs’. The more country-style singers, of which there was a growing number, sang Hank Snow’s ‘Nobody’s Child’. Everybody sang the traditional Māori song of goodbye ‘Now is the Hour’, and songs like ‘Born Free’, and ‘Our Day will Come’, the 1963 US Number One for Ruby and the Romantics, that with its bossa nova rhythms and political overtones became a standard, covered by black artists all round the world. Local compositions like ‘Son of Mine’, ‘Maranoa Moon’ and ‘Brown Skin Baby’ were becoming entrenched too. But is it really reasonable to suggest, say, that as the 1960s became the 1970s, Marcia Hines enjoyed her success at the expense of a Syvana Doolan? It strikes me as overly protectionist, if not xenophobic, in the same way White Australia and even the Musicians Union responded to Sonny Clay and Ivie Anderson in the 1920s. Besides, at the same time that Marcia

Australia goes Afro: Wendy Saddington and Sharon Redd before her deportation, 1971

was beginning her inexorable ascent, other imported Americans were faring less well. Singer Sharon Redd, after all, who like Marcia came out here to star in Hair, was unceremoniously deported in 1971 in much the same way Clay and Anderson were 50 years earlier! In the 1970s, the politics of race and of gender, along with opposition to the Vietnam War, became increasingly militant. It was a volatile time, nominally known as the Whitlam Era, a belated extended summer of love and hate that hadn’t quite reached comfy Australia in the 1960s. In 1970, the year before Sharon Redd was deported, controversial black American satirist/ activist Dick Gregory couldn’t even get a visa to get in to Australia in the first

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place. Out of this environment, Australian music in the early 1970s experienced a very real coming of age, especially in terms of songwriting, including Aboriginal songwriting. Even if it’s true that Australia produced little of our own disco-soul, whether by black or white artists (and disco was a mixed, crossover genre from the outset), there was an uprising of Aboriginal music taking place at the time. But it took place in the country genre. Once singer-songwriters like Herb Laughton, Dougie Young, Bob Randall, Harry Williams, Vic Simms and Bobby McLeod pushed through, the door was opened. As Randall put it in Buried Country, for members of the Stolen Generation like him, singing their stories was a form of healing. Now there was a growing canon of Aboriginal standards—songs like Randall’s ‘Brown Skin Baby’ and others like ‘Stranger in My Country’, ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’, ‘Prison’s Nothing Special’, ‘No More Boomerang’, ‘Outcast Halfcaste’, ‘Streets of Tamworth’, ‘Koorie Rose’, the list goes on. They underpinned the rise of a new wave of female Aboriginal country singers who made those songs their own, like Wilga Williams, Auriel Andrew and Essie Coffey. For other Aboriginal women and musicians like, say, Marlene Cummins, American role models like activist Angela Davis and musician Nina Simone gave impetus to getting involved with the Australian chapter of the Black Panther Party, founded by Denis Walker in Brisbane in the early 1970s. Davis was just part of a genealogy that Cummins inherited along with Sibby Doolan and Nina Simone, who was popular in Australia because her recordings for major labels like Philips and RCA were widely distributed here. Sibby Doo herself sang at the Tent Embassy in Canberra, and when Bettie Fisher founded the National Black Theatre in Redfern in the early 1970s, where Doolan also performed, they saw it as a political as well as artistic gesture. Popular music, however, has remained the cultural poor cousin to more apparently legitimate art forms like writing, painting, theatre and dance, even film-making, which the elites who shape our highbrow culture industries have fostered with official support and funding. But black women have always been singing their stories, and since musicians of all stripes are pretty accustomed to not making any money, they have persisted in doing so thanks to the nourishment and encouragement of an actual grass-roots audience. After No Fixed Address, complete with Leila Rankine on sax, appeared on Countdown performing ‘We Have Survived’ in 1982, there was a great rebirth. Digitisation—computers and the

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Country Outcasts’ 1970s publicity photo … and inspirational 2007 Jon Langford artwork based on it

internet—has caused a revolution in society generally but it had already caused a revolution in music, first with the CD, and then with the rise of electronic instruments and recording equipment. Electronic dance music, including hip-hop, was the biggest sea change in pop since the birth of rock in the 1950s. And in Australia, it was Christine Anu, again conspicuously from the Deep North, who over and above any white artist personified this paradigm shift. Kylie Minogue may have been Australia’s international Queen of Pop in the 1990s, but Anu was our domestic goddess. Her closing-ceremony performance of the now-ersatz national anthem ‘My Island Home’, along with Cathy Freeman’s gold medal, was one of the real highlights of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Today, the music world is such a vast and nebulous network of an ever-growing number of ever-smaller

fragments that it resists attempts at big-picture analysis. Black Australian women, like musicians everywhere in post-post-modern culture—a melting pot of genre, race, nationality, sexuality, politics, everything—are thinking globally and acting locally. Doing best by not forgetting their roots as they approach a broad range of possible futures. Deadly Woman Blues can but try to remain a coherent history up to this elevated state of the present-day. It’s a catalogue for collectors of the lost, a lament, a blues for what might have been . . .

Just before Christmas 2010, not long after Georgia Lee died, I drew the portrait of Marlene Cummins you can see on page 170. This marked the real birth of this book.

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Examples of the author’s own fan art from the early 1970s

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It started as an experiment, a summer project. I had a photo I liked of Marlene, and I thought I’d just try rendering it, to see how it looked. It turned out okay, and so I thought I’d try another one. And when that one turned out okay too, that’s when I started to think, I could put together a whole gallery like this. ‘Images inform our every thought’, Peter Guralnick wrote in 1984, in the introduction to a volume of photographs of musicians from the fabled Michael Ochs Archives in LA, itself a monument to the lost. ‘Long after precise memories have faded, long after we have forgotten the intricacies of plot or the daunting weave of history, often a single vivid image will remain. Sometimes, like a half-remembered childhood dream, it cries out for explanation. Frequently it distorts the full-focus picture. Occasionally it will illuminate a world.’ Within a few years, only ever working on the side, I had completed nearly a hundred illustrations. Many survived and make the grade here. There’s always plenty of rejects, that’s what makes the rest the best. Over the next couple of years, grabbing spare time whenever I could, I drew another hundred or more; during which time I also started drafting the biographies, based on files I’d been building ever since the publication of Buried Country. It was a different approach to storytelling. Sort of. At first I thought I was doing this pure Robert Crumb/ Rock Dreams homage, with a bit of Jon Langford thrown in. I can’t

underestimate Langford’s importance to me: Jon Langford is a Chicago-based expatriate Welsh musician/artist, and when he first came to Australia in the late 2000s I went along to see an exhibition of his work (and hear him sing). I was greatly inspired by his series of portraits inspired by my own Buried Country. When I eventually crystallised the thought, it was, if he can do it, so can I! But the more I thought about it, I realised it was an instinct that ran much deeper. Recovering forgotten memories from childhood, I remembered that long before I ever saw Crumb or Rock Dreams, not to mention Langford, I was doing something similar myself. I spent half my life as a kid drawing. I was into comics and hot rods and ‘Big Daddy’ Ed Roth, and I collected bubblegum cards and football cards that I meticulously pasted into their designated albums. I then started doing my own newspapers and graphic histories like this and, eventually, wouldbe LP covers. With pen and ink I would draw a set of thematically linked illustrations, complete on the uniform page with a few explanatory words, and then I would staple those pages together to make my own little chapbooks. None of these survived my family’s peripatetic 1960s, our big shift from Melbourne to Queensland in 1969, but a couple of the would-be rock posters I moved on to in the early 1970s did, and so I’ve reproduced them here so you know that my recovered memories aren’t just the plant of some bogus shrink. That’s why Rock Dreams made such perfect sense to me when it first came out in 1974: not just because I’d become such a rabid music fan by then, or because I already understood appropriation and collage due to having precociously fallen in love with contemporaneous pop art; but because I’d already been long doing my own fan art, as they call it now. I still love fan art, and that’s what I sometimes like to think of this book as: an extended love letter in fan art form. All this would also explain how I was so readily able to go into putting out punk fanzines in the late 1970s. I was at art school in Brisbane but the pull of music was so strong that I dropped out to start writing about it, doing that in my own fanzines. After I quickly ‘graduated’ to the real rock press, I put down my pencil and pen and ink and guache—and for another three decades, didn’t pick them up again. Researching a previous book, 2013’s The Wizard of Oz, I spent a lot of time looking at between-wars newspapers. Finding myself falling in love all over again with the sort of line illustrations that

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coloured those papers before photography took over—falling in love again with the magic of cross-hatching, in a word—was a lot of the inspiration I needed to try and start doing the same myself again. I was all the more encouraged because I found that it’s true: drawing is like riding a bike, you can’t un-learn it. You get rusty, but it’s not hard to quickly reclaim technique. I can’t overstate how much pleasure this gave me. After using my right brain almost exclusively for so long, returning to the left brain was a revelation. It was all hand-eye, more like playing sport than writing a book. I was reminded why I spent so much time doing it as a kid. It was an almost fugue-like state to get lost in, in the doing; and in the having done, such a reward, at least when you nail it. The outside world drops away and time stands still until you come up for air a couple of hours later, drained and spent and with this glowing result—or sometimes not. Thus I embarked on what became no less than an odyssey, studded with these bright flashes of illumination and breakthrough that in turn kept pushing me on. At the same time, I very deliberately embarked on a parallel course of study, looking at other art and imagery for influences, ideas and inspiration. I looked harder too at Aboriginal art, and at the way Aboriginal people and especially women were more broadly represented in art. I’d already fallen in the thrall—again as a consequence of researching The Wizard of Oz—of vintage cigarette cards, the forerunners to the bubblegum cards I’d loved and collected as a kid. I went back to the illustrations that informed Robert Crumb, of American jazz and blues artists from 1920s catalogues of race records, as they were called. I looked harder at the commercial illustration and graphic design I’ve always loved. At album covers. It finally dawned on me, 30 years after the event, that I went to art school because I wanted to be an album cover designer! In so many ways this book is the belated consummation of that instinct—imagining album covers that never were but should have been. I looked more closely at psychedelic poster art. Martin Sharp, the lurid covers of pulp fiction. Communist propaganda art, whether Russian or Chinese. What’s called kitsch, and outsider art, I’ve long enjoyed as much if not more than so-called fine art. And kitsch, of course, starts to cross over with Aboriginality, inauthentic or otherwise, in velvet painting and pyrography, and other ceramics and decorative arts. The popular perception of African-Americans as musical, widely accepted in Australia as the couple of reproductions here suggest,

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Vintage line art renderings of female African-American musicians Ma Rainey, above, from a ‘race records’ catalogue, and Josephine Baker, by Josef Gels

was not extended to Aboriginal people. Sydney Long’s famous painting from 1904, The Music Lesson, which has a young, ostensibly Aboriginal girl playing a pipe for an audience of magpies, serenading them straight out of the trees, strikes me as no less phantasmagorical than any of his other canvases of nymphs cavorting in an art nouveau Australian bush. All a bit dodgy really. About the only time Aboriginal people were accorded any positive affirmation was when they were being used to sell something, as happy consumers in advertisements for tourism, shoe polish or shirts. It was one of the ironic double standards of

old white Australian racism that Aboriginal people could be seen but not heard, or at least seen in an idealised way. White Australia used the images and iconography of traditional life and culture to sell Australia overseas and to fill holiday resorts, while the reality was shoved away out of view. Happily, however, the songlines feed back on themselves. Bindi Cole Chocka has appropriated old tourist posters and remixes a new meaning for them— throwing the weapons of the oppressor back at him, just as dissident Chinese and Korean painters do, say, when they take the aesthetics of propaganda art in which they were trained and subvert them—and Tony Albert recycles velvet

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African-American inspirations in agit-prop poster art (Angela Davis), advertising, and rhythm&blues bubblegum cards (singer LaVern Baker)

painting (which, it should be noted, was the work of Aboriginal artists as much as white ones). Vernon Ah Kee and Daniel Boyd fire off anthropological photography in order to reclaim its subjects, as if rehabilitating propaganda into the service of good rather than evil. Like many people around the world, I’ve been captivated by the development of Aboriginal acrylic dot painting, for want of a better term, ‘the last great art movement’, as the late, great Robert Hughes put it, ‘of the 20th century’. But as pervasive a shorthand as this aesthetic has become, I’ve resisted its influence because it tends to hark back to traditional life and its landscapes and culture and spirituality, whereas the story at hand tends to the more modern and urban. More pertinent to

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me then is the (post-modern, or rather post-pop) work of contemporary urban Aboriginal artists like those mentioned above along with others like Reko Rennie, or Julie Dowling, or Robert Campbell, Gordon Bennett or the Blak Douglas, all of whose propensity for using aspects of narrative, portraiture, serialism, (black) humour, appropriation and collage, I suspect stems from sharing many of the same influences as my own. I looked hard at black American art too and found it uncanny the way music and dance is so central to its imagery. In that sense artists like Archibald Motley, Romane Beardon and Ernie Barnes, with their tableauxstyle canvases of nightclubs, dance halls and juke joints, have had much more impact on me than any number of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarris or Emily Kame Kngwarreyes. Like a DJ mashing up old records in order to create a whole new groove, I’ve wanted to take the same fine techniques

of, say, an ST Gill, or Eric Joliffe, or Elizabeth Durack, and re-deploy them, recontextualise them in the same way I admired so many Australian posterartists for fucking with the iconography in the 1980s, whether it was Sydney’s Tin Sheds collective, or our three great ‘Reds’ of the game, Redback, Red Eye and, more recently, Red Hand. Even more recently, expatriate Tasmanian Julien Poulson’s Cambodia-based operation Sticky Fingers has created signature images of Khmer pop stars lost to the Pol Pot era, and this act of cultural reparation had as direct a personal impact on me as Jon Langford, if not so much inspiration as confirmation … On a roll, I drew portrait after portrait. I searched all over the country and around the world for images in books, newspapers, magazines, on record covers and sheet music, on posters and handbills, in private collections, on the internet, in films and videos. I knew that for many entries, especially in the first two parts of the book, I could never offer more than an (artist’s) impression of a life and its music. Biographical data was just as hard to find as an image. Often I had to content myself with a random sample from the narrative of a life if there were no surviving recordings, or films, or none had existed in the first place. But if I could find an image, everything followed. I pride myself that not a single character was left out because I couldn’t find some sort of mugshot. As I poured out the portraits, ultimately producing around 200, my criteria for a keeper was that it had to

be lifelike and a good likeness. I wasn’t interested in self-expression, save for capturing an essence of (my understanding of) the subject’s character. My personal self-expression came after the drawings were completed and scanned into the computer, when the process took on a Rock Dreams-like approach to colour and collage. With Rock Dreams, Belgian pop artist Guy Paellert, in concert with English writer Nik Cohn, paid homage to the mythology of post-war popular music by taking iconic imagery and amplifying it in new assemblages and contexts. Deadly Woman Blues is a different kind of dreaming. ‘Reimagining’ is the vogue literary term, but I dislike it because it suggests a degree of fiction, of making things up—and as a writer trained in (oldschool) journalism, that’s something I have no interest in doing. I’m interested in verisimilitude, and even if I’m also interested in mythos, and even if I’m remixing the images at hand, I don’t think the two things have to be mutually exclusive. For some illustrations I had a particular end in mind from the very first, others evolved organically. My rule of thumb was that every panel had to have my hand in it somewhere, however small, though nearly always it’s much bigger than small. I would do a rough of a layout on paper and then hand the parts over to my son, Earl, and he would do the finished artwork in Photoshop, adding colour and/or assembling the appropriation. The teenage Earl’s contribution to Deadly Woman Blues is inestimable. Did good, mate!

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Where possible, where they’re credited, I’ve on-credited the original creators of photographs on which I’ve based my drawings. Like so many other contemporary artists, I’ve taken longlost commercial art as fair game for collages; homages are done in the spirit of acknowledgment. Since I’ve not gone into any traditional, tribal or sacred realms with all their attendant protocols, my guiding principles remained those in which I was inculcated as a journalist; those of independence, integrity and accuracy. And entertainment. And while I can guarantee the intractability of my independence and integrity, which includes the objectivity that negates personal prejudices or loyalties, I have strived to maintain the third quality, accuracy, despite the lack of documentary evidence. Because nearly all these women in question have stepped onto the spotlit stage of public life at some point, they’ve left some sort of trace you can find if you dig deep enough. I can only hope, to paraphrase Peter Guralnick, that even starting from such a wildly scattered and vague sprawl of data, I’ve illuminated a (lost) world, not distorted it. Which is why I cling to the caveat that this book could only ever strive to be impressionistic, ultimately, and not definitive. Certainly not (I hope) the last word. Whether or not I’ve achieved the fourth quality, entertainment, is up to you, the reader. But remember, it’s meant to be fun. Perhaps it’s a bit like Ruby Hunter’s second album Feeling Good, from 2000, whose title alone was a taboo-buster by suggesting that,

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counter to the bleak stereotype, Aboriginal people could actually enjoy a sensual life of pleasure as well as pain. There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube where the immortal Ruby introduces ‘Ain’t No Time to Complain’ saying, ‘A song to make you feel good. About hey, it’s all right to get on with life … it’s all right’. With Deadly Woman Blues, I always wanted to present a picture that similarly resists the negative, doesn’t deny or disrespect it, but is as bright and vibrant as the subject at its best. As I worked away for years, I sometimes amused myself with the notion that my wife might be getting jealous that I seemed to be spending so much time with all these other women. And it was a bit like that. I started to fall a little in love with each and every one of them. I know this could sound a bit perverse or creepy, but I also know that had that not been the case, I wouldn’t have been able to do as good a job as I hope I have. As I went along I became more aware of just how different all these women were, across two centuries and the four corners of the continent. But beautiful and heroic, those were the two commonalities I soon realised I was finding in each and every one of them. Because beautiful and heroic, that’s what these women are. I didn’t have to superimpose it, or imagine it, or re-imagine it, it just came out as a consequence of my faithfulness to the story at hand.

The dignity, empathy and energy that black Australian women have contributed to the recovery of community generally is disproportionate and nothing short of incredible. The archetype starts at home, with woman as mother, or, more often, as single mother; like the white community, so many fathers are absent, for whatever reason. Talking to Katelyn Barney about her central role in the 2001 Yothu Yindi album Garma, singer Jodie Cockatoo-Creed put it like this: ‘My father passed away when I was very young and he was a father of five girls. I am the eldest. And my mum had to play both roles and did such a good job to

Australia’s popular press imagines the black American affinity for music

keep us all together as a family, and it all comes out in my songwriting’. Her track ‘Good Medicine’, which opens Garma, is a stone classic that can still fill any dance floor. Most often it’s the women who hold Aboriginal communities together, pushing back the rising tide of unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, illiteracy, diabetes, eye problems and other sicknesses that drag communities down.

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Aboriginal Australians as advertising mules

Women too played important roles in establishing black media in Australia in the 1980s and 90s, and now seem to dominate moderntraditional painting: this is feminism in action. There are women like Freda Glyn and Maureen Watson who for their work in radio especially could be called great black women of Australian music, given that radio is the great disseminator of music. We are blessed in Australia to have some of the best public radio in the world, and there are plenty of other black women who warrant acknowledgment for just getting the tracks out there, like Lola

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Forrester, Jaslyn Hall and Rhoda Roberts. As DJs as well as musicians who get an entry in the following pages, Vi Chitty and Marlene Cummins extend an old tradition. It used to be (another stereotype?) that practically all black singers either: a) started out in church, b) went to ‘finishing school’ doing BVs, or c) both. ‘BVs’, of course, is industry parlance for backing vocals. Semi-discrete BV groups like the Iketttes, the Blackberries or, in Australia, the Fascinations (as in ‘Delvanius and …’), themselves became revolving-door institutions through which countless women passed.

Nowadays more musicians have graduated from drama school than the orphanages and foster homes of the stolen generations—although Part Three shows of the persistence of this genocidal tendency, with a handful of artists separated from their families as recently as the 1960s—but still it’s so often children that shape women’s lives, or the absence of children, when they’ve been removed or stolen. For many women, the idea of music as a vocation, let alone a career, was never viable. Others included in the pages ahead, including those closer to traditional life and less touched by the modern world, are women for whom music was an intrinsic part of the everyday, not something to pursue beyond it. Many in the modern era have heard the calling back to community more loudly, and retreated from musical promise to work in health or other social services, or on land councils and in the struggle for rights generally: women like the real-life Sapphires, Bettie Fisher and Essie Coffey. There’s still a savage cultural apartheid at work in Australia. There’s government money for the ‘legitimate’ arts, and for Indigenous arts, or rather Arts with a capital ‘A’. But there’s still far too little support for contemporary music, as I argued at length in my short book from 2012, History is Made at Night. The Australian Women’s Register lists a bare handful of female musicians, and none of them black, but includes plenty of writers, painters and dancers, most of them white. Sadly, the television talent quests seem to me like a tide that, rather than lifting all boats,

submerges them! The awards system, as it’s gone from the Deadlies to the NIMAs, is better, but still not one I’ve ever put great stock in (and so you won’t find the biographical notes reduced to shopping lists of such citations). The unstoppable rise of electronic dance music (EDM) or urban R&B and hip-hop inevitably dominates Part Three. Even the singer-songwriter tradition had to submit to it, and indeed, when artists like Toni Jenke added slinkier beats under otherwise acoustic textures, they gained an edge. Still the music doesn’t sever its roots in Koori country, with any number of present-day soul divas readily admitting they started out singing country, from Emma and Casey Donovan to Kylie Auldist, Jessica Mauboy and X-Factor contestant Ellie Lovegrove. Part Three is very different to the first two parts of the book in another important way, and one that certainly illustrates how much this lineage or tradition has grown: it became less a question of what to put in as what to leave out. The first two parts, I’m confident, are quite comprehensive. Taking the discographical as a yardstick, the figures make it plain. In Part Three’s final or most recent two decades, a hundred black women have released debut recordings. This is more than three times as many as the previous two parts/centuries put together, and a number that had to be drastically pared back to reach a manageable 34 entries. The book thus faced the same dilemma that faces all music fans today: with so many more artists competing for attention, for

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Golden Voice: Inspirational 2011 Julien Poulson screenprint of 60s Cambodian singer Ros Sereysothea, one in a series that recovers images of musicians murdered by Pol Pot

thinner and thinner slices of the pie, how do you choose? For me, for Deadly Woman Blues, I just trusted my instincts, as I ever have. Which means my ears. The recordings that sounded best to me made the case for including their creators, it was that simple. Along with the rise of EDM, happily there is now a growing awareness of its roots in jazz, blues, soul, funk and disco. So now not only can Jess Mauboy, say, go to the top of charts (or what’s left of them with the decline of CD sales), but a band like the Bamboos,

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leaders of Melbourne’s old-skool nufunk movement, can be one of the hottest live acts in the country, fronted by singer Kylie Auldist, who like Vika and Linda Bull is Tongan-Australian. There are still multiple women who’ve released multiple CDs over the last decade who’ve missed the cut here. To those women—especially Lexine Solomon, Monica Weightman, Gina Williams, Jacinta Price, Jessie Lloyd, the Hot Brown Honey crew, and Thelma Plum; and to newer-comers like Eleanor Dixon’s Kardajala Kirradurra, or Emily Wurramara—Deadly Woman Blues accords an apology on the basis that the page-count has to stop somewhere, and suggests the reader might look into them, and others, who are only listed in the discography. They are every bit as beautiful and heroic as the other women you’ll meet here. Deadly Woman Blues was called a labour of love long before it was published, and that might only go to show how deep a part of my life it has become. Quite a solitary part too as the foregoing should suggest, but still there are some people to whom I owe great gratitude: Steve Connell, Cameron Emerson-Elliot, Jim Paton, Michaela Perske and Syrene Favero. Thanks to Bill Casey and Kamahl Djordan King for a couple of key little emails. Thanks for inspiration and friendship to Jon Langford and Julien Poulson. It’s impossible to cite sources when I’ve scoured, often to no avail, hundreds of newspapers, magazines, discographies and databases, but I should acknowledge the primacy of the National Film & Sound Archive’s

Recordings by Indigenous Artists (1899–1998) listing by Peter DunbarHall, from 1999, and for all its frustrating flaws, the 1989 book Our Place, Our Music (edited by Marcus Breen).Thanks also to Michael Lynch and Mary Mihelakos, and to Nick Shimmin, and to all the mob at NewSouth—Pip McGuinness, Kathy Bail, Emma Hutchinson, Jocelyn Hungerford and Hugh Ford. A special nod goes out to Auriel Andrew, in remembrance, for just being who she was: one of a kind, a friend, and a true star. But then, there are even more stories that still elude my grasp. Such as Gwen Hunt: who was Gwen Hunt? There are Indigenous female musicians like Hunt or Roz Webb who survive as nothing but a single faded photo, or a memory, or myth, and many others who never came within cooee of making a recording: like wartime Moree ‘swing singer’ Dorothy Levy; ‘blues singer’ Mavis Dixon in Sydney after the war; Cowra hillbilly harmony duo June and Hazel Murray; mezzo-soprano Gwen Natoon, and singer of airs Joyce Mercer. Enid Williams and Rose Miller, who joined the Moral Re-Armament Choir in the 1960s. Sally Anderson, and also from Cherbourg, Joyce Blair, who in the 1960s fronted Darcy Cummins’ legendary band the Opals in Brisbane. Country vocal groups the Waratahs, and the Ebony Koorines. Folk singer Jenny Bush. Alice Bateman from Brisbane, who appeared on radio’s Amateur Hour after the war; WA’s Joan Dick, who did the same. And then there are all the long-faded echoes of impromptu campfire singalongs led by real people who now exist as mere phantoms and ghosts … But hopefully some of these shortfalls will not detract too much from the overall effect of Deadly Woman Blues. I can still remember the impact Rock Dreams had on me as a teenage music fan in the mid-1970s. All it took was a luminous image and maybe just a handful of words, but that was evocative or tantalising enough to prompt me to go out and seek all the more I could learn, and listen to. If Deadly Woman Blues can do just a small fraction of that for anybody, I’ll be happy.

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Part one

The Godmother Georgia Lee Georgia Lee is the original Indigenous diva of Australian pop, a singer who took her ‘down under blues’ to the world. Born Dulcie Rama Lyra Pitt in Cairns in 1921 to a father of Jamaican descent and a mother of mixed Scots/Aboriginal/Afghan blood, she grew up with church music and Island songs. She started singing on stage during the war in a Cairns concert party called the Tropical Troubadours, and then formed a group with her sisters Heather and Sophie, and brother Wally on guitar. ‘With a white flower half lost

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in the black curls of her hair, Dulcie would sway her lithe body and croon the haunting melodies of her people’, wrote Jean Devanny. ‘She has grace, charm and a delicate wit, and is dynamic besides.’ After the war, Dulcie headed south, along the way reinventing herself as Georgia Lee, and there is not space here to pay full tribute to all her pioneering achievements. In Sydney she went to the Conservatorium and started ‘gaining a reputation for her sympathetic interpretation of Negro songs and blues numbers’, as the Age put it in 1949. She became a star on the glamorous nightclub circuit, moving on to Melbourne and recording sides like ‘St. Louis Blues’ with jazz legends like Graeme Bell and Bruce Clarke. In 1951 she appeared alongside Harold Blair, Allan and Joan Saunders, Joyce Johnson and others in Melbourne’s fabled first Aboriginal ‘Moomba’ show at the Princess Theatre. She bid the city farewell with her own headline concert at the Assembly Hall in 1953, and moved on to London, where she sang as featured vocalist with such top orchestras as Geraldo and Edmundo Ros’s. She turned down a lot of money

to stay on with Geraldo’s into 1955. ‘It’s not money I want’, she told one newspaper, ‘it is to reach the top so that any success I have will reflect credit on my people and give the world a better understanding of them’. In reality, her health was poor and she was homesick. She returned to Sydney and after playing a national tour with Nat King Cole in 1957, became the first black Australian to release an album when in 1962 Melbourne’s Crest label put out the amazing Georgia Lee Sings the Blues Down Under. But again her health caught up with her, and after starring in the groundbreaking ABC teleplay Burst of Summer, she suffered a nervous breakdown and went into semi-retirement. She made a brief comeback in the late 1970s, when, after starring in the local production of the African-American stage musical The Wiz, and having taken up the Baha’i faith, she was crowned Australia’s Queen of Jazz, appropriately as part of Melbourne’s annual Moomba festival. Then she returned to real retirement. She died in Cairns in 2010, aged 89. She told the ABC-TV show Blackout in 1992: ‘I had a wonderful life’.

The Last Tasmanian Fanny Cochrane Smith One of the first Australians recorded singing was one of the ‘Last Tasmanians’: Fanny Cochrane Smith was an Aboriginal woman from

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talking machine technology was invented in the late 19th century, one of its popular early uses was anthropological, and only a year after Thomas Rome cut Australia’s famous first cylinders in Victoria in 1897, Indigenous Australians were recorded in the Torres Strait by a team from Cambridge. The following year, in 1899, Horace Watson of the Royal Society recorded a number of cylinders with the then 65-year old Fanny Smith in Tasmania. Fanny had grown up in the cruel Queen’s Orphan School in Hobart; after marrying an ex-convict named

Smith when she was 20, they went to the Aboriginal settlement at Oyster Cove to live, before being shunted off to Flinders Island. Fanny claimed the title of ‘Last Tasmanian Full-blood’ after the 1876 death of Truganini, but it was the latter who became erroneously fabled as such. As the Australian Dictionary of Biography put it, Fanny, whose illustration at left is based on a photo by John Beattie, was ‘one of nature’s ladies who could entertain any gathering’ with her patter and singing. She spoke and sang for Horace Watson, who said, ‘I feel very glad indeed that the Aboriginal language of this island, together with its songs, however fragmentary, have at last been permanently registered, and can be listened to in future years’. Two years later in 1901, Sir Baldwin Spencer started recording Aboriginal people in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Two years after that, in 1903, Fanny recorded again with Horace Watson in Hobart. Her two sessions with Watson were among the first inaugurated into the National Film & Sound Archive’s Register of historic recordings. She died two years after the second session, in 1905. A century later, in 2002, veteran Australian jazz-folk-blues artist Judy Jacques recorded versions of Fanny’s ‘Bird Call Song’ and ‘Spring Song’ for her sublime Making Waves CD.

Flinders Island in Bass Strait, who in 1899 sang down the bell of a waxcylinder recording machine at the Tasmanian Museum in Hobart. After

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Circus Freaks ‘Sideshow Jenny’ and Cunningham’s 1883 Circus Troupe In 1993, in the basement of a disused funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio, the century-old mummified remains of a man were found and identified as fabled Aboriginal circus performer Tambo. Tambo was one of a troupe of nine Aboriginal Queenslanders that American theatrical agent RA Cunningham ‘recruited’ to appear in the 1883 Barnum & Bailey circus spectacular ‘Ethnological Congress of Strange and Savage Tribes’. In the late 19th century, with the age of Empire at its height and anthropology one of the vogue new voodoo-sciences, a popular attraction on the American and European circuits was putting such stolen people in stage shows that gave white supremacists an exotic glimpse into their distant conquered lands. Cunningham took off with six people from Palm Island and three from nearby Hinchinbrook: six men, two with their wives, and one child. They would present a sort of mock corroboree, with boomerang-throwing demonstrations and, of course, much music and dancing, in which, in vaudeville terms, the men tended to be the hoofers while the women provided the music. Their appearances in the US in 1883 caused a sensation. The senior

woman, Jenny, highlighted at left, wife of Toby and mother of little Toby, was the MD, who led Sussy, teenage wife of Tambo, on singing and clapsticks. But then members of the troupe started dying, whether due to TB, pneumonia or broken hearts. First it was Tambo, in Cleveland. By mid-1884, now in Europe, Sussy and three more of the men were dead, including Toby, Jenny’s husband. Now only Jenny, little Toby and Billy remained. Cunningham kept them on the road until they returned to Australia in 1888, whence they faded back into the landscape. Cunningham returned to Australia again in 1892 to get together another troupe for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but when they too started dying off, he gave up on Aboriginal people and moved on to Wild West shows starring cowboys and Indians. A local Queensland show along similar lines, Archibald Mester’s Wild Australia, had ambitions of going overseas, but after touring the east coast over the summer of 1892-3, disbanded amid various controversies. Tambo’s remains, which survived because they were long displayed in a dime museum in Cleveland, were returned to Palm for a fitting burial.

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status, whether open or closed, sacred or otherwise. So pervasive was music that song, speech and language all overlapped. The songman was an exalted figure. Nor was music an exclusively male domain. Semi-sacred music had men singing and women dancing. In the fully open realm of the corroboree, what ethnomusicologist Catherine Ellis once called ‘really a folk dance evening’—the original bush doof?—women tended to provide musical accompaniment to the men’s dances. Women too had their own strictly segregated sacred songs, ceremonies and rituals, as shown by the illustration at left, based on a photo

by Phyllis M Kaberry published in her 1939 book Aboriginal Women: Sacred and Profane. Mostly, traditional music was vocal, based on singing, with accompaniment mostly rhythmic, whether, say, clapsticks or, in the Top End, didgeridoo (which was played mostly by men). The words carry the minimal melodies, there is no real harmony, and the structures are repetitive and circular. Anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and Aboriginal people themselves have preserved some of this music. But so much of it, like the languages themselves, was simply stamped out by the whitefella.

Born Sandy Devotional The Hermannsburg Choir and Western Desert Gospel

Women’s Business Female Music in Traditional Society In traditional Aboriginal societies, which were largely oral cultures, (portable) music was the premier art form, and its power absolute. That the term ‘songlines’ is used nowadays to describe the Aboriginal understanding of life, history, the universe and everything is an indication of its primacy: songs were creation itself—the world is effectively sung into being during the Dreamtime—and songs were maps and the law; they were history, they were gossip, and they were the basis of all ceremonies and dances. They were handed down and varied, depending on their

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Since 1970, the Hermannsburg Choir, whose roots stretch back to the late 1800s, has been all-female. The tradition established by this shifting ensemble is unique, a breathtaking meeting of the European and Aboriginal. Missionaries brought hymns with them, and the influence of gospel music spreads way beyond the walls of churches. The Hermannsburg mission was established by Lutherans on Arrente land west of Alice Springs, and it’s probably still most famous as the home of landscape painter Albert Namatjira. Different denominations had different music. The Lutherans’ choral tradition was based on Ira

Sankey’s Protestant hymn books, with its hits like ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God’, ‘Showers of Blessing’ and ‘Old Rugged Cross’. In 1950, 60 years after the Hermannsburg Choir produced its first hymnal, it was first recorded, at the University of Adelaide, singing mainly Bach chorales under the baton of Pastor Ted Strehlow. On the mission’s 90th anniversary in 1967, a 23-voice choir embarked on a tour of South Australia, culminating in the recording of a live album at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide. Around the same time, the choir from Ernabella in northern South Australia, where Presbyterians established a mission

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in 1938, was starting to sing hymns in its own Pitjantjatjara language, and it also cut an album, called Singing Walkabout, for EMI; the Millingimbi Childrens’ Choir also visited Melbourne and recorded an EP. Other central desert choirs grew at Amata, Warburton

and Aeronga; in Alice Springs there was the Yirara Girls choir. Some of this music came out in the 1980s when the newly established CAAAMA started releasing cassettes. In 1985, the nowsegregated Hermannsburg Aranda Ladies Choir released its debut album through CAAMA, and in 1999 the renamed-again Ntaria Hermannsburg Ladies Choir released its first CD, Ekarlta Nai! In 2003, they sang with the Sydney Symphony at the Opera House, which was the subject of the documentary film Cantata Journey. Today, the Ntaria, Ernabella and Areyonga choirs still sing out, with the ladies of Ntaria releasing a third album in 2011 called Tjina Kngarra, which translates as Best of Friends. Subsequently, a ‘supergroup’ came together, the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir, comprising singers from six desert communities, and it toured with the Soweto Gospel Choir in 2014, went to Germany in 2015, and in 2016 appeared at the Denmark Festival of Voice.

Black Velvet Indigenous Women in White Music ‘Black Velvet Band’ is an old folk ballad about an Irishman transported to Tasmania for taking the fall for his girl’s theft of a ribbon, but in Australia the term ‘black velvet’ came to mean something altogether different. For a long time, Aboriginal women were

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heard of but not heard, or rather seen but not heard, in our music. It’s ironic that what is so often cited as one of Australia’s first ‘original’ compositions, from 1834, was ‘Song of the Women of the Menero Tribe’, which was collected by John Lhotsky and transcribed by

Isaac Nathan. Aboriginality permeated Australian folk songs as they developed in the 19th century, the single greatest hit of which, of course, is ‘Jackie Jackie’, which was sung by black and white alike. But what of, say, Jacquie Jacquie? Or as she was called in the ballad ‘Sam Holt’, ‘Black Alice’, depicted at left

based on a photo by Douglas Wylie, ‘so dusky and dark/That Warrego gin, with a straw through her nose/And teeth like a Moreton Bay shark’. ‘Black velvet’ came to refer to the Aboriginal sex object. ‘Black Mary’ (Mary Ann Bugg) was the Aboriginal girlfriend and partner-in-crime of 1860s bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, about whom there is sure to be an opera produced. In ‘The Old Bullock Dray’—again a standard sung by black and white alike—the white drover takes an Aboriginal woman for a wife. Another classic image based on fact is of the young black girl disguised as a ‘ringer’s boy’, or cowboy’s offsider. In the 1920s, ‘My Little Lubra’ was a hit for music hall duo Vaude & Verne, a local variation on the American ‘coon song’ tradition, and in 1940 when Noel Coward toured Australia, he performed a specially penned new song called ‘How I’d Like to Be a Little Aborigine’, to join his earlier hit, ‘Half-Caste Woman’. The 1960s folk revival inculcated change and white women expressed solidarity with their black sisters in songs like ‘Bush Girl’ and ‘Tribal Girl’ (by Shirley Jacobs) and ‘Dark Eyed Daughter’ (Phyl Vinnicombe). Soul singer Jeff St. John in 1966 released a single called ‘Black Girl’, but as a cover of the Leadbelly standard, the reference was AfricanAmerican. After Bob Randall’s ‘Brown Skin Baby’, it was up to Aboriginal women to sing their own stories, and in the 1970s a wave of country artists like Auriel Andrew, Wilga Williams, Essie Coffey, Vi Chitty and Cherie Watkins started doing just that.

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House Gin Blues Bessie Flower Bessie Flower was an Aboriginal girl born around 1851 at Albany in south-west Western Australia, and her life, in which music was one of the few constants and joys, epitomised the mistreatment of her people. Taken from her parents as a child, she grew up in an Anglican school called Annesfield, where, as Bain Attwood said in a 1986 article in the journal Hecate, ‘she developed a love of music and a passion for reading’. She was the model ‘civilised savage’, the perfect future ‘house gin’ who spoke fluent French and played chess. In 1864 when she was 13 and moved to a Church of England school in Sydney, she was just beginning a peripatetic existence that would see the Aborigines Protection Board bounce her around the country for the rest of her short life. She returned to Albany after a couple of years and played the organ at church services. She was then moved again, in 1867, to the Ramahyuck mission station in Gippsland, Victoria, where she married—as illustrated, with her husband Donald Cameron, in 1877—and had eight children. She played the new harmonium in the station’s chapel, with ‘an amount of accuracy that took her audience by surprise’, as the Gippsland Times put it. Wrote Attwood: ‘She became locally well-known for her performances at fund-raising concerts, celebrated for her pianoforte and vocal selections’. But her husband was wandering, two of her children died and another two were taken away. She moved to the Wimmera in western Victoria, and then back to Lake Tyers in Gippsland, where she regained a degree of happiness because, as Attwood said, she ‘took up singing and her beloved harmonium again, playing in the church and at concerts’. Into the 1890s, she had to keep fighting to keep the rest of her children, and even to see her husband, and she helped other Aboriginal women hold their families together. But by 1895 she was dead of a heart attack at 43, survived by only five of her children. For the local Aboriginal community, her passing, as the Gippsland Times put it, ‘caused a profound sensation’. She was finally brought home in a special ceremony at Albany in 2013.

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can only now be imagined, ethnomusicologist Marylouise Brunton is to be thanked for preserving some of the music of the Lower Murray. In the early 1980s, Brunton made field recordings of songmen Issac Hunter and Tom Lyons as well as of a number of women, including Annie Koolmatrie and Janet Smith. And though Janet Smith, who played accordion, harmonica, banjo and violin, proclaimed herself the Queen of the River, she retired to religion, leaving Annie Koolmatrie to assume the throne, not least of all thanks to her legendary ‘Coorong Song’. Born at Swan Reach in the 1890s, daughter of Rita Mason, a singer herself, Koolmatrie sang and played pianoaccordion, usually accompanied by

her husband Jack. She had a repertoire that ranged across hymns, music hall novelties, drawing room airs and traditional material. ‘The Coorong Song’, which is based on the traditional ‘Lay My Head Beneath a Rose’, was so popular that in 1974 it made it into the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship’s songbook Gospel Favourites Along the Murray. Marylouise Brunton recorded Koolmatrie singing the song, accompanying herself on the squeezebox, at Barmera in 1981: ‘Birds of every kind are whistling/As the evening shadows fall/I can hear the people singing/Singing songs of long ago’. After her death, her name was given to the Annie Koolmatrie House in Adelaide, a rehabilitation hostel for Aboriginal alcoholics.

Jubilee Singers

Belle Gibbons, Claire Solly and Violet McAdoo

Delta Lady Annie Koolmatrie Just as the Mississippi Delta in the US was a crucible for so much music, the rich Australian riverlands where the Darling, Murrumbidgee and Murray meet—where Victoria, NSW and South Australia meet—from the Coorong just south-east of Adelaide, where it all empties into the ocean, to as far north up the Darling as Menindee and as far east along the Murray through Swan Hill to Echuca, these too are fruitful songlines. The comparison to the Deep South is irresistible—paddleboats plied the waterways and a travelling Aboriginal minstrel, Paddy ‘Hero’ Black, plied the paddleboats. But if Hero Black’s signature tune ‘Menindee Waltz’

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Belle Gibbons, Claire Solly and Violet McAdoo were all, at different times, members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the original black American minstrel troupe whose second home was Australia for three decades between the 1880s and 1920s. Gibbons was AfricanAmerican, one of the first black stars of Australian music; Solly was Aboriginal, from Katana in Western Australia, ‘a coloured lady’, as one paper put it, ‘with a remarkable contralto voice’, who was likely the first Indigenous person on the professional colonial stage; and

McAdoo was the illegitimate Australian daughter of one of the Fisks’ AfricanAmerican leaders, Orpheus McAdoo, who died in Sydney in 1900. There were other African-American women on the busy Australian circuit—including Bertha Miller, the ‘black Melba’—but Belle Gibbons was the Fisks’ enduring drawcard. Outlasting not only McAdoo but another leader, Professor AC White, who died in 1922, again in Sydney, Gibbons became, as the book Out of Sight put it, ‘increasingly important as a symbol of continuity and authenticity’.

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When she first arrived in Australia in 1886, Gibbons was a soprano, but she switched to a contralto and with the latter-day Australasian Fisks, she became a ‘lady baritone’. Claire Solly (highlighted at left) joined the Fisks in 1905, and she was the show’s resident ‘native songbird’ for 15 years, until after the war. In 1919, when both she and Gibbons left, Solly to go on and form the successful all-female quartet the Austral Maids, Gibbons was replaced by Violet McAdoo. The young Miss McAdoo played the lady baritone role up until AC White died, when Belle Gibbons returned for one final farewell tour between 1923–25. Claire Solly went on to further her career overseas; she studied in Italy and England. But in London in the early 30s she ran headon into the Depression, and struggled to get work. On her return to Perth in 1935, she told the Daily News, ‘unless a singer can branch out into variety or do broadcasting, there is very little hope for her in London’, and she took her final bow. The Fisk Singers franchise is still extant to this day.

Claypan Dancing ‘Stringband Sarah’ and Mission Bands Just as a great deal of music grew out of the collision of African slaves and their European masters in the American Deep South, Aboriginal people in Australia picked up the instruments

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banjos, autoharps, harmonicas, jew’s harps and tea-chest basses as well as clapsticks, gum leaves and didgeridoos. Photographs and reports put mixedgender black stringbands and concert parties all over the country, from Point McLeay near Adelaide up to Kuranda near Cairns and all points in between. The illustration above—of Sarah, just ‘Sarah’—was based on a photo taken at Wynnum, near Brisbane, around 1900. Women figure in other stringbands like the one at Purfleet, on the NSW coast near Taree, which had singers Lena Bungie and Harriet Neville. In the Top End, the stringband music that hit a

peak in Darwin between the wars was a result of the melting-pot population there, and of a different saltwater strain, with the influences of Filipino rondellos, Indonesian gamelan and Hawaiian steel guitar streaming through it. But a photo of the 19-playerstrong Cubillo family guitar orchestra reveals not a single woman. Leila Rankine grew up at Point McLeay just before the war, and in the 1989 book Our Place, Our Music she remembered: ‘After tea, at nightfall, it was very popular to build a campfire and have a singalong. You’d find people with guitars and harmonicas were popular. Or maybe someone would come along who could play an old concertina or gumleaf. There was no lack of musicians and you didn’t have to have a big group to have a singalong, or a concert, or a dance’. Guitars became dominant after the war. A photo of an early 1950s concert party at Cherbourg in south-east Queensland has Sally Anderson singing in front of Jack O’Chin’s band of two guitars, two lap steel guitars and a banjo, and a photo of a 1940s Malay Town band in Cairns has an Aboriginal woman on lap-steel guitar—and this evolution eased into country music. The claypan dance as such faded, although, through the 1980s into the 90s, north-western NSW Aboriginal women like Ivy Fernando, Rita Croaker and Evelyn Crawford were still playing the accordion.

and songs of the whitefella, along with his religion, drugs and diseases. In the 19th century, the claypan dance became a sort of updated corroboree, fuelled by music made with fiddles, accordions,

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The Rose of the Illawarra Queen Rosie In 1934, when the show Collits’ Inn, starring the young Gladys Moncrieff, moved from a sell-out season at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne to the Tivoli in Sydney, it could have been called a phenomenon. Billed as ‘the first all-Australian musical romance’— although it actually followed on from the 1921 show Laughing Murra, which also contained appropriations of Aboriginal music like the song ‘Demon Wind’—‘there were two breathtaking things in Collits’ Inn’, as Peter Fitzpatrick put it in the Argus: a revolving stage (!), and ‘an Aboriginal corroboree at the opening of Act Two […] the like of which no-one had ever seen before’. Collits’ Inn was an operetta, based on the history of a real-life colonial inn near Lithgow in central NSW. Written by Varney Monk and TS Gurr, it was when Monk was visiting Kiama, south of Sydney, in the late 1920s that she was inspired to write a corroboree number. At a flower shop in Kiama, Monk witnessed local Aboriginal woman Queen Rosie, then in her eighties, sing and dance—and it was these ‘raw materials’ she transposed to the ‘legitimate’ stage. Rosie died even as Collits’ Inn was still winning encores in 1934, and as the Sydney Morning Herald said, the show’s ‘corroboree chant is her

requiem’—and while the paper pointed out she received no credit for it, it added she ‘is deserving of a place in the history of the play’; she is further deserving of a place in Australian music history. ‘All loved Rosie’, said the Herald, ‘she was a “white” woman. She was the medical adviser and maternity nurse for the scattered members of her tribe, from Wollongong to Ulladulla, and ushered into this world many a dusky piccaninny. She herself had a family of eighteen, and outlived them all but one. Her husband was King Micky, the last of the Illawarra tribal kings […] he predeceased Rosie by some thirty years. They were a remarkable couple. Only to a favoured few would Rosie sing or dance. Then, like Burns’ Cutty Sark, “her feet like hammers struck the ground” and her eyes grew strangely lambent, for she had, in memory, cast the trammels of civilisation aside, and was back to the life of her tribe and its customs of the past, when she was young, nearly a century ago. With her has departed the knowledge of many songs and the legends of her people, the knowledge of medicinal herbs, and the melodies of corroborees of earlier days, the war dances, the songs to bring the rain, good fishing or good hunting. Rosie knew them all’.

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Nigger Go Home Ivie Anderson In 1927, when jazz was still new, Californian Sonny Clay’s Plantation Band toured Australia in an episode that will ever be a blight on our history. Black American musicians had played here before, but in a country that had just codified the White Australia policy, the only question could be, as it was put in a local film from 1919, Does the Jazz Lead to Destruction? Jazz music, to most rightthinking folk, was louche and decadent, and at worst black. Certainly, Sonny Clay’s outfit, with singer-dancer-comedienne Ivie Anderson out front, was the first black jazz act to come here, signed by theatre chain Williamson’s to tour a show called The Colored Idea. Just prior to leaving LA, the band recorded a song called ‘Australian Stomp’, which they played as they steamed through the Sydney Heads. The Sydney Morning Herald described the act’s Tivoli debut as ‘winning emphatic applause. Equally adept at rendering classical airs as well as weird jazz effects […] Miss Ivy [sic] Anderson was warmly applauded’. But as the tour wended its way to Melbourne through February, the party picked up a tail of groupies and cops alike. ‘Noisome Niggers’, Truth called them. ‘Scum of America’, said Prime Minister Billy Hughes. On March 25, police raided an East Melbourne apartment they’d had under surveillance. It was an outrage that black men should be fraternising with local white women. Five flappers were arrested on charges of vagrancy. One was also charged with possession of cocaine; another escaped through the window. The Americans were not charged, but were issued with deportation orders. Even the Musicians Union sided against them: ‘It was not desirable’, said a spokesman, ‘that coloured people should be imported to do the work which could be much better done by Australian citizens’. Today, Sonny Clay is but a footnote in jazz history, although Ivie Anderson went on to brilliantly sing with Duke Ellington between 1931 and 42, including on the original recordings of ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)’, ‘I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good’ and ‘Stormy Weather’.

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Merri Melodies The Merri Singers The Cummeragunja (formerly Maloga) mission on the Murray River near Echuca became one of the pillars of Aboriginal life in the early 20th century: it was where the Fisk Jubilee Singers made a special visit in 1886; where so many of the pioneer fighters for Aboriginal rights like Pastor Doug Nichols, William Cooper and Margaret Tucker started out. And it was where Jimmy Little Snr founded a travelling vaudeville troupe in the 1930s, whose number included, as illustrated, the Merri Singers. Jimmy Little Snr grew up at Wallaga Lake, on the NSW south coast, where he was a member of the community’s famous gumleaf orchestra. During the 1920s, the Wallaga mob marched all the way to Melbourne to appear at the Palais Royal. Along the way, they stopped off at Cummera, and in short, Jimmy Little never left. He started a family there and the vaudeville revue, the second such Aboriginal troupe after whitefella George Davis directed the Australian Natives Vaudeville Company out of Kempsey, NSW, in the late 1920s. The Merri Singers, sometimes Merri Sisters, comprised three girls from the mission—Iris Nelson, Nona James and Clare Murray—and with a name derived from the creek in Melbourne where the city’s founder John Batman signed a contract with the local Kulin tribe, they

were the original Aboriginal girl group who paved the way for all the others to follow. The Cummera troupe, which also starred its leader’s wife Frances Little singing and yodelling, would play church halls, shearing sheds, football clubs, claypan dances, anything, with the young Jimmy Little Jr soaking it all up. In 1937, they put on in Melbourne what was described as a ‘novel entertainment’, with a program including a harp and gumleafaccompanied choral version of ‘The Old Folks at Home’, the Stephen Foster plantation song from 1851 that the Fisk Singers first performed at Maloga in 1886; the Age reported that Wyring, ‘a neat young gin, clad in a smart black evening frock, gave a sympathetic rendering of “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life”#’. In 1939, Jack Patten led a walkoff at Cummera in protest at the working conditions, and with that and the onset of war, an era ended. The Merri girls all got married. But the seeds planted by the Fisk Singers, and carried on by the Merri Sisters, were deeply rooted. In 2012, when the film The Sapphires included a version of the Yorta Yorta language version of the hymn ‘Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned’, called ‘Ngarra Burra Ferra’, it became a virtually viral hit that young black girls all over Australia posted videos of themselves singing on YouTube.

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Maori Melodies Ana Hotu The first black woman to cut a commercial recording in Australia was Māori songstress Ana Hato, who was brought to Australia in the late 1920s by the Parlophone label and recorded over a dozen sides in Sydney. Hato was just the first in a string of acts from New Zealand and Hawaii who beat black Australians onto shellac. Among the first British record companies to set up shop in Sydney after World War One, Parlophone was an innovator looking to plunder the South Pacific’s musical treasures. Ana Hato, who was born in Rotorua in 1907 and was the first star of modern Māori music, first sang in Australia in 1925. In 1926, when the Duke and Duchess of York visited New Zealand, Parlophone sent engineers and equipment to Rotorua to record Hato, a soprano, with her baritone partner Deane Waretini, singing four duets for the royal couple. These were the first-ever recordings of Māori music, and after their trans-Tasman success on 78rpm release— Hato was praised for her ‘trueness in purity and register’— Parlophone got the pair over to Sydney in 1929 and put them into a proper studio. Parlophone was owned by EMI, and EMI’s new state-of-the-art recording facility at Homebush was already cutting sides there with native Hawaiian duo Queenie and David Kaili. Hato and Waretini put down 14 tracks at Homebush, including the first-ever recording of the Māori evergreen ‘Pokarekare’. Following this, in 1930, the Māori vocal trio the Tahiwis—sisters Weno and Hinehou Tahiwi, with their brother Henare—arrived at Homebush and cut 22 sides for Parlophone, which were praised in Australia for their ‘authority and distinction’. It all became part of a push EMI made into opening up what might be called the ‘world music’ market. By gathering together some of its Columbia imprint’s recordings of the Rotorua Choir and other Māori singers, along with some of Parlophone’s Hato and the Tahiwis sides, EMI went so far, in the early 1930s, as to release an elaborate album of Māori music, ‘album’ meaning, at that time, a folder containing a set of six 10” 78s by various artists. It was a first in so many ways—but still an Indigenous Australian would not appear in a local recording studio for another couple of decades to come.

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Little Nell Nellie Hetherington Aboriginal Queen of Sacred Song was a chapbook published out of Melbourne in 1929. Written by United Aborigines’ Mission (UAM) soldier of the Cross Isabella Hetherington, it was a biography of the Aboriginal girl she’d adopted, Nellie now-Hetherington, who between the wars was greatly celebrated as a musician and singer within the church and without. Nellie was born at Wellington on the central NSW tablelands in 1903, and when her mother died in 1906, after most of her numerous siblings had also died (all from TB), she was taken in by the good Sister. Thus the pair began a peripatetic life together in the service of the Lord, spreading the good word, a crusade greatly assisted by the young Nellie’s conspicuous talents on guitar and ukulele as well as a folding organ (a portable pump organ that packed into a compact carry-case) that went everywhere with them. Nellie’s life was at the mercy of her keeper, her music a function of their religion. Sister Isabella and Nellie travelled all round the country talking in tongues and singing songs of praise, converting sinners from Point Macleay in South Australia

through La Perouse in Sydney on up to Queensland, where in the late 1920s they settled. ‘She wants to sing the songs of Zion all over her own land’, wrote Nellie’s ‘white Mammie’, ‘so that the dear people may be encouraged to help her to pray and search for her wandering people’. She sang on air for Brisbane radio station 4BC in 1932. Testimonials were generally lavish: ‘Quiet and gentle in her manner, she is yet untroubled by the slightest nervousness when she sings before an audience’, said the Brisbane Courier. ‘A vocalist of no mean order’, said Brisbane’s Telegraph. ‘A note of loneliness and pathos creeps into her voice when she sings the hymns and negro spirituals’, said the Melbourne Herald. Her greatest hit was the original composition ‘The Aboriginal Maiden’s Lament’, with its chorus refrain, ‘Oh! Where are my people tonight?’/‘Oh, could I see them once again/As they were in those olden days/Before the white man took their land/And they learned his evil ways’. Nellie died, at Barambah, in 1940, aged just 37, and Isabella Hetherington six years later at Mossman in 1946, aged nearly 80.

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Curly Headed Babby Betty Fisher In 2007, the septuagenarian Betty Fisher was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Northern Territory Indigenous Music Awards. In 1946, when Fisher was just 14, she caused a sensation when she won radio’s Amateur Hour talent quest, the era’s equivalent of Australian Idol or The X-Factor. Not to be confused with Sydney’s later Bettie Fisher, this Betty-with-a-‘y’ Fisher was a stolen child, born around 1932, who grew up at the Methodist Mission on Croker Island north of Darwin. During the war, the kids from Croker famously made an epic march through the desert to take refuge south of Sydney at Wollongong, the subject of a recent film called Croker Island Exodus. It was at school in Wollongong that Betty started singing lessons and joined the choir. Australia’s Amateur Hour was a well-trodden path for aspiring performers black as well as white; it was where baritone Harold Blair got his first break, where Moree ‘swing singer’ Dorothy Levy shone in 1942, and where Cowra hillbilly duo Hazel and June Murray won applause in 1945. When Betty Fisher appeared on the show in 1946, she polled a record 4000 votes. The song she sang, of all the plantation melodies she could

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have chosen, was ‘My Curly-Headed Babby’. Made famous by Paul Robeson, the song was actually written by an Australian, George Clutsam, who scored many hits after moving to England. Hearing Betty sing the song, Australia’s poet laureate Dame Mary Gilmore said she invested it with more mystique than Robeson himself! Fisher was offered a contract by the Tivoli. Gilmore said she should become an envoy for truly Aboriginal Australia. But she became a pawn in a tug of war between the government and the church; Aboriginal people were the last to have any say in what happened to them back in those days. The mission wanted her back. She returned to Croker devastated at the theft of yet another possible life. She left the mission as soon as she could with her new baby in 1948, settling in Darwin and still contemplating a music career down south. But instead she married and remained in the Top End, dedicating her life to community service. She told the Koori Mail: ‘I’d like to have made a singing career and given my people a chance and let them know, too, that if they had any talent they should go ahead and try. But in my case I never had that chance, it was taken away’.

Princess Lilardia Margaret Tucker Margaret Tucker is one of the heroes in the history of Aboriginal resistance, but her achievements as an activist should not obscure her talents as a singer and performer. Born in 1904 to a Wiradjuri man and Yulupna woman, she grew up on the Cummeragunja mission before being taken away to the Cootamundra Girls Home. Released in 1925, she went to live in Melbourne, where Pastor Doug Nichols was gathering a flock in inner-city Fitzroy. Tucker was affiliated with the Communist Party and in 1932 became a founding member of the Australian Aborigines League. She had a beautiful singing voice and, during the war, helped organise and performed at fundraising functions. After the war, with yet another Cummera man, Bill Onus, now leading the AAL, she continued to sing to raise money. When Onus put on a special ‘Corroboree’ season at Wirth’s Olympia circus in Melbourne in 1949, she sang under her Aboriginal stage name of Princess Lilardia, alongside other black acts like Joan and Allan Saunders (‘in delightful harmony’, as the program notes read), singers Joyce Johnson and May Lovett and, for ‘something modern’, Nancy Green. In the 1950s, when Bill Onus set up his Aboriginal Enterprise Novelties gallery at Belgrave in the Dandenong Ranges, Tucker led the choir that sang at functions there. At the fortnightly dances Eric Onus put on at Collingwood Town Hall, she sang with piano-player Alice Thomas. Thomas recalled in Snapshots of Old Fitzroy, ‘Aunty Jessie Taylor, that’s Joyce Johnson’s mother, she used to play the piano accordion, Marg [Tucker] used to play ukulele, and we had a band, us three girls. We was like sisters. And there was Aunty Sissie McGuinness, then there was Stella Nicholls, she’d sing a song, everyone had a special song. They were lovely days’. In 1958, Tucker was awarded an MBE, and in 1964, she became the first woman appointed to the Aboriginal Welfare Board. In 1968, she joined the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, and in 1969, with the assistance of Joyce Johnson, among others, she founded the United Council of Aboriginal Women. She wrote in her 1977 autobiography, ‘Through the music we loved we expressed our joys and sadness and our legends’. She died in 1996.

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Healing Hands

Moomba Blues

The Bangarun Orchestra

Joyce Johnson

The uses of music are many and varied beyond the predictable performeraudience entertainment model. Music can be a political weapon or a therapeutic tool. It can be performed by players purely for their own pleasure, and it can serve weddings and funerals equally well. For members of the Bangarun Orchestra at the Derby Aboriginal Leprosarium in north-west Western Australia, it was perhaps all these things. Leprosy first struck the Indigenous population of the Top End at the turn of the last century, and by the 1930s the Big Sick was in epidemic proportions. The island colony was opened in 1934, run by St. John of God nuns, and at its biggest was home to around 200 patients. Sister Alphonsus, or Kathleen Daly, had the idea of forming an orchestra during World War Two, as an experiment to try and strengthen her patients’ muscles. ‘The project started in a modest way’, she recalled in her memoir Healing Hands, ‘after five violins were made available and five patients began learning to play. Their aptitude surprised us and before long their technique had reached the point where they could be termed good players. As more and more patients

Pictured previous pages: Molly Sebastian

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expressed interest, so the orchestra grew until there were no fewer than forty violins, six banjos, one cello and a cornet’. The ensemble entertained visiting dignitaries, performing Beethoven, Mozart, even Handel, but was more for the patients’ well-being, mental as well as physical. Molly Sebastian spent most of her childhood on the island between the 1930s and the 50s, and in 1999, upon the release of the film The Healing Sounds of the Bangarun Orchestra, she told the Australian, ‘We used to play concerts and everything, singing and all. We’d play “Danny Boy” and “Down by the Swanee” and sing away like nobody’s business!’ In the film, another survivor, Margaret Sariago, said, ‘We always looked forward to practice time. We used to play for the governor and he praised the band and it was written up in the papers. It took your mind off things and set it in the music you were learning. It helped to lift your spirits up a bit’. The rise of guitars and transistor radios in the 1960s, however, drove a nail in the orchestra’s coffin, and when the colony was finally, happily, closed in 1986, it was one of the few things people weren’t glad to see the last of.

When Australian band Chain recorded a song called ‘Gertrude Street Blues’ in 1970, it was a free-love era lament about going down to Melbourne’s feared VD clinic in the inner suburb of Fitzroy. But for most white denizens of marvellous Melbourne, Fitzroy was feared and loathed for another reason— because even as it may now be home to some of the nation’s most terminal hipsters, for most of the last century it was where most of the city’s Aboriginal people lived. Music was central to the neighbourhood’s identity, and central to that music was Joyce Johnson. Born Joyce Taylor in 1926, the daughter of noted pianist Jessie Taylor, Johnson grew up near the Lake Condah mission on Victoria’s western coastline, and moved to Melbourne with her family after the terrible Black Friday bushfires of 1939. She started singing with Tex Banes’s Hillbilly Club during the war. After the war, she continued to sing around Melbourne coffee lounges and at Fitzroy functions. She appeared in both 1949’s ‘Corroboree’ season at Wirth’s circus, and 1951’s groundbreaking ‘Moomba’ show at the Princes Theatre. She is illustrated, centre, with other Moomba cast members including Eric Onus (at the

piano), Allan and Joan Saunders, and the Williams brothers. The show ‘hit town’, as Frank Doherty put it in the Argus, ‘as gently as a Guy Fawkes’ Day squib, and overnight assumed the vigour and blast of an atom bomb’. During the 1950s, Johnson appeared at the regular dances Eric Onus put on at Collingwood Town Hall, and at the regular parties the Jockomos family hosted at their home in Coburg, before retiring from the stage to have six children. In the 1970s, she starred more behind the scenes, launching the short-lived Nindethana Theatre, whose one production, of Kevin Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers in 1973, was directed by Harry Williams. She stuck with Williams to manage the band he formed with his wife Wilga, the Country Outcasts, whose line-up included her son Ian Johnson on drums. Her daughters Roslyn and Janice joined forces with Harry Williams’ daughter Debbie along with Marion Green to sing as the Ebony Koorines. Her swan song was a role in ABC-TV’s pioneering 1981 drama, Women of the Sun. Since her death in 1982, her name has been attached to a gallery room at the Koorie Heritage Trust headquarters in central Melbourne.

Pictured following pages: Moomba cast members, 1951

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Little Big Man Nellie Small In post-war white Australia, the big black star on the circuit was Nellie Small. Small in stature but not nature, this next Nellie after Dame Nellie Melba was less a queen than a sort of king, a crossdressing black vaudevillian who specialised in singing traditional jazz tunes like ‘Dinah’ and ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’. Born in Sydney in 1900 to West Indian parents, Small grew up in a Catholic orphanage before being adopted by a wealthy white woman called Edith Meggitt. The young Nellie had no real designs on show business but she was a natural, and with her foster mother managing her, she debuted in 1922 in a revue at Her Majesty’s Theatre called Chu Chin Chow. She started singing at Paddington sly grog joints, the Australian equivalent of American speakeasies, and started dressing in men’s clothes. ‘Male impersonators’ were then a show business standard. But Nellie Small had a doublewhammy in being black. And she pulled it off. Audiences loved her. As well as comedy routines she could belt out a song. She got good notices for her role as the cabin boy in Noel Langley’s Queer Cargo, and in the 1930s, she went into the swish city nightclubs like the New Cavalier and Romano’s. ‘She was the first in Australia to sing swing in the modern style’, said People magazine. After the war, playing all the top spots with all the top outfits, from Graeme Bell to Les Welch to Hal Lashwood’s minstrel show, she was ‘Australia’s top rhythm and jazz singer’, as Post put it. ‘When she gets going’, Tempo reported, ‘there isn’t a soul in the house left unmoved by the terrific zest and sincerity she puts into every number’. The only recording she released in her lifetime was 1956’s ‘End of the Affair’, which future Festival Records musical director Ken Taylor wrote and produced. It became, according to Taylor in his memoir Rock Generation, ‘a minor rhythm-and-blues hit with a heavy rock’n’roll accent’. Small suffered ill health after that, and though she made a brief comeback in the late 1950s, ‘A Night for Nellie’ at Sammy Lee’s theatre in Woollahra in 1959 was her swan song. Her last gig was at the Playroom on the Gold Coast in 1964. She died in Sydney in 1968.

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Indigenous people have always had to create their own entertainment and safe havens, especially in urban centres, and the Coolbaroo Club sits alongside Darwin’s Sunshine Club, Melbourne’s EMU Hall, Sydney’s Foundation and Brisbane’s Open Door as a legendary black venue. An outgrowth of the Coolbaroo League, which formed in 1946 to fight savage segregation in Perth, it started out putting on weekly dances in the Pensioner Hall in East Perth’s sanctioned Aboriginal ghetto. As restrictions were gradually lifted during the 1950s, the club expanded its operations to stage events all over the south-west, including beauty pageants, poetry readings and an annual ball at Perth Town Hall, which attracted such visitors as Mabel Scott and the Harlem Blackbirds, Nat King Cole and Harold Blair. The club house band comprised Gladys Bropho, her brother Tommy and drummer Ronnie Kickett. Born in 1937, Gladys was also a regular busker around Perth. One of her hits was the

song ‘Till I Waltz Again with You’, which was originally sung by Theresa Brewer. When she was crowned Coolbaroo Queen at Geraldton in the late 1950s, Gladys sang Jo Stafford’s ‘The Shrimpboats are a-Coming’ and ‘My Heart Cries for You’. The Coolbaroo Club vividly portrays the extremities of both persecution and pleasure. As Tommy Bropho says in the film, ‘Run a dance? Have fun? That was just for white people!’ The younger Gladys is played by jazz singer Lois Olney, but she herself also appears in the film, playing a whooping harp solo. The real-life club closed in 1960, when Ronnie Kickett suddenly died and the heart seemed to go out of it. Gladys Bropho had eight children, some of whom were taken from her, and when she died in 2005, Len Findlay wrote in her obituary in the West Australian that she ‘had a life which saw many hardships but which never stopped her singing, playing mouth organ or making sure her home was filled with music’.

Bloody Mary Coolbaroo Blues Gladys Bropho Long before Bran Nue Dae hit the silver screen in 2010, even before Buried Country in 2000, there was The Coolbaroo Club. Released in 1995, The Coolbaroo Club was a musical docu-drama that told the story of the club of the same name that gave Nyoongar people in Perth a social fulcrum in the 1940s–50s. Gladys Bropho, singing and playing her harmonica, was one of the regular attractions.

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Virginia Paris Virginia Paris was a black American singer who came to Australia in 1952 to star in the first local production of South Pacific and stayed on well beyond the show’s long run. ‘With a personality’, as the Sydney Morning Herald put it, ‘as warm as the Deep South from where she comes’, Paris became a regular on the

Melbourne circuit especially, and cut a number of local recordings. Born in Ohio, Paris grew up in a musical family and, after the war, she toured Europe as a concert contralto. In 1951, she joined the two-year-old Broadway cast of South Pacific as the new Bloody Mary character, and the year after

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moved to Australia to repeat the role in JC Williamson’s local production. South Pacific remains one of the most popular musicals of all time, and the show ran for two years in Australia, touring nationally. At a time when black American classical singers like Dorothy Maynor and Mattiwilda Dobbs came

and went, Virginia Paris was a shining star. She was sought for fashion modelling, the newspapers published her soul food recipes, and she sat for a portrait painted by John Yule. After South Pacific closed in late 1954, she recorded an album called Spirituals for Melbourne independent label Spotlight. Her fellow cast member from South Pacific, local Colin Smith, wrote two songs for her, ‘Hebbin is a Great Green Pasture’ and ‘Checkin Ma Conscience’, but the album, which had the evergreen William Flynn Orchestra backing Paris’s vocals, comprised standards like ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, ‘Motherless Child’, ‘Steal Away’ and ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’. ‘If I feel a bit unhappy’, Paris said, ‘I sit down at the piano and sing a few spirituals—and I feel better. We, as Negroes, are very proud that our music has been taken all over the world’. Paris recorded even more sides in 1957; an EP with accompaniment by pianist Franz Holford veered more into jazz-blues, featuring numbers like ‘Ain’t Misbehaving’ and ‘Stormy Weather’. After that, Paris returned to the US where, on the West Coast in 1960, she died of a brain haemorrhage.

Latin Tinge Eileen Broderick aka ‘Monda Valdez’ If an Aboriginal person could ‘pass’, as the expression went—pass for white, that is, or with just a slight ‘Latin tinge’—the ploy was sometimes used.

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and sell himself as a sort of downunder Dean Martin. The story of Eileen Broderick, as Michael Aird reveals in his 2000 book Brisbane Blacks, is similar in that she ended up taking the stage name Monda Valdez. Born in Brisbane in 1923, Broderick grew up in relative freedom and affluence; her father had an exemption certificate, which was required for Aboriginal people to travel off the mission, and he had a job, in an abbatoir. The young Eileen started singing lessons as a teenager, after her mother died. ‘I got to go away thanks to this old Aboriginal

lady I lived with, Maggie Love’, she told Aird. ‘This fella came around one day looking for singers, entertainers, anything. She told him about me and he said, Come along, it will be fun. I travelled for three years with that vaudeville show. They had this big bus. That was back before the war. I learnt a lot. When I came back I got into the Theatre Royal.’ The Theatre Royal was a South Brisbane institution, a vaudeville palace run by star George Wallace Jnr and conjoined in mortal combat with the Cremorne Theatre, run by George Wallace Snr. Theatre Royal shows like Grin and Bare It, New Year Nudes, Couldn’t Wear Less and Watch the Curves give a fair idea of the kind of fare the place peddled—it was the next best thing to burlesque, or a grindhouse. When Eileen Broderick joined the cast in 1949, she was given the name Monda Valdez because ‘it sounded less Irish’. She said, ‘I knew what I was going to sing because I’d already had three years on the road. I could do hula dancing, Spanish songs in Spanish language. I sang ballads. I loved it. It was good money. I was the only Aboriginal, I never thought it was a big deal’. (Although there was at the same time an Aboriginal chorus girl at the Cremorne, Jessie Tanna.) When the Theatre Royal made the transition to television in 1959, Monda Valdez was no longer with the company. She went back to being Eileen Broderick.

Circus performer Con Coleano was happy to be taken as Italian, and in the 1950s singer George Assang changed his name to Vic Sabrino in order to try

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Jump Blues Mabel Scott Mabel Scott was a US R&B performer who toured Australia in 1955 and started what would become a long tradition of AfricanAmerican women cutting important recordings in this country. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1915, Scott was appearing at the Cotton Club in New York before she was even 21. After the war, in LA in 1948, she recorded the seminal ‘Elevator Boogie Blues’; in Australia, the song was covered for his first-ever release by local rhythm-and-blues pioneer Les Welch, and was a hit for him in 1949. Welch was the godfather of R&B in this country, and as such the great pointer to local rock’n’roll, and the string of often black girl singers through his various combos was second only to that which ran through the Port Jackson Jazz Band, among them Pamela Jopson, Joan Robey, Georgina de Leon, Nellie Small, Claire Pool— and Mabel Scott. Welch was instrumental in getting Scott out to tour Australia in 1955 as part of the Harlem Blackbirds. Trade rag Music Maker reported: ‘This fast-moving revue, featuring top Stateside Negro artists, peaked all previous records. Each night the audience was hit with slick comedy plus excellent dancing and vocalizing with the accent on the current rock’n’roll trend. Mabel Scott gave several numbers currently popular with a bouncing, bubbly style’. It was when the troupe had completed its extended Sydney season at the Palladium that Welch, in his capacity as A&R Manger for Festival Records, cut four sides with Scott—‘I Wanna Be Loved, Loved, Loved’, ‘Mabel’s Blues’, and reworkings of her two greatest hits, ‘Elevator Boogie Blues’ and ‘Boogie Woogie Santa Claus’. These were released as two 78rpm disks on Festival, and would turn out to be the last recordings by this important artist before she returned to gospel music and the church from whence she came. She died in 2000. Legendary English DJ John Peel played ‘Boogie Woogie Santa Claus’ on his BBC radio show every Christmas up until he died in 2004.

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Erambie Harmony Olive & Eva Olive & Eva were the first Aboriginal act to commercially release a recording under their own name, forming a link between the Merri Singers in the 1930s and the Sapphires in the 1960s. Less a professional, jobbing band than a sort of party act that was a fixture on the Sydney Aboriginal social circuit in the 1950s, Olive McGuinness and Eva Bell both hailed from the Erambie mission at Cowra in central NSW. Olive was born in 1937 and Eva, 1939. At house parties and fundraising get-togethers in Redfern, they would always get up for a sing. Harry Williams’ brother Candy organised regular turns at his uncle Major Murray’s place in Lawson Street. Jimmy Little would show up and have a sing, as would Olive & Eva, as would the boxer Teddy Rainbow, who was Olive’s brother. Mainly the material was American country songs. When the girls were due to appear on Australia’s Amateur Hour in 1955, likely emboldened by the success on the show of fellow Erambie alumni like Doug Williams and vocal duo Hazel and June Murray, Women’s Weekly ran a story that said Olive & Eva ‘started singing two years ago and specialize in performing original ballads written by Grace O’Clerkin’. O’Clerkin also taught the girls guitar; she and her husband Con were great friends of the Aboriginal people. Olive & Eva sang their way deeper into legend when in 1955 they went into Rex Shaw’s little studio on George Street in the city, where Planet Hollywood is now (where Bob and Dolly Dyer’s radio show Pick-ABox was then recorded), and, with backing probably provided by the Horrie Dargie Quartet, put down four songs written by O’Clerkin: ‘Rhythm of Corroboree’, ‘Old Rugged Hills’, ‘When My Homeland is Calling’ and ‘Maranoa Moon’. The recordings were released as two 78rpm singles on the Prestophone label. ‘Both girls’, said Women’s Weekly, ‘make their own clothes and take lessons in dressmaking, but their main ambition is to sing professionally’. Which was not to come to pass. Only Eva (by this time known as Mumbulla, not Bell) was sighted again, singing at NAIDOC Day celebrations in Sydney in 1963. Yet the four songs they recorded became Aboriginal standards which are still sung today.

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The Sopranos Lorna Beulah and Nancy Ellis The ‘legitimate’ music of whitefellas, the high culture, was that of the classical concert hall, and this was a field into which Aboriginal opera singer, tenor Harold Blair blazed a trail after the war. Two women from opposite ends of the continent, Lorna Beulah and Nancy Ellis, each had a shot at being the first Aboriginal classical soprano. Ellis, born and raised in Katanning and a Western Australian representative hockey player, was a mezzo-soprano discovered by black American singer Dorothy Maynor when on tour here in 1952. With Maynor’s encouragement, a committee was formed to raise money to send Ellis to the US to study. What eventuated was that she went to the Conservatorium in Sydney. She completed her studies, appeared alongside Harold Blair at the famous 1957 Sydney Town Hall meeting/concert ‘A New Deal for Aborigines’, and was involved in singing for the proto-feminist cause of International Women’s Day around the same time. But after that she faded from notice. Lorna Beulah, as illustrated at right, left a stronger mark. Born in Forbes in central NSW in 1930, Buelah told the magazine Dawn in 1963, ‘I learned the piano, my sisters both played violin, and my brother was a cornet player in a Salvation Army band’. Beulah was living in Alice Springs in 1962 when she won a NAIDOC talent quest, and NAIDOC sponsored her to also go to the Con in Sydney. ‘Winning the quest was a great thrill for me’, the young mother told Women’s Weekly, ‘and we moved to Sydney to really study singing’. With a voice reputedly too big for a microphone, she sang classical arias at Sydney nightclubs, parties and wedding receptions. She was on the bill of Jimmy Little’s All-Coloured Revue in 1963, and was a regular on Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music TV show. In 1965, she landed a part in the New Zealand Opera’s production of Porgy & Bess that toured Australia. Most of the roles were filled by African-Americans and a few by Māoris. ‘I want to sing in Australia only’, Beulah told Dawn, ‘so the community can see what Aborigines can do’. But this appears to have been her high point, and Aboriginal women singing opera would not reappear till Maroochy and Deborah Cheetham in the 1990s.

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The Good Die Young Bettie Fisher Not to be confused with the Top End’s Betty Fisher, who won the Amateur Hour in 1946, the other Bettie Fisher was a Koori cabaret singer of the late 1950s/early 1960s, who went on to head the newly founded National Black Theatre in Sydney in the mid-1970s. Born in 1939 at the Greenwell Point mission near Berry on the NSW south coast, descendant of the Jerrinja people, Fisher grew up in Newcastle, where she was expelled from school at age 12. She first rose to prominence in Queensland in the late 1950s, where she appeared at Gold Coast resorts and on the ABC-Brisbane TV program Jazz Comes to Town. An imposing figure of a woman, charismatic and outspoken, she was often likened to Eartha Kitt. Returning south, she became a regular vocalist with Graeme Bell, and in 1962–63 was one of the stars of Jimmy Little’s All-Coloured Revue alongside other female singers like Candy Devine, Lornah Beulah and Christine Aslett. ‘The audience used to come along to look at the freaks’, she once said, ‘and then they discovered the freaks could actually sing!’ Fisher appeared on Bandstand, singing songs like ‘Up a Lazy River’ and ‘Basin Street Blues’. But like many pre-rock stars, if Elvis didn’t put her out of business, the Beatles did. She suffered a nervous breakdown and did not pop up again until the early 1970s, when she joined Black Lace, Redfern’s virtual house band. Black Lace was ostensibly a rock act but played all kinds of material, from country to blues with Latin tinges, and Fisher managed the band as well as singing with it. In 1974, she took on the job of running the new National Black Theatre. With actor Brian Syron joining the team and finding a premises in Redfern, the theatre was officially launched with a party attended by such luminaries as visiting black American musicians Roland Kirk and Roberta Flack. Its first full-scale production was of Robert Merritt’s play The Cake Man, directed by Bob Maza. But it was already too late for Bettie Fisher. She died of coronary arteriosclerosis in May 1976, aged only 37. Brian Syron wrote in an obituary, ‘I regarded her contribution and legacy to black arts as monumental and her death a symptom of Australian societal attitudes towards Indigenous people. Aboriginal people die young’.

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around the same time, as did piano pounder Hadda Brooks, Queen of the Boogie, who became a regular on Graham Kennedy’s legendary TV variety show In Melbourne Tonight. Barbara Virgil arrived with pianist Wilmus Reeves and bassist Carl Brown in tow, and with local trumpeter Billy Weston as well as Frank Smith they completed the Embers Quintet. Virgil was an overnight sensation, glamorous enough to do a shoot with top fashion photographer Bruno Benini, on which the illustration is based. The Americans eventually had a dispute with Knowles and then the club suffered a fire—the Embers indeed!—but before that the Quintet cut an album for Columbia Records (EMI) called Jazz at the

Embers. Virgil sang two songs, ‘Day by Day’ and ‘Summertime’. She moved on to television work, starring for a couple of seasons in her own ‘sophisticated musical show’, as Listener-In TV called it, Just Barbara, in which she was accompanied by another black American, pianist Joe Jenkins. She cut an EP of the same name, Just Barbara, with the Dick Healey Octet. Healey was another American interloper, albeit white. By 1963 though, she had left Australia, and was noted singing in the UK with Ray Ellington, with whom Georgia Lee had also worked. But beyond touring Vietnam later in the 1960s, she went on to make next to no more impact in all the voluminous annals of American music.

Black & White Rag Winifred Atwell

Just Barbara Barbara Virgil Barbara Virgil might have to remain the most enigmatic black American singer to have had a direct impact on Australian jazz. Virgil was based in Melbourne for a couple of years around the turn of the decade into the 1960s. In 1959, when gangster Jimmy Knowles opened the Embers nightclub in South Yarra, he imported a clutch of African-

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American musicians to bolster his house band, which was led by maverick Australian sax modernist Frank Smith. These weren’t the only Americans in town. Ava Gardner had just left the city she apocryphally called the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world. Black jazz singer Gloria Smyth spent an extended sojourn there

Boogie-woogie (or honky-tonk, or ragtime) pianist Winifred Atwell was one of the biggest-selling recording artists in the world in the 1950s, after her signature tune ‘Black and White Rag’ became a huge hit at the start of the decade. Though she was born in Trinidad in 1910, and moved to the UK after the war, she migrated to Australia in the early 1970s and played out her life and career as a naturalised Australian. Atwell first came here in 1955, broke box office records and cut her first recording, ‘Poor People of Paris’. She toured Australia persistently,

and in 1959 cut her second session here, two more A-sides, ‘Let’s Have an Aussie Party’, and ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’, a tie-in to the contemporaneous film of the Australian play of the same name. Off the back of her 1960–61 tour, she taped her own 13-episode TV series here, and in 1962 made headlines when she spoke out in support of Aboriginal people. She took on an Australian musical director, guitarist Jimmy Doyle. Legendary record man Ron Wills, the producer of ‘Pub with No Beer’ and ‘Gurindji Blues’, signed her locally to RCA, and in 1964 she cut a

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single called ‘Revival’ for RCA subsidiary label Bluebird, which specialised in sojourning black artists, including American Freddie Paris. In 1965, she released her first live album, … at the Silver Spade, recorded at the Chevron Hotel in Sydney. In the early 1970s when BBC TV snooker show Pot Black adopted ‘Black and White Rag’ as its theme tune, her career enjoyed a renaissance, and in 1972 she moved to Sydney permanently, to live on the northern beaches and head a band made up of Digby Richards’ old R-Jays. The White Australia policy was by this time officially disavowed, but still Immigration Minister Phillip Lynch only granted her residency on the grounds she was ‘of good character and had special qualifications’. She continued to tour nationally and internationally, and made albums for RCA, including another live one, from Revesby Workers’ Club, in 1976. She announced her retirement on TV’s Mike Walsh Show in 1981. After that, she

restricted public appearances to playing organ in her local church, and in 1983, after a fire destroyed her Narrabeen home, she died of a heart attack, aged 73. She is buried near Lismore in northern NSW.

Black Irish Blues Candy Devine If the introduction of television to Australia in the late 1950s killed off the vaudeville circuit—if rock’n’roll wasn’t already doing it!—vaudeville itself didn’t die, just moved onto the small screen. Black women made the same transition. Some, like Christine Aslett and Cheryl Bracken, came and went.

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Others made more durable inroads. Candy Devine is not to be confused with, especially, Candy Williams, the (male) Koori country singer. Born Faye Guivarra in Innisfail in Queensland’s Deep North in 1938, with Danish, Sri Lankan, Spanish, Filipino, Polynesian, West Indian and British blood, Candy’s

whole family was musical. Both her parents were members of the wartime concert party the Tropical Troubadours that operated out of Cairns’ ‘Malay Town’ (where non-whites lived), and her father led a group called the Sunday Serenaders. Candy studied piano and cello at the Queensland Conservatorium. ‘I taught for a few years’, she recalled, ‘and then literally fell into show business’, after first singing jazz with Jim Shaw’s Trio in Brisbane. Moving to Sydney, she played the same club circuit as Cheryl Bracken and all the Pitt women, and appeared on the same TV shows like Bandstand, Be Our Guest, Startime and Sing, Sing,

Sing. In 1964 when she appeared on the program On Stage, the Australian Women’s Weekly said she ‘made Eartha Kitt look passé’. She even fronted a short-lived show of her own, In Key, on the ABC. In 1965 she toured Vietnam, and in 1968 appeared in a racially themed episode of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo called ‘They’re Singing Me Back’, in which she sang two original songs by Charles Marawood, ‘Walk You High’ and ‘I Must Go’. She appeared in the ABC-BBC co-produced telefilm Kain, and then headed overseas. When she went to Ireland to play a gig at the Talk of the Town in Belfast in 1969, she fell in love, in a word, and never left. In Dublin in 1970, she cut her one and only album, Candy Devine Sings, which ranges from standards like ‘Birth of the Blues’ to more contemporary folk-pop fare like ‘Both Sides Now’, along with the funkiest version ever of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. In 1976, Candy joined Belfast’s fledgling Downtown Radio and would serve as a star announcer for four decades, until she returned to Australia in 2013 after her husband died. She was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to broadcasting in Ireland. ‘Looking back’, she said, ‘I’d say I’ve been blessed. My whole life has been a chance of one door closing and another opening. You know, showbiz is pretty full-on. You either have the personality to entertain or you don’t. I was very lucky’.

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Harmony Mamma Heather Pitt Sister of Georgia Lee, Heather Pitt stayed behind in Cairns after the Harmony Sisters broke up after the war. Even before the Pitt sisters group, she was involved in the concert troupe the Tropical Troubadours. But with the success her sister Dulcie enjoyed down south and overseas as Georgia Lee, and with a husband, Jack Flower, who was also her manager and drummer, Heather took the leap in the late 1950s. She would go on to enjoy an illustrious career, performing for a good couple of decades on stage, screen and record. Initially, she sang around Sydney coffee lounges in a duo with her brother Wally, and as Shirley Andrews wrote in Australian Tradition, they became ‘well known for their fine singing of their traditional songs […] remarkable for their rhythm and vitality’. Then she moved on to jazz, traditional bands like Graeme Bell’s and ‘moderns’ like Col Nolan’s. She appeared on double bills with sojourning black American singer-guitarist Brother John Sellers, who’d come to Australia with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe and stayed on, and she sometimes shared bills with Black Alan Barker, the Aboriginal bluesman from Western Australia. She appeared on all the TV variety shows, and played a residency at the Texas Tavern in Kings Cross for the best part of that infamous gin house’s life between the late 1960s and 70s, when it was a mecca for American servicemen on R&R leave from the Vietnam War. Pitt fronted the band in the Red Garter room, which proffered jazz as opposed to the country of the Barn room, or the Latin flavours of the El Camino room. The place doubled as a front where the Nugan Hand Bank laundered drug money. Pitt’s first appearance on vinyl was a 1970 EP with the Red Garter band, followed by an LP on RCA. In 1972, she appeared on trumpeter Doc Willis’s album Duke’s Men, alongside, as illustrated, sax legend Merv Acheson, singing songs like ‘Mood Indigo’ and ‘It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie’. In 1977, she made her last appearance on vinyl on the soundtrack album of the ABC-TV show Dr Jazz, and then she returned to Cairns to retire. ‘When you sing’, she told ABC-TV show Blackout, ‘you forget about your troubles, which I didn’t have, and it just makes you feel peaceful, absolutely beautiful’. She died in 1995.

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Prodigal Daughter Wilma Reading Wilma Reading was the one of the Pitt dynasty from Cairns who took the torch furthest, her three-octave range propelling a fourdecades-long career. Born in Cairns during the war, daughter of Heather Pitt and niece of Georgia Lee, Wilma started out singing with her sisters Heathermae and Dulcie. Blessed with stunning looks and an hourglass figure as well as an amazing voice, she was discovered by bandleader Lali Hegi singing in the Primitif coffee shop in Brisbane in the late 1950s. Her ascent from there couldn’t have been smoother. Moving on to Sydney, she cut three singles for Festival subsidiary label Rex Records in 1960–61, including a version of ‘Nature Boy’. Moving overseas, her first engagement was at the Goodwood Hotel in Singapore; from there, she was recruited to play the Hilton circuit, and it was while appearing at the Tokyo Hilton that she was discovered by American agency ABC and booked straight into the Las Vegas Riviera. By 1965, she was on the cover of African-American magazine Jet, as illustrated, celebrating her latest engagement as vocalist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra for a season at the Copacabana in New York. Then she moved on to London, where Harold Fielding, the same agent who discovered her Aunt Dulcie, hired her to replace Cleo Laine in his West End production of Showboat. She made three specials of her own for the BBC, and in the early 1970s recorded two albums for the Pye label and one for the Dutch NCR label. As a singer, her control, dynamism and sensuality were phenomenal. After recording the John Barry-composed title song for the 1974 Omar Sharif film The Tamarind Seed, she went on to a starring role herself in the 1979 disaster movie Pacific Inferno. In the 1980s, she fronted the Moscow Symphony on a 33-date tour of Russia. She returned to Cairns to live after her husband died in 2003, and has since released a new album Now You See Me, and started teaching singing. When she won the Jimmy Little Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 Deadlies, she said, ‘There weren’t many of us in those days. It was a challenge to go overseas and say, Hey, I think I’m good enough, and give it a go. We broke a lot of ground and I would like to encourage you young people out there to follow’.

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Prodigal Daughter No.2 Heathermae Reading Heathermae Reading was the last chick out of the nest for the amazing Pitt dynasty. She started out on the Sydney circuit in the late 1960s. Sydney was jumping at that time, musically, politically, in every way. With the Vietnam War raging, it had become a magnet for US servicemen on R&R leave, and so organised crime catered to all the vices—sex, drugs and rock’n’soul. Kings Cross clubs like the Whisky a-Go-Go, Bourbon & Beefsteak and the Texas Tavern boasted the hottest bands in the land, capable of moving even the most jaded customers. Heathermae appeared at the Texas Tavern as did her mother Heather Pitt. In 1969–70, she toured Vietnam itself, as the singer with a band called the Sounds of Lawrence. Vietnam was no walk in the park even for entertainers, but a steady stream of Australian stars from Johnny O’Keefe to Little Pattie and the Sapphires toured there. Only months before Heathermae arrived, singer Catherine Warnes became one of the few Australian women to be killed in the conflict, when she was hit by a stray American bullet during a performance in a Da Nang nightclub. The Sounds of Lawrence played over 400 gigs in the war zone,

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and when Heathermae sang a song like ‘How Can I Be Sure?’ it couldn’t have been more fitting. Returning, in one piece, to Australia, she appeared alongside Jimmy Little, Vic Simms and Auriel Andrew on a special Indigenous show at the Sydney Opera House during its opening week in 1973, and then got back on the club circuit. She was a regular on TV programs like Paul Hogan’s and Mike Walsh’s. When in 1975 she appeared at the Club 25 in Canberra with Freddie Paris, one of the few African-American men to have moved to Australia, it was billed as an ‘All Negro Show’. Forming a duo with her brother Warwick, they moved to Europe, and there hit the heights. After releasing a couple of disco-soul singles on the legendary Atlantic label, Heathermae —just ‘Heathermae’ now—represented Holland in the 1976 World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo. She fared even less well than the official Australian entry (Marty Rhone), but they all lost out to Italy’s Franco & Regina. After a few more recordings in 1978 for Dutch label Bovema-Negram, Heathermae returned home, and was still playing occasional gigs on the Sydney circuit in the early 2000s.

Part two

Words and Music Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) If poetry is a sister to song, then Oodgeroo Noonuccal, nee Kath Walker, occupies a significant place in Australian music history. The interaction between Indigenous poetry and song is a strong tradition among women almost exclusively, with other writers like Kathleen Mills, Leila Rankine, Mary Duroux, Maureen Watson and Aileen Corpus all feeding into and out of music, right up to, more recently, Lisa Bellear, Romaine Moreton, Maggie Walsh, Lorna Munro, even Maxine Beneba Clarke. Noonuccal’s poems,

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with their sing-song cadences of Aboriginal vernacular English, were readily adapted to music. Born on Stradbroke Island east of Brisbane in 1920, her first collection We Are Going was published in 1965. In the foreshadow of the 1967 Referendum, after the famous Freedom Rides, Indigenous people were becoming increasingly politicised. Writing was a powerful weapon. The 1960s folk revival tied in directly to Left politics, and Gary Shearston, Australia’s would-be Bob Dylan, as well as cutting a version of Dougie Young’s ‘Where the Crow Flies Backwards’, also rendered a version of Walker’s poem ‘Son of Mine’ on his 1965 album Australian Broadside. In 1967, he adapted her ‘We Are Going’ to music in an attempt, really, to write a jingle for the Referendum’s Yes campaign. The campaign was successful but the song wasn’t very. Shearston also sang

live, it has been reported, a musical setting of ‘The Aboriginal Charter of Rights’. But Shearston himself said it had to be best for Aboriginal Australia to find its own voice. Noonuccal’s poem ‘No More Boomerang’ was recorded no fewer than four times, first by folkie Phyl Lobl (nee Vinnicombe) on her 1968 W&G Records EP Dark-Eyed Daughter, then in the early 1980s by Murri protest singer Les Collins and Nyoongar reggae-rock band Coloured Stone; and then again in 2001 by Theresa Creed on her album Unfinished Business; Unfinished Business also includes a recording of the late Noonuccal herself (she died in 1993), plus another version of ‘Son of Mine’. Today, the young wordsmiths are more likely to rap their own rhymes to beats, although as recently as 2008, the Black Arm Band referenced Noonuccal’s ‘Song of Hope’ in its Hidden Republic show.

Murri Blues Syvana Doolan Syvana Doolan was a drop-dead brilliant singer of almost mythical stature, perhaps precisely because her concrete legacy is so slim, with not a single recording released under her own name. Whether that name was spelt correctly as Syvana or incorrectly as Savannah, Syvanna, Savanna, Syvannah, Sivanna or Sivana, she was always ‘Sibby Doo’. Born at Woorabinda

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in central Queensland in 1950, her father was Fred Doolan, the famous Singing Stockman. The family grew up on Palm Island, at least until Fred led the strike there in 1957, after which they moved to Townsville. ‘Dad and Mum’, Sibby said on Songlines, ‘we were all a musical family, brothers and sisters, the ukulele, old gum leaf ’. Sibby made her first public performance at the Boyd

Hotel in mining town Mount Isa; she moved to Brisbane in 1963, and then on to Sydney to study at the Aboriginal college Tranby. In the early 1970s, as an oft-repeated legend goes, she was beaten only by Marcia Hines in an open-mic contest at the Whisky A Go Go. She sang at the Harlem Hideaway and the Cheetah Room; she supported Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee at the Town Hall, and founded the gospel choir the Mamma Hill Singers. She sang at the Tents in Canberra in 1972, and in 1973 appeared at the Sydney Opera House in the play The Cradle of Hercules. ‘I used to do gigs like the Whisky, big clubs, but I was young and immature then, didn’t know about my culture, I was too busy dancing around in discos and not going back to the bush.’ Sibby was involved in the early days of Bettie Fisher’s Black Theatre in Redfern too, starring alongside Bob

Maza and Aileen Corpus in the touring revue Basically Black, and singing with Mac Silva’s band Black Lace. Moving back north to Townsville, in 1978 she started fronting the Doolan family band Doctor Bones, which was a staple on the Deep North country music circuit. In the early 1990s, she played a role in the first production of Bran Nue Dae. But better than leading the gospel tracks on that show’s cast album is ‘Sad Moon’, the original song she performed on Songlines in 1997 with Leroy Cummins backing her on acoustic guitar. It’s so good it only makes you wonder or regret how much more she had to offer that’s now lost. ‘Aboriginal people have this knack for singing about the land’, she said, ‘that’s just a natural thing. It comes from the heart. I do love songs too you know. But it always goes back to the land’. Sibby died in Townsville in 2013.

Music and Words Mary Duroux Mary Duroux is today probably best remembered as a poet, but unlike Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who found her way to music through poetry, Duroux got into poetry through songwriting. Duroux is the author of two of the greatest hits of Koori country, ‘Outcast Halfcaste’ and ‘Heartaches COD’. Born in Bega on the NSW south coast in 1934, she grew up at Wallaga Lake. She left school at 14 after the war and went

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to live in Sydney and work in a factory. In 1963, she moved to Kempsey, on the north coast near Tamworth, where she became involved in community work. Kempsey is fabled musically of course as the home of Slim Dusty, a great friend and hero to Aboriginal people with his songs of the land. In early 1973, Duroux had a poem, ‘Tatiana’, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, and later in the year, Dawn

magazine reported, ‘She has a song on record called “Outcast Halfcaste” sung by Mick and Aileen Donovan of Eungai’. Mick and Aileen Donovan were the heads of a family that was a musical force on the northern NSW coast, grandparents of today’s stars Emma and Casey Donovan; in the early 1970s, they ran their own barn dances all through the northern rivers. Dawn continued, ‘Four more of her songs are soon to be released’. But not even a trace of the Donovans’ implied single has ever turned up, let alone any more material. ‘Heartaches COD’ is the song of Duroux’s that can be accounted for—it was recorded by Harry and Wilga Willams for their second album of 1981. Sung by Wilga, it’s classic country ‘cry in your beer and laugh’ fodder. Duroux published her first chapbook of poetry, Dirge for Hidden Art, in 1992, and in 2005 published the illustrated children’s book The Rain Flower. More recently she collaborated with Eurasian-Australian Evie Pikler on her CD motherearth, fathersky, which links the spirits of Indigenous Australia and native America. Moving back down the south coast, Duroux died in 2011. ‘I think every Aboriginal child should be taught something about his origin, the tribal life and lore surrounding it’, she told Dawn in 1973. ‘If we lose this, we lose everything.’

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Across the Tasman Inez Amaya In the late 1960s, Australia’s reigning queen of acid rock’n’blues was Wendy Saddington—and she said that the singer who inspired her even more than Aretha or Janis was fellow Sydneysider Inez Amaya. Amaya was a graduate of the Māori showband network who at her height slayed ’em as vocalist with the Levi Smith Clefs. A war baby born to a Filipina mother and African-American father, Amaya married in New Zealand before moving to Melbourne in 1961 to appear in the TV show Latin Holiday. By 1964 she was in Sydney, where she joined the Māori Premiers. The Premiers were one of a number of Māori showbands who mounted a virtual Australian invasion in the early 1960s, becoming a staple on the club circuit in Sydney and on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Women like Amaya, Mona Wiki, Mary Nimmo, Rena Pohe, Joy Yates and Keri Summers rotated through Australia-based acts like the Māori Troubadours, Māori Hi-Qinns, Premiers, Quin-Tikis and Māori Volcanics. Many went on to tour Vietnam during the war, and Mary and the Māori Hi-Fives and Mohena and the Māori Volcanics eventually moved on to the US. Inez Amaya left the Premiers to join Little Sammy and the In People, house band at the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub. She really made her name after that, as co-singer alongside Barrie McAskill in the Levi Smith Clefs, house band at the Whisky A Go Go in Kings Cross, where American servicemen on R&R leave from Vietnam flocked to get down to the funkiest sounds. The pity is that she moved on again before the Clefs laid down their debut album Empty Monkey in 1969. Amaya joined the cast of Hair and appeared on the Australian cast recording of the show before going on to sing backing vocals with Marcia Hines in the latter 1970s. She is finally only reported in the Who’s Who of Australian Rock to be working with a band called Motorco in the early 1980s. Much more recently, Mary and the Māori Hi-Fives were awarded a star on The Strip in Las Vegas, and Mohena and the Māori Volcanics were resurrected in deep north Queensland.

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Truckstop Sweetheart Auriel Andrew Auriel Andrew grew up in Alice Springs working in a café where she listened to the jukebox and dreamed, when she dared, that one day she too might have a record on the jukebox—and, incredibly really for a little outback Aboriginal girl in 1970s Australia, her dream came true. Auriel was the black country songbird of the Australian music scene, a regular on TV’s Reg Lindsay Show who became only the second Indigenous Australian woman to release an album when in 1971 Just for You came out. Born in Darwin in 1947 to a white father and Arrente mother, Auriel was lucky to escape being stolen—her father took his family bush with him whenever he left Alice Springs to work on the stations. Auriel was 14 in the early 1960s when she got a guitar one Christmas—music ran through her family—and she took readily to singing and entertaining. She was a fan of Slim Dusty and Winifred Atwell. By the late 1960s, she was a teenage mother who’d sung her debut professional gig at the Italian Club in Coober Pedy. Legend says it was a tape-recording made by a miner of her singing at the Sound Lounge in Mount Isa that opened doors in Adelaide. In 1969 Auriel moved to the South Australian capital, and there she joined the cast of The Reg Lindsay Show, and joined the roster of independent label

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Nationwide Records. After an EP as well as her first album, she moved on to Sydney. In October 1973, she appeared alongside Jimmy Little, Vic Simms and Heathermae Reading in an Indigenous showcase that was part of the opening week of celebrations at the Sydney Opera House. She worked the country circuit consistently through the 1970s, and in 1981 released a second album called Chocolate Princess. In 1982 she moved again, to Newcastle, and in 1985, released her second album, on cassette for the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Mbitjana. Unlike her previous album, which comprised mainly American material, Mbitjana was a collection of great Aboriginal country songs like ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’; Bob Randall’s original lament for the stolen generations, ‘Brown Skin Baby’; the brilliant ‘Easy Going’ by Joan Fairbridge; and others by Herb Laughton and Jimmy Little. Thereafter, Auriel slowed down a bit, handing the baton on to her daughter Serena, but she continued to occasionally act on TV and sing in schools and the clubs. In 2010, she was awarded the Order of Australia; in 2013 she released the album Ghost Gums, her swan song, and in 2016 starred in the touring stage show production of Buried Country. She died in 2017, aged 69.

The Queen of Koori Country Wilga Williams The 1970s’ undisputed King and Queen of Koori Country were Harry and Wilga Williams. With their band the Country Outcasts, Harry and Wilga were the inseparable trailblazers of a great Aboriginal tradition, Wilga the woman who introduced live music to the town that would later claim the title of Australia’s country music capital, our Nashville, Tamworth. It was near Tamworth in 1940 that Wilga Munro was born, under a wild orange tree, after which she was named. She grew up with music and sport, singing and learning guitar, and playing representative netball. The first record she bought was Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’. She served in the air force, after which she returned to Tamworth, where, in the 1960s, she started singing in a coffee shop called the Hayshed. This was long before the launch of the Tamworth festival in the early 1970s. Then Wilga wed and moved to Newcastle north of Sydney. There, as her marriage fell apart, she met Harry Williams. It wasn’t long before the pair were involved personally, and performing in a trio with Alan Saunders called the Tjuringas. The couple then moved on to Melbourne to start a family and a band of their own. In 1974, the Country Outcasts released their first single, the double A-side ‘Home-Made Didjeridoo’, written and sung by Harry, and ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’, written by Ted Egan and sung by Wilga. The couple started the Country Music Shindig radio show on 3CR and took over a residency at the Grandview Hotel, which became Melbourne’s defining Aboriginal gig of its era. With the assistance of manager Joyce Johnson and Harry’s Sydney-based musician brother Candy Williams, the Outcasts toured the Northern Territory, recorded a debut album for RCA and, between 1976 and 1982, convened the annual national Aboriginal country music festival. In 1981, Harry and Wilga moved to Canberra and started work in Tamworth on a second album. After touring New Guinea and Canada and, in 1985, making a triumphant homecoming appearance at the Tamworth festival, Harry died in 1991. Wilga retired the band. Her legacy is enormous, her grace and leadership incomparable

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Going to a Go-Go The Sapphires In 2012 the feature film The Sapphires was a feelgood hit. The story of a 1960s Aboriginal girl group that went to Vietnam to entertain troops during the war, it was based on the real-life experience of writer Tony Briggs’s mother Laurel Robinson. Robinson (nee Briggs) led the group that was sometimes just a duo with Lois Peeler (nee Robinson)—as illustrated—and at other times a quartet including sisters Naomi and Beverly Briggs. All four women originally came from the Cummeragunja mission on the Murray River, and always sang together. ‘My parents and aunties would stage concerts around Shepparton for the local farmers’, Laurel told the Sun-Herald. When the girls moved to Melbourne to work as nurses in the 1960s, now smitten by the new soul sounds of Stax and Motown, they landed a gig as backing singers with the Māori house band at St Kilda club the Tiki Village. ‘We were frightened’, Beverly Briggs told Steve Dow. ‘We’d just come from the bush!’ When the girls were asked to accompany the band to Vietnam, that was even scarier, and Beverly and Naomi demurred. Laurel and Lois went in 1968, for three months. ‘I have some good memories’, Lois told Vibe, ‘but at the same time, it was quite frightening. It was a time of a lot of sadness and we wanted to make the troops happy’. Lois, who was also a model, went on to eventually marry an American GI; when Laurel returned to Australia, she quit singing and joined Naomi and Beverly at the Redfern Medical Centre in Sydney, where they still work. The Sapphires was first mounted as a stage show in 2004, in which not two but four fictionalised ‘MacRae sisters’ tour Vietnam, and it went through numerous productions, and through such stellar cast members as Ursula Yovich, Rachel Maza, Christine Anu and Casey Donovan, before becoming a film. With Jessica Mauboy, Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell and Shari Sebbens starring, the film, as Lois told Vibe, ‘touches on points of our history that were not the happiest, but the story rises above the hardships. We held on to our Aboriginality and that was uplifting’. Said Mauboy: ‘Knowing [the film] is based on a true story about the Aunties, and having them come on set and see their reaction, was really, really on a whole other level’.

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Nigger Go Home, Part 2 Sharon Redd Hers was the voice on one of Australia’s biggest hits of 1969, but it wasn’t singing a song that registered on any chart, nor was its black American owner widely acknowledged—because it was an ad jingle!—and then, echoing the experiences of Sonny Clay and Ivie Anderson some 50 years earlier, Sharon Redd, otherwise star of the first local production of controversial tribal love rock musical Hair, was deported! Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1945, Redd cut a handful of singles for United Artists in 1968 before her big break, being cast in Harry M Miller’s Australian production of Hair, alongside other black Americans like Marcia Hines and Chuck McKinney. Hair premiered in Sydney in 1969 and Redd sang on the single off the soundtrack album, ‘Easy to be Hard’, which was a Top 30 hit. Her greatest hit though was the jingle for Amoco petrol, ‘Where the Mind Can Breathe’. Recording jingles was and still is a common way for singers to make a buck: the voice of the Voice himself, Johnny Farnham, was first heard long before his debut 1968 single ‘Sadie’, when he sang a hit ad for Ansett Airlines called ‘Susan Jones’. ‘Where the Mind Can Breathe’, along with its

flipside ‘Nice Clean Petrol’, were written by Graham Woodlock and performed by Woodlock with former Jeff St. John sideman Groove Myers, with Redd on vocals. Teenagers all over the country begged their parents to fill up at Amoco stations to get a free copy of the flexidisc. In April 1971, after Redd had guest-starred in Max Merritt and the Meteors’ Memphis soul TV special, she and fellow Hair cast member Teddy Williams were forced to quit the show because they’d been denied extensions on their visas. It was a time of paranoia, and black power was seen as a rising threat. In 1969, a visit here by Caribbean activist Roosevelt Brown caused such a scandal that radical black American comedian Dick Gregory was later refused a visa to tour. ‘I don’t see any white Americans with visa troubles’, Redd told Music Maker magazine. She returned to New York and there, after a period as a member of Bette Midler’s Harlettes, she signed to the famed disco label Prelude and enjoyed a run of hits in the early 1980s. She started a noble tradition—in the US in 1986, Aretha Franklin, no less, sang an ad for Amoco. Redd died in 1992 of an AIDS-related illness.

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Left Hand Like God Dora Hunter Aboriginal piano players are not overabundant, for the simple reason that Aboriginal people had little access to the costly, cumbersome instrument, except in churches. Dora Hunter was one of the (recognised) few, next to Dolly Roe, Jessie Taylor, Alice Thomas and Frankie Foster. Her musical life was inseparable from her religious life—before and after everything, she was a church organist—and this certainly didn’t encourage a career in show business. But she was a fixture in black Adelaide for four decades from the 1960s to the 1990s. Hunter was raised at the United Aborigines Mission’s Colebrook Home, where she started learning piano, and after moving to Adelaide in 1944, she worked as a domestic and in childcare before joining the Central Methodist Mission. As she qualified to become an Aboriginal community worker, she remained a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and, encouraged by Winifred Atwell, she deployed her music in this service; she also played accordion, steel guitar and harmonica, and naturally she sang. Singing for the Salvation Army alongside Leila Rankine in the 1960s, and with Rankine and other local Aboriginal musicians like vocalist Val

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Power and fellow pianists Wanda Mark and Bessie Karpany, she became a regular at Nyoongar functions at the Point McLeay and Point Pearce missions in the 1970s, and at the Scots Church in Adelaide, where Auriel Andrew was also a regular. ‘There was a piano in the hall in the later years’, Leila Rankine said of Point McLeay. ‘There were people who could provide music for dancing. They did waltzes, military twosteps, barn dances, square dances, sets and quadrilles. There would be a dance once a fortnight. Aboriginal musicians would travel to the hall, and people would come in from the surrounding areas.’ Hunter herself, whose illustration borrows from Australian graphic storyteller Luke Howard, was quoted in the book Some Aboriginal Women Pathfinders: ‘I have a love for music, and I find this very soothing and helpful when I need to relax. My music has also helped me in meeting friends, and I have been able to use my gift to bring pleasure to people not able to join activities because of age or illness. I like to think that, through God’s love, I can do a little to bring black and white people closer together; that, just as we need to use both black and white keys on the piano to get the fullest harmony, so black and white people can work together to produce harmony in life’.

The Queen of Pop Marcia Hines Australia’s barely rivalled Queen of Pop for the whole second half of the 1970s was black American émigré Marcia Hines. After a string of mostly demure country-lite singers like Allison Durbin and Liv Maessen vied for the title in the early part of the decade, Hines blessed the golden age of Countdown with a more sophisticated, urban angle. Born in Boston to Jamaican parents in 1953, Marcia originally came out to Australia in 1970, when she was still only 17 (and pregnant), to star in Harry M Miller’s production of Hair. After moving on (and giving birth to daughter Deni) to play the Virgin Mary in Miller’s Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, she embarked on a solo recording career under the aegis of manager Peter Rix and Wizard Records label boss and producer Robie Porter. She enjoyed hit after hit thanks to deft song selection and slick arrangements, from her 1975 debut version of James Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain’, which went Top 20, to another five Top 10 singles before the decade was out, including her version of Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself ’, ‘Something’s Missing’, and her 1977 Number One, ‘You’. Her first four albums up to 1978’s double Live Across Australia all went Top 10. In 1978–79, she presented her own ABC-TV show Marcia Hines’ Music, meaning she’d made the transition every pop singer longs for, to all-round entertainer. Signing to Warner Music in the 1980s, she receded from the charts, but in the 1990s she commenced a comeback leading up to 2001’s Diva, the book and the CD. In 2003, she released a one-off single version of the Bee Gees’ ‘To Love Somebody’, and by 2006, she’d come full circle back to the Top 10— and back to club dancefloors—with an album called Discotheque. Daughter Deni followed in her mother’s footsteps, first hitting in the early 1990s as vocalist with Sydney electro-funk outfit the Rockmelons on their two Top 5 singles, ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, and ‘That Word (L.O.V.E.)’. A mother-and-child reunion was enacted with one of the singles off Discotheque, a duet version of the Brothers Johnson 1979 classic ‘Stomp’.

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Family Circle Leila and Veronica Rankine Adelaide in the 1970s was a beneficent place under gay, safarisuited South Australian Premier Don Dunstan, and it was there that the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) was formed. CASM was seminal in the development of black music in this country, and central to its success was poet and musician Leila Rankine, whose daughter Veronica Rankine was part of its success too. Leila Rankine was born in 1932 at the Point McLeay Mission in the Coorong just south of Adelaide, which was long famous for its music and singing. She moved to Adelaide in 1964 and sang for the Salvation Army. In the early 1970s, along with her sister Veronica Brodie, she joined the Adelaide Aboriginal Orchestra, which was founded by husband-and-wife ethnomusicologists Max and Catherine Ellis. The Ellises would also found CASM, and in 1976 Leila Rankine was made its chairperson. The place started attracting students from all over the country, and started producing bands like No Fixed Address, Coloured Stone and Kuckles. Reggae-rock outfit No Fixed Address was formed at CASM by Bart Willoughby, and included in its line-up fellow student Veronica Rankine on sax. The band started playing around Adelaide and this experience was vividly captured in the 1981 film Wrong Side of the Road. The illustration at right at right is based on the film by Carol Ruff. With their signature song ‘We Have Survived’ released as a single in 1982, NFA even scored an appearance on Countdown! But Rankine left the band before it went on to venture overseas and returned to working with her mother at CASM. In 1983 mother and daughter were both part of The Indulkina Suite, a sort of jazz-rock opera/multi-media happening that described the Aboriginal people’s struggle. Directed by composer Ron Nicholls with poetry by Leila, and performed by a band that included Veronica alongside a young David Page in the brass section, plus Ladonna Hollingworth on keyboards, the show toured Australia and the South Pacific, and was released as a cassette album. Veronica went on to play occasionally with (white) South Australian soul singer Sue Barker, and in 1987 was involved in CASM’s follow-up to The Indulkana Suite, called Urban Corroboree. Her mother Leila died in 1993.

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She Moves With the Wind Essie Coffey Essie Coffey was a country singer as well as community worker who led her own band Black Images out of north-western NSW’s socalled Dodge City, Brewarrina. She released no recordings as such, though she did star in two autobiographical documentary films—in which her music featured—1978’s My Survival as an Aborigine, and 1993’s My Life as I Live It. Born of Muruwarri descent at Goodooga near the NSW-Queensland border in 1942, named Essiena after the

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flower of the honey tree, Essie grew up in the bush. In the mid-1950s she settled in Brewarrina with her husband Doc and their 18 children. There was music in the dusty air out there, but fellow local, country singer Col Hardy, was only able to carve out a semiprofessional career because he got outta Dodge and moved to Sydney. Essie, illustrated in front of a sad moon drawn by Peter Doyle, stayed to work for her people with the Brewarrina Aboriginal Movement and other bodies, as her films describe. She taught herself to make music, telling composer Trevor Pearce, ‘I just get down some words and put a tune to it’. Singing and playing guitar and drums, her signature song was ‘Bush Queen’: ‘She’s a woman, a beautiful black woman/She loves her people, she loves her land’.

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Her repertoire also included such standards as ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ and ‘Frankie and Johnny’, as well as personalised versions of Cherie Watkins’ ‘Prison’s Nothing Special’ and Dougie Young’s ‘I Don’t Care Who Knows’, plus other originals like ‘This is Dodge City’ and ‘She Moves with the Wind’. ‘She was a very strong woman’, her colleague Steve Gordon told the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘In the early days, we had nothing, but she’d always sing in the pubs and cheer us up.’ Essie eventually recorded some tracks at CASM in Adelaide with blues-rock band Us Mob, but these went unreleased. In 1988, Australia’s supposed Bicentennial, she presented the Queen with a video of her first film after refusing an MBE on the grounds she was ‘an Australian and not a member of the British empire’. She died too young in 1998, aged only 56.

Arafura Pearls The Mills Sisters Confusingly, Darwin’s Mills Sisters are just one of two sets of black Mills Sisters in Australian music history. Unlike the Torres Strait trio of the same name, the Top End’s Mills Sisters were a quartet that used their real name. June, Allyson, Barbara and Violet Mills were daughters of David and Kathleen Mills, long-prominent Larrakia people. In common, however, with Thursday Island’s Rita, Cessa and Ina Titasey—and due to the same ocean currents and pearling routes lapping their shores—Darwin’s Mills Sisters also had an aspect of the hula jazz to their sound, which meant it all added up to a sort of saltwater country whole. With their mother a poet and the niece of legendary Darwin stringband musician Val McGuinness, and their father a singer and picker in his own right, the four Mills girls grew up in a home that was a virtual musical drop-in centre. Their first semi-pro public performance was at a meeting of the Northern Country Music Association in 1980. Soon they were in demand throughout the Top End. With Ali, as Kath put it, ‘always the singer’, the girls specialised in putting their mother’s poetry to music. Their first release, in 1987, the cassette album Arafura Pearl, confirmed that its title track, written by Kath, was on the way to becoming a local anthem. At Tamworth in 1989, the girls won the Golden Swaggie Award for busking. In 1995, they

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released Sing Along with the Mills Sisters. After that, the group receded as June went solo, staging the one-woman show Blackout in Darwin in 1998. In 2002, the sisters came back together to mount a tribute to the music of Val McGuinness and the Sunshine Club era in Darwin, called String Bands and Shake Hands. In 2005, June finally released her debut solo album I’ll Be the One. More recently, Ali and her ukulele scored a YouTube hit with her ‘real, real Kriol version’ of her uncle’s version of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Waltjim Bat Matilda’, from String Bands and Shake Hands. In 2010, she released a self-titled debut CD packed with great material like ‘Alabama Coon’ and the hilarious post-proto-rapping of ‘Mission Food’. ‘I could not find a better way to archive, relay and transfer what is important to me’, she said of the album. ‘My legacy, my dreaming, my time capsule: now my stories and my heirlooms will be preserved to travel through time eternally.’

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Hula Jazz The Mills Sisters The ‘discovery’ of Torres Strait singersongwriter Seaman Dan, who started his recording career at age 70 in 2000 and was collecting ARIA Awards within a couple of years, shone a bit of a light back on the Mills Sisters and the ukulele-driven Thursday Island ‘hula jazz’ sound they helped create along with Dan and Jaffa Ah Mat. Twins Cessa and Ina Titasey (born on Coconut Island in 1927) and little sister Rita (born in 1935) never had to learn to sing, as they once said, because when they just opened their mouths, music sailed out. Rita, the motivator, started appearing at the Grand Hotel on Thursday Island and in the late 1970s encouraged the twins to join her; pearl lugger Seaman Dan sometimes guested with them. With a repertoire of over 200 songs of all types, in the late 1980s the sisters stepped up to playing on the mainland, and at a time when the modern festival circuit was just starting to sprout, when ‘world music’ was getting that name and black acappella groups like Sweet Honey in the Rock were breaking out, they were an ‘overnight sensation’. They first hit at the Port Pirie folk festival, then starred at Maleney, and Woodford. Their first

recording released was their version of Dan’s ‘TI Blues’, which appeared on an ABC Music Deli compilation CD in 1992. In 1993, they released their debut album Frangipani Land. The album was a balmy breeze on the airwaves, containing Island standards like ‘Baba Waian’, ‘Guba Paruka’ and ‘Taba Naba’ alongside more contemporary songs like ‘TI Blues’ and Jaffa Ah Mat’s ‘Old TI’. In 1996, after a second album Those Beautiful TI Girls, the group retired. The twins were by then nearly 70, after all. Rita, still only in her 60s (!), made a great first solo album, Blue Mountain, in 1998, toured as far as the US with her band the Descendants, and in 2001 released a second album Mata Nice. Said Ina of her little sister Rita on Message Stick, ‘When we decided to retire in 1996, she didn’t want to, so, we let her go. She was going to retire because she was sick. She was good. She was great with the guitar. Because we weren’t the lead singers, we were just harmonising all the songs with her. She is our lead singer and guitarist. After three or four years, she went solo. But she was already sick’. In 2004, Rita died, and Cessa and Ina buried their sister act with her.

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Australian man who went to live at Point McLeay near Adelaide, Watkins grew up on stations in South Australia’s north, from Leigh Creek to Marree. ‘Where I grew up there was no radio or TV’, she said in Our Place, Our Music. ‘Personal music was the only entertainment, and every second person had an instrument. Both my parents were musical, my father playing several instruments (when he could get hold of one). He had his own banjo-mandolin, which I learnt’. Moving to Adelaide in the early 1970s, Watkins got involved in the fledgling CASM’s Aboriginal Orchestra, playing trombone. Adelaide was a relatively liberalised hotbed of activity. Aboriginal people congregated at venues like the Scots Church or the Carrington Hotel, where musicians like pianist Dora Hunter, singers Auriel Andrew and Val Power, and singersongwriter Bob Randall provided the entertainment. Randall was fresh down from the Top End, and toting his groundbreaking song about the stolen

generations, ‘Brown Skin Baby’. Cherie Watkins wrote the words for a tune Cyril Coaby had and that became the song ‘Carrington Hotel’. But her greatest hit was ‘Prison’s Nothing Special’. Released as a track on the 1979 album The First Australians, ‘Prison’s Nothing Special’ vies with Vi Chitty’s ‘Awakening’ as the first recording released of a female Aboriginal singer-songwriter, and it vies with Jim Ridgeway and Joan Fairbridge’s ‘Ticket to Nowhere’ (released as a single by Ridgeway a year later in 1980) and ‘Easy Going’ (cut by Auriel Andrew on her album Mbjitna) as one of the original standards of Aboriginal country. ‘Prison’s nothing special’, the refrain goes, ‘to any Nyungar I know/Because the white man makes it prison/Everywhere we go’. When Essie Coffey sang it, she changed ‘Nyungar’ to ‘Koori’. Watkins went on to become a welfare worker at Gawler before she became a language and culture teacher at Kaurana Plains school in the 1990s.

Nyoongar Country One-Hit Wonder Cherie Watkins Sometimes one hit is all it takes. Cherie Watkins is the author of the song ‘Prison’s Nothing Special’, which in the late 1970s became one of the standards of new Aboriginal country music, and was one of the first recordings released of an Aboriginal woman singing a song she’d written. Born of Kaurna people, daughter of a Western

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Vi Chitty The Aboriginal busker, usually singing country and western songs, is still a common sight on Australian streets. In Perth in the 1970s, one such fixture was Vi Chitty. Born at Mooreesa in 1934, Chitty grew up at the Carnarvon mission on the north-western tip of the continent. She remembered in the book

Our Place, Our Music: ‘I was told never to sing an Aboriginal song or I’d get the cane. I never had the opportunity in the 1940s for schooling or music and any encouragement to further my musical career, and there were many like me. So now I sing about what I feel deeply inside. We are getting up from our

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sleeping and bondage of the white man’s hold over us’. After the war, guitars started permeating through Aboriginal communities all round the country, and in Perth in the 1960s when Chitty arrived there, Alby ‘Bronco’ Lovegrove was carving out a black country and western Australian tradition. Chitty herself set a precedent

for female Aboriginal singersongwriters. Neither Auriel nor Wilga, the two pillars of Koori country, wrote songs. Mary Duroux wrote songs but did not perform them; her songs were sung by the likes of Auriel and Wilga. Vi Chitty vied with Cherie Watkins to be the first female Aboriginal singersongwriter on record. After co-founding Perth’s Aboriginal Radio in 1978, she went on in 1979 to release her debut recording, the track ‘Awakening’, one side of a split single with singer-guitarist Merv Graham. ‘Awakening’ was a gentle, folk-country-gospel ballad and a pointer for both Chitty and Aboriginal women singing their own songs generally. In 1983, she starred in the play Through the Black Door, and in 1984 released her debut album on cassette, Tall Trees. Tall Trees, the title a reference to Western Australia’s magnificent towering jarrahs, was part folk, part country, part gospel, part gossip song, part Dreamtime. After its release, Chitty retired to Cairns. She died in 2002.

Saw the Light

gospel was born from a fusion of country ballads and spiritual songs, powered by guitar rather than piano. And so obviously for Aboriginal people, who moved readily into country music and had a strong Christian tradition too, it was natural to go to countrygospel. Robyn Green is one of the stalwarts of Australian gospel music generally. Born in Darwin, she grew up in a musical, religious family and started singing when she was three. She told Impact, the magazine of the Wesley Mission, ‘At eleven years of age,

I lost my sight and doctors said I would never see again. My parents, who were Christian pastors, prayed. I personally bargained with God saying that I would sing for Him and tell people anywhere in the world of His love if He would heal me. Within five days I had completely regained my sight and become serious about my faith’. Green started releasing albums on cassette in the 1980s. This was a boom time for Aboriginal country-gospel, not least thanks to CAAMA becoming increasingly active out of Alice Springs. Robyn Green led the pack with her first album He Is the Answer in 1986. She continued on with Good News, Volume 2 in 1988, and Shine On in 1992, which marked her transition to CD. She appeared at the Praise Corroborees in Canberra in the late 1990s and on the 2003 two-CD set Australian Country Gospel Masters. By 2010 she was Tweed Heads-based and still singing for the Lord, rivalled only by Pat Morgan. Other Indigenous Australian gospel artists are now more likely to shave off the ‘country’ prefix, with the likes of Lexine Solomon, Elverina MurghaJohnson and Georgia Corowa equally crossing over into secular soul and funk.

Robyn Green The old joke used to go: both kinds of music—country and western. But perhaps the biggest gulf is not between black and white, or rhythm and blues, or male and female, but sacred and secular. Gospel music has always been strong in Australia. When CBS Records

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first set up a Sydney office in the late 1950s, its first release was by Mahalia Jackson, and there is a long tradition of black American women bringing their declamatory gospel singing to Australia, from Venetta Fields in the 1970s to Francine Bell now. Country-

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Rare Grooves Chelsea Brown, Delilah and US Disco Queens What little disco, funk and soul Australia produced in the late 1970s was mostly made by black American women. Was it a fact that, say, an Aboriginal singer like Syvana Doolan was resisted in the face of more palatable American imports? Certainly, the genre was seen as black and female, if not gay. So much so that in a reversal of the American tradition of putting a sexy young white girl on the cover of a black record, a disco album by the faceless white Australian studio band the Soul Seekers has a sexy young black girl on the cover, while other local (largely white) disco/funk bands took on names like Dark Tan, Afrika, or Pantha. Some of the imported American divas came and went, leaving local recordings (Joyce Hurley, Coco York, Kellee Patterson, MonaLisa Young), while others like Marcia Hines, Chelsea Brown, Delilah and Venetta Fields came and stayed. Joyce Hurley hailed from Detroit; when in Sydney in 1978 working at the Conservatorium, she cut an album for 44 Records with David Martin’s band. Arkansan Coco York similarly cut an album in 1981 called Come On Everybody with the Serge Ermoll Ensemble, an avant jazz outfit. Chelsea Brown, who’d risen in the US with hit late 1960s TV show

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Laugh-In, moved to Australia and in 1977 appeared in the last days of sexy soap opera Number 96, playing an American singer (what else?) called Hope Jackson. She appeared, as Chelsea Brown, on the Number 96 Party Music LP, and in 1982 released the disco album On the Rocks. Delilah may have gained nothing but notoriety for her famous 1990s ad campaign for Campbell’s Cash & Carry supermarkets—as outrageously as she has made her trademark—but she is first and last a jazz and soul singer. She came to Australia in 1976 to star in the local stage production of the black disco musical The Wiz, and she left everything behind in the US, including a young daughter, to settle in Sydney. In 1977 she cut a couple of singles for Miracle Records, a subsidiary of Marcia Hines’s parent label Wizard, and in 1979 she represented Australia in the World Popular Song festival in Tokyo, singing a number called ‘Here and Now’. The contest is best remembered for introducing Bonnie Tyler to the world. After the TV ad business, Delilah sank low due to addiction and depression, but she’s since bounced back to the stage, and in 2007 put out her first-ever album, Delilah Sings the Gospel at the Basement.

Hartbeat Kim Hart For all the disco music Australia consumed, we never really produced much. One item that snuck though was Kim Hart’s ‘Love at First Night’—and it was a major hit and a minor classic, going Top 10 in 1980. Hart was a teenage starlet from New Zealand who in 1979 moved to Sydney. ‘I was just this young girl from Ellerslie with this hit song in Australia’, she said in the TV documentary Unsung Heroes of Māori Music. ‘I was like, wow, I’m a pop star—not really!’ Born in Auckland in 1960, Hart was still in high school when she started singing alongside another Māori lass, Tina Cross, in a fittingly named band called Chalkdust. When Chalkdust split, both girls went solo, Hart to quickly sign a recording contract with EMI (and Cross to eventually wend her way to Australia too, where in Sydney in the late 1980s she fronted the band Koo De Tah). Hart represented New Zealand in the Yamaha Song Festival in Tokyo in 1977, and her performance of ‘You Don’t Need Me’ won the ‘Most Popular Contestant’ award. EMI released the song as her first single in New Zealand, and it was a minor hit. The next logical step was to move to Australia. ‘Love at

First Night’ was her first Australian recording and Countdown, of course, helped push it up the charts. The song was written by American Alan O’Day, who had previously enjoyed success with, among other cuts, ‘Angie Baby’ for Helen Reddy. The vampire movie spoof Love at First Bite had come out just the year before, and this next wordplay was waiting to happen. Hart, however, was perhaps topped as Australia’s queen of pop in 1980 by Christie Allen, because Allen had two hits, where Hart was a classic one-hit wonder. But Allen quickly disappeared too. Hart, who the 1981 Countdown Annual said ‘has not found the going all that easy since the success of “Love at First Night”%’, was swept aside by a whole new wave of female performers, whether fellow Kiwi Sharon O’Neill, or the Divinyls’ Chrissy Amphlett or Kate Ceberano. Her farewell to vinyl was the title song, ‘Heartbeat’, on the soundtrack for the 1984 Australian movie Coolangatta Gold, written by none other than Sharon O’Neill. After that, she pulled back from performing and became a personal fitness trainer in Sydney, although she has recently been sighted back on the boards as part of a ‘Soul Sisters’ tribute show.

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Koori Blues Carole Fraser Described by Melbourne-based former Motown house producer Gil Askey as having ‘a better natural feel for jazz than any singer I’ve heard in Australia’, Carole Fraser’s legacy is all too slim. She was a musician who jumped all the fences, combining country-soul, jazz and blues. ‘You have to live it to be able to sing it’, she would say. Born in Dimboola in western Victoria, Fraser moved to Melbourne aged 14 in the early 1970s and started out on bass in the Diamond Valley Drifters. In 1976 she came second to Bonnie Quayle for the

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Leila Rankine Trophy for female soloists at the National Aboriginal Country Music Festival in Canberra. But as she told Paul Stewart in the Herald, ‘I got sick of trying to shout over the top of rock’n’roll bands. Then one night I was at a gig by trumpet player John Hawes and he invited me up to sing “Summertime”, and I was hooked. Then Ruby Carter and Peter Jones helped push me along’. In 1988, pianist Jones got Fraser in to replace Kate Ceberano as featured vocalist with his modern jazz trio. In 1993, when American soul-jazz pianist Mickey Tucker toured Australia, he hired Fraser to sing with him. She branched into acting as well as community work, appearing in the plays Up the Road (1991), Food for Thought (1994) and No Parking (2001), and in the film The Life of Harry Dare (1995). It wasn’t till 2000 that she finally got on to disc. Alongside Kev Carmody, Lou Bennett and Liz Cavanagh, she was one of the stars of ‘Winter Dreaming: Concert for Reconciliation’ at the Boite theatre, and the show became a live album as well. She opens the CD with a version of Joe Geia’s ‘Yul Lil’, but better still is her own signature tune ‘Koori Woman’, set to a lilting Latin groove. In 2001, as illustrated (based on a photo by Rob Woolf), she headlined the Federation Festival show ‘Black Velvet’ over Vic Simms, Ella Pitt and, again, Liz Cavanagh. ‘Being a Federation event is a Catch-22 situation really’, she said. ‘On one hand, we can look at how far we have come in 100 years; on the other, at what we have lost.’ She is survived only by a few clips on YouTube, in one singing a version of ‘Mess of the Blues’, another the original ‘Singing Up Your Memory’, and the other singing a deadly version of ‘Seven Spanish Angels’ at the 2009 funeral of Victorian Aboriginal activist Sonny Booth. She died herself not long after that, from cancer, too young in her 50s.

Song of Joy Joy Yates Sydney-based for 30 years now, Joy Yates was the Māori showband singer who could, a jazz artist who in partnership with her husband, pianist/arranger Dave MacRae, has sustained a 50-year career of international standing. After growing up in a musical family in New Zealand’s remote far north, her path was set when she moved

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to Auckland and first encountered a) jazz, and b) her future husband. In 1961 she moved to the Gold Coast to join the Māori Hi-Quinns. She soon left them and eventually settled in Sydney, via Melbourne, singing along the way with such jazzers as Chuck Yates (no relation), and fellow expat Kiwis Julian Lee, Claude Papesch and Judy Bailey. In Kings Cross in the booming 1960s, as she said in Unsung Heroes of Māori Music, ‘there was club work, television work, radio work …’ She formed the Joy Yates Singers, and they provided backing vocals on countless recordings. In 1967, she and Dave moved on to the US, and then in 1969, to the UK. In the UK, while Dave established himself on the Cambridge acid-folk scene, along the way writing the Goodies theme ‘The Funky Gibbon’, Joy formed a backing-vocal group called Bones and sang with everyone from Cliff Richard to Olivia Newton-John, Cat Stevens and Van Morrison. She joined the groundbreaking multicultural classicalrock group Esperanto alongside Australians Glenn Shorrock (post-Twilights/pre-LRB) and Janice Slater. After three albums with Esperanto, she and Dave formed their own jazz-rock band Pacific Eardrum, which cut three albums for Charisma Records. Pacific Eardrum folded in 1980 when Joy had her daughter, Jade MacRae, and the family moved back to Sydney. Joy’s first step now was to start teaching, and today her school Sing for Joy is one of the most successful in the country. She and Dave cut their first duo album, Forecast, in 1984, and after Dave did some catching up with his 1986 solo debut Southern Roots, he formed his Trio, and with Joy ‘guesting’ on vocals, they’ve cut two albums, Midnight Blue and Songs from Lady Day. Joy also leads the Jubilation gospel-jazz choir that’s cut three albums. She is one of the finest jazz singers to have ever graced Australia, capable of raw earthiness on traditional blues like ‘Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer)’, or a sophisticated modern-jazz edge on the likes of ‘Midnight Blue’.

Out of Africa Trude Aspeling If Australia’s Queen of Soul in the 1970s was Renée Geyer, our Queen of Jazz was probably Kerrie Biddell. By the 1980s, jazz was in transition, going from the perceived indulgences of jazz-rock back to

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an earthier (i.e. non-electric) post-bop neo-classicism. In 1983 when Calcutta-born Indian singer Marie Wilson released her album I Thought About You, it was widely hailed as the best jazz vocal recording ever made in this country. South African Trude Aspeling arrived on the Sydney scene around the same time, and after Wilson faded following her second album I Miss the Hungry Years, she carved out a longer career. Born in Cape Town, Aspeling emigrated to Melbourne in the 1970s with her parents and sister Anastasia, who was also a singer. Moving on to Sydney and performing around the jazz traps, she was noted by the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘raw talent, accomplished but still untrammelled’. Mid-decade she travelled to Europe, where she appeared at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London and also played a season in Paris. Returning to Australia, she was reviewed again by the Herald, in 1986, and praised for growing ‘more theatrical, moving away from jazz into other African and reggae territories. The voice, abundantly rich and powerful, extended to featuring the unique and fascinating tongue-clicking of the Xhosa language of South Africa’. After making a return tour of her homeland in the early 1990s, in 1998 Aspeling released her first album, a live one, called The Joy of Being Alive, which further extended her range, going from orthodox jazz, blues and gospel to a reggae version of ‘Summertime’, to the traditional South African song ‘Ntyhilo Ntyhilo’. Her second album, 2003’s Sublime, was a return to almost pure jazz, with backing by such superb players as pianist Ray Aldridge and reeds-man Willy Qua, formerly of Galapagos Duck. ‘As a singer, you need musicians who can accompany you sensitively’, she said. ‘As a woman, you need to know what you want, learn to be assertive, and to deal with the retorts that come with being an assertive woman.’ Now teaching Aboriginal kids in Sydney, she told Green Left Weekly: ‘Music unifies people. Art highlights awareness and encourages communication. Music raises the spirits of the people’.

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Country and Western Australia Josie Boyle and Donna Atkins

string of cassettes, starting in 1985 with the compilations Fifteen Australian Greats and Variety of Aboriginal Culture, which collectively introduced women like Marcia McGuire, sister act Donna and Sandy Atkins, Anne Leuba, Lois Olney and Betty Colbung as well as herself. The Atkins sisters got going out of Albany south of Perth, along with their brother, didgeridoo player Mark Atkins. At the same time in the Kimberley, the Coxes—Kathleen, Francis and Lucy—all got going too. The Atkins girls started out as a duo, but it was Donna—illustrated above— who went the distance, going on to lead the country act Donna and the Dimes, who contributed to numerous albums

like Blackfellas and Noongar Voices Singing Strong. Josie Boyle dedicated her life to keeping alive the language and culture of the Wongi people, and her music strongly reflects this commitment. Born in the Western Desert in 1941, Boyle was removed from her mother and put into the Mount Margaret Mission. ‘I didn’t know my biological father, like most of us kids in the mission who had white fathers who didn’t own up’, she said in the film Talk About Walkabout. ‘I was three years old when I was put into the mission. My identity crisis began when I left. I had to find my parents, who they were, who I was, all of the kids from the mission went on that journey. Many of my brothers and sisters found their father in Jesus, others fell by the wayside.’ ‘Adopted’ by a new Aboriginal father, a tribal man and songman, Boyle said, ‘His love for me allowed me to find out who I am’. She is, in simplest terms, a storyteller, and before the 1980s were out she’d released three more cassettes under her own name, Warburton Mountains, Dinkie Di Aussie and Wongatha Gospel. She made a specialty of adapting classic American country songs to her own language; her version of ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ rewritten into ‘Red, Red Dirt of Home’ is amazing. In 2008, she and Donna Atkins reunited in the studio to record tracks with Perth’s Yuk Yuk Women’s Choir.

Cassette technology launched Josie Boyle—illustrated above—out of Perth in the 1980s as part of a virtual black music renaissance in Western Australia, which included the whole Atkins mob in the south of the state, and the Cox mob in the north. Boyle released a

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Ladies Love Outlaws Sharon Mann and Other Tamworth Stars In the 1970s, the NSW northern rivers town of Tamworth cemented itself as Australia’s country music capital, and in the 1980s, on the other side of its tracks, Aboriginal country began to boom. The centre of it was a studio-cum-label called Enrec. Founded by a posse of outlaws from the 1960s Sydney rock scene, Enrec took off in 1984 with an album by Roger Knox, and up until the end of the decade released a string of vinyl and cassettes, including, as part of its Koorie Classics series of albums, the first all-female Indigenous collection, which featured the likes of Sharon Mann, Serena Andrew (Auriel’s daughter), Tracy Lee Gray, Kathy Kelly and Judy Quinlan. Sharon Mann was the most successful but also the most atypical, firstly in not being a Tamworth local or nearly so, and secondly in being an Islander into straight country! Kathy Kelly was the member of the famous Kelly music family led by Clive and Masie Kelly in nearby Armidale, Clive, who’d grown up near Kempsey, trading licks with Slim Dusty; Masie a matriarch of New England Aboriginal music alongside Aileen Donovan. Kathy was their granddaughter, and through the 1980s she was in and out of the Kelly Gang family band with her sisters Thelma and

Ella, cutting a great version of ‘Arnhem Land Lullaby’ for Koorie Classics: The Girls in 1988. But like Judy Quinlan, Serena Andrew and Tracy Lee Gray, and unlike Sharon Mann, she did not sustain a career. Mann, who was from Rockhampton, became a regular visitor to Tamworth, and in 1987 she won the festival’s Kurri Talent Quest. Enrec lifted her track ‘Far Away’ off The Girls for single release and in 1989 she started work on a debut album of her own. Among the songs she recorded were a couple written by the then-Federal member for Capricornia, controversial morals crusader Keith Wright; as it turned out, his song ‘Reach Out’ became the album’s title track. But when Wright was sacked amid a sex scandal, the album died. Mann returned to Rockhampton and released a second album, 1994’s My Home in Joskeleigh, but faded after that. Enrec found some final success in the early 1990s with transplanted Western Australian didgeridoo player Mark Atkins, but then folded. Aboriginal women continued to sing country out of Tamworth, notably Shelley Atkins, Mark’s daughter, but more recently, the town has produced Loren Ryan, who, in a sign of the times, is a soul/R&B singer.

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Beyond the Black Sorrows Vika and Linda Bull When Joe Camilleri’s band the Black Sorrows broke out in 1989 with the Top 10 single ‘Chained to the Wheel’, one of the track’s features, shown to even greater advantage in its video, was the backing vocals provided by this pair of gorgeous Islander women who would soon enough, as a consequence, be identified as Vika and Linda Bull. The Bull sisters still sing behind other stars—they’ve worked with ’em all in the Melbourne music mafia—but since the early 1990s they’ve concentrated on being a vocal duo in their own right, and as such are widely loved. Born in Victoria to a Tongan mother and Australian father, the sisters grew up in Melbourne in a very Tongan, quite churchy and very musical environment. Replacing Venetta Fields and Shirley Matthews in the Black Sorrows, the girls went on to spend six years touring and recording with Camilleri, singing on all the biggest hits, from ‘Hold on to Me’ to ‘Harley and Rose’. Along the way, among other things, they sang backing vocals on Archie Roach’s 1990 debut album Charcoal Lane, and it was working with that album’s producer, the ubiquitous Paul Kelly, that led them to leave the Sorrows and, in 1994, release their own debut, the Kelly-produced

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Vika and Linda album. Vika and Linda was an overnight smash, going platinum, and it set the girls up for an exemplary career to follow. They have a basic gift for lovely sibling harmony which is only enhanced by strong original songs written especially for them by friends like Kelly, and Hunters & Collectors’ Mark Seymour. The sisters slowed down a bit after both becoming mothers in the late 1990s, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of good music, in which they have increasingly explored their roots in gospel (1999’s Two Wings, 2004’s Tell the Angels), their Islander heritage (1997’s Princes Tabu) and blues and country (2002’s Love is Mighty Close). In 1996, they played in Tonga for the King, an experience captured in the film Pacific Stories. ‘Tongans are great singers, great harmonisers’, says Vika in the film, ‘it’s just natural, it’s like the Welsh, they’re great singers, aren’t they? So Linda and I going to sing for the Tongans—it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done!’ But they pulled it off with their characteristic grace and humour. More recently, they have opened their own boutique in North Fitzroy called Hoochie Coochie, and they still serve, much-loved, doing backing vocals for SBS-TV’s Rockwiz Orchestra.

Sing Out Sisters Tiddas Like Bob Marley’s I-Threes or Vika and Linda Bull, the Tiddas too began life singing backing vocals—and then stepped out to embark on a career of their own. Amy Saunders, Lou Bennett and Sally Dastey came together in Melbourne at the tail end of the 1980s to sing with Amy’s brother Richard Frankland’s band Djambi. Amy was a descendant of the Gunditjmara tribe of western Victoria, from Portland, while Lou Bennett was a Yorta Yorta woman from Echuca on the Murray; the white member of the trio, Sally Dastey, was from suburban West Heidelberg. Because Djambi means ‘brother’, Ruby Hunter dubbed the trio Tiddas, which means sisters, and the name stuck as the girls went out on their own. And almost immediately, amid the noisy rise of grunge rock, but with sweet acoustic folk making something of a counterpoint comeback too, Tiddas weren’t just a breath of fresh air from Aboriginal Australia, they had a real edge over other female vocal groups. Their first recording, a CD EP (Australia’s first CD by a black act) called Inside My Kitchen, whose cover, designed by Jim Paton, inspired the artwork at left, was released in 1992. In 1993, stepping up to a direct deal with the major label PolyGram, they released

their first full-length album Sing About Life—and it shot into the Top 40 (the first recording by Indigenous women to do so), and went gold (ditto). The album was released in the US in 1995 and the group toured there, again a first for an all-female Aboriginal act. That they called their 1996 second album Tiddas, however, suggests a restart: produced by Black Sorrows leader Joe Camilleri, Tiddas saw the trio find their true voice, and it climbed even higher in the charts (Top 30) and spawned the successful single ‘Ignorance is Bliss’. This was followed in 1998 by Lethal by the Kilo. But already the record company was losing interest. Dropped by PolyGram, the girls recorded a live album for Festival in 1999, called Show Us Ya Tiddas, and it became their fitting farewell as they announced their dissolution and in 2000 played a final national tour. Sally Dastey went solo and has released a couple of albums (Secrets to Keep and Half a Wish, Half a Moon), while Lou Bennett, after releasing a debut solo album, reunited with Amy Saunders to form the Bloody Marys, albeit briefly. When Amy went back to Portland to live, Lou went solo again and since then has produced a body of fine work, as well as working extensively with the Black Arm Band.

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Don’t Take Your Love to Town Ruby Hunter When Ruby Hunter died (way too young) in 2010, there was a wave of loss and love felt all over Australia. With her gumnut-baby face and sparkling eyes, her indomitable spirit and good humour, not to mention her rich, throaty voice, penetrating songs and wild wardrobe, Hunter was an artist who actually warrants that much overused tag, iconic. With her soulmate Archie Roach by her side, she was the first lady and den mother of 90s Aboriginal music. She sang her story for her family and her people, and she reached out and touched so many others as well. Born in 1955 on the banks of the Murray River in South Australia, Ruby was a descendant of the same Ngarrindjeri Hunter clan that includes music hall singer Grandpa Isaac Hunter and pianist Dora Hunter. She survived being stolen and institutionalised, as well as life on the streets. She met Archie when they were both homeless teens in Adelaide in the 1970s, and it was the love and support they gave each other that enabled them to go beyond survival and to thrive. In 1989, after getting off the grog and starting their own family in Melbourne, the pair released a cassette called Koorie, which propelled Archie,

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particularly, with his song ‘Took the Children Away’. But with her own songs like ‘Down City Streets’, which Archie recorded on his 1990 debut album Charcoal Lane, Ruby quickly followed, and in 1994 she released her own debut album Thoughts Within. It was followed by two more albums of earthy folk-country-blues, with her third, 2000’s Feeling Good, a pointer to the extraordinary positivism that underpinned her success. In 2005, she and Archie collaborated with jazz pianist Paul Grabowski and his Australian Art Orchestra to stage Ruby’s Story. Along with its soundtrack album, the show was really Ruby’s swan song. It reworked the couple’s greatest hits into a suite of sweeping epics of widescreen chiaroscuro, and Sydney Morning Herald jazz critic John Shand called it ‘the finest, most moving work the AAO has undertaken’. It was mainly Ruby’s ideas and drive that led to the formation of the Black Arm Band, an ‘Aboriginal orchestra’ which would become an institution responsible for a string of fine productions in the 2000s. She was only 54 when she died in 2010, of a heart attack, at her home outside Melbourne. Aboriginal people’s life expectancies are still criminally short.

Part three

Black Swan Maroochy Barambah Can there be a greater honour for an Australian singer, even a dispossessed Aboriginal one, than to perform the national anthem at the Australian Football League Grand Final? Maroochy Barambah did just that in 1993, and it was fitting that the game and premiership was won by Essendon, the club that pioneered links

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with black players in the Top End. Nominally an opera singer, Maroochy crossed genres to find a voice more befitting her times. Born Yvette Isaacs at Cherbourg in Queensland in 1956, Maroochy—whose name means ‘place of the black swan’—is a songwoman of the Turrbul people, traditional owners of the Brisbane area. At age 12 in 1968 she was fostered to a family in Melbourne as part of the Harold Blair Children’s Project. After graduating from the Melbourne Conservatorium, her first major acting role, in 1982, was in ABC-TV’s miniseries Women of the Sun. Her breakout singing role was in Andrew Schultz’s 1989 opera Black River, which was about Aboriginal deaths in custody. In 1990 she starred in the original stage production of Jimmy Chi’s Bran Nue Dae, and she shot the film version of Black River.

In 1993, her husband and manager, Nigerian-born Ade Kukoyi, produced the Goodwill Concert at the United Nations in New York to celebrate the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and he gave his wife a starring role. While in New York, Maroochy went into the studio and cut a number of ‘modern tribalist’ dance tracks, and in 1994 released the first of them, ‘Mongungi’, complete with 12” remixes. This was followed by a second single, ‘Aborigine’, the following year. In 1996 Maroochy starred in a revival of Porgy & Bess at the Sydney Opera House, and released her debut album Once Upon a Dreamtime. She has subsequently not returned to the recording scene. ‘I didn’t really want to be an opera singer’, she told journalist Robert Milliken. ‘I wanted to be Aretha Franklin!’

Black Girl Next Door Brenda Webb Brenda Webb didn’t make a lot of records in her brief music career, but the first of her two singles, 1993’s ‘Little Black Girl’, was an Australian dancepop classic that paved the way for the later, broader success of Christine Anu. Born a Bundjalung woman in northern New South Wales, Webb’s breakthrough in the early 1990s was scoring a part in iconic TV soap Neighbours. But more than that, she followed in the grand tradition of soap

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stars graduating to pop stardom, as most perfectly epitomised by her fellow Neighbours alumna, Kylie Minogue. The rise of electronic dance music in the 1980s, from hip-hop to house to New Jack Swing, caused a shift in all music, and it had a strong impact on Indigenous women. The new standard for solo female artists after Madonna, Kylie and Whitney was dance-pop. Jodie Raquel, Katja Henaway and Seveka all cut one-off turntable hits.

Brenda Webb’s ‘Little Black Girl’, released by Vicki Gordon’s independent Sydney label Republic Records, was exemplary, with its funky bottom end and slinky melody on top. But Webb’s singing career was barely out of the blocks when it was effectively killed off by an article in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, in which she was accused of ripping the song off, or at least not crediting its co-writers, who were fellow students with her at Eora College in Sydney. This sort of thing is standard music business practice and usually goes unremarked upon, but the Terrorgraph has never been kind to black people. But then Aboriginal copyright is a red-hot issue. Webb went on to release a follow-up single in 1994, a version of the 1969 Blue Mink classic ‘Melting Pot’, but by then the lawyers were closing in. Webb eventually issued an apology to Wendy Dempster and Chris Bowen as the rightful authors of ‘Little Black Girl’, and sessions that had started towards a debut album with collaborator Tim Finn were scuttled. Webb returned north, where today she is a painter. A slightly bizarre postscript is that only a couple of years later in 1997, a 15-year-old Aboriginal girl by the name—of all names!—of Angela Davis tried once again to make a hit out of ‘Melting Pot’, and still couldn’t.

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Saltwater Soul

Rainmakers. She was first heard by the wider world in 1993, singing a duo with Paul Kelly on a ragamuffin remix of his track ‘Last Train’, and even though it charted no higher than #93, it was enough to launch her solo career. Signing to the same label as Kelly, Mushroom, which was then flush with the success of Yothu Yindi, Anu set to work on a debut album. The first single off the album Stylin’ Up in 1995 was a contemporary reworking of the traditional Islands song ‘The Monkey and the Turtle’, and it wasn’t a hit, but the second single, a ballad, ‘My Island Home’, was. Written by Neil Murray for Warumpi singer George Rrurrambu, with his landlocked longing for Elcho Island where he grew up, Anu, with her saltwater roots, could relate to the song, and perhaps also see its broader implications. Stylin’ Up went on to go platinum, and for a few years Christine Anu was Australia’s undisputed Queen of Pop. She even posed nude in Black+White magazine, a rendering of which is included in the artwork at left, inspired by Stripy Design’s cover for Anu’s 2003 CD 45 Degrees and also includes a ‘sample’ from the portrait the Blak Douglas painted of the singer for the 2017 Archibald Prize. Anu starred on stage and screen, in Dating the Enemy, Little Shop of Horrors and Rent, and when her second album Come My Way finally came along in 2000, it was just in time to propel her to an appearance at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, singing her signature song, which had become a sort of alternative national anthem. It was a performance almost as memorable as Cathy Freeman winning gold in the 400m. In the 2000s Anu could afford to pick and choose, and she spread herself thin between singing and acting, recording and touring, theatre and film. She continued to produce hits like ‘I’m Free’ and ‘Sunshine on a Rainy Day’, played the role of Arabia, one of the famous four whores, in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, produced a children’s show, and even starred in one of the early stage productions of The Sapphires.

Christine Anu Christine Anu was the first Indigenous woman to become a pop superstar in Australia, and she marked an exciting shift for young black divas away from folk and country and towards urban dance music. Born in Cairns in 1970 with a heritage that hooks into the Torres Strait and the Mills Sisters, Anu herself calls it ‘saltwater soul’. Arriving in Sydney a mere slip of a 17-year-old, her first break was singing backing vocals with Neil Murray’s post-Warumpi band, the

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Instrumentally Hers Brenda Gifford Never was a mob better named: Mixed Relations, the band formed by Bart Willoughby after he broke up No Fixed Address, was mixed in every way: gender and genre as well as race. The band’s line-up was completed by whitefella Murray Cook on bass and guitarist Leroy Cummins, along with three or four women: Brenda Gifford on sax, Alice Haines on backing vocals and percussion, sometimes Sharon Carpenter, and Greek-Australian Vanessa Lucas on violin. Indigenous women may have been typecast as singers, but Brenda Gifford followed on from Veronica Rankine as a reeds-player to rival white counterparts like Sandy Evans and Louise Elliott. Born in Nowra in 1965, Gifford took up saxophone at primary school in Sydney, and in her last year of high school in 1981 was a member of the Warringah Stage Band. She studied jazz under Don Burrows at the Sydney Conservatorium, and after teaching at Eora College, she joined Mixed Relations in the early 1990s. With Bart Willoughby writing great songs and the band crossing over onto the white pub circuit, it was a hot act. In 1992 Red Eye Records released the Rellies’ debut single, ‘Take It or Leave It’, and in 1993, the album Love. The second single from the album was ‘Aboriginal Woman’; with its Caribbean lilt led by Gifford’s sax and the lyric’s refrain, ‘She’s the backbone of our spiritual way’, it became something of an anthem. Around the same time, Gifford also appeared on one of the other all-time great Aboriginal tracks, Kev Carmody’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’; she also blew a gorgeous solo on Kev’s single ‘Blood Red Rose’. Gifford left Mixed Relations and went on to form her own jazz band, who were spotted at Sydney’s 1995 Survival Day gig working out on ‘Our Day Will Come’. She then taught in Townsville before moving to Canberra to work for the National Film & Sound Archive, where she has helped to preserve Indigenous Australian music.

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Gumbaynggirr woman who was born under a lantana bush in the Nambucca Valley in northern NSW in 1935. Enchanted by her uncles’ skills on the leaf—one of them, George Possum Davis, was a member of the Burnt Bridge Gumleaf Band at the turn of the last century—she took up playing it herself at the age of eight, and it became her lifelong vocation. To white Australia, blackfellas playing the leaf, with a sound like the kazoo, has always been a semi-acceptable novelty, and many settlements in the early half of the last century boasted their own ensembles. The Wallaga Lake band, from southern NSW, which included Jimmy Little Snr among its number, marched at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932 and appeared in the movie The Squatter’s Daughter. At the same time there was also a

well-known gumleaf ensemble working out of Lake Tyers in Victoria. After the war, Ted ‘Chook’ Mullet’s band appeared as part of the special Corroboree season at Wirth’s Circus in Melbourne in 1949. ‘It was traditional’, Boston told ABC radio program Ad Lib, ‘carryin’ on from the younger days when they used to pick the leaves just walkin’ in the bush and imitatin’ the sounds of birds’. The tunes on her album tell the story—some are traditional, some country songs, some spirituals, some contemporary Aboriginal songs. ‘People get together and wanna make music, that was the thing in those days, with the squeeze box and the gumleaves and the clapsticks. It’s so magical in a way, when I walk through the bush playin’ my gumleaf, just pickin’ a leaf and playin’, all the birds come around me, I love it.’

‘Australiano Princesso’ Alice Haines

Gumleaf Melodies Roseina Boston Gumleaf-playing is not confined to Australia—it is practised by bush men and women all round the world—but Aboriginal people have made a special skill of it. Of the small number of recordings of the gum leaf, one was made by Herb Patton, the great master, and another by Roseina Boston, his female counterpart. Boston is a

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After Leah Purcell’s Box the Pony and Deborah Cheetham’s White Baptist Abba Fan in 1997, the one-woman show became a standard in Aboriginal music/ theatre. Pure black autobiography was enough to alternately shock and delight the nice polite white folks who made up the legitimate theatre’s constituency. Rhoda Roberts followed in 1998 with Please Explain, and in 2001, Alice Haines with Alice. Alice recounted its creator’s extraordinary path to music

success. After surviving abuse at the Toomelah mission on the NSWQueensland border, even the further hardship of life on the streets in Sydney with a young daughter could not stop her. In 1989, Haines won a part in the original Perth production of Bran Nue Dae, and after nine months on the road with the show, returned to Redfern and joined Bart Willoughby’s band Mixed Relations, singing back-ups and playing percussion. During her years with the

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Rellies, she completed studies at the National Aboriginal Dance Theatre and released a debut dance-pop solo single, ‘One Law’. Going back to Perth

to take a scholarship at the Conservatorium of Music there, she was cast in the movie Serenades as a green-eyed Afghstrinan-Aboriginal girl. In 2001, as Serenades was released, Alice premiered as part of the Perth Festival; it then went on the road to Brazil, of all places, where Haines was hailed as ‘the Australiano Princesso’. Upon returning to Perth, she got a brand new iMac and set up her own home studio. The ability to seize the means of production made possible by digital technology was a breakthrough for all musicians, and Haines started work recording a debut album. Matter of Time was released in 2005, and it was full of tasty souldance-pop jams. But it made little impact. Since then, Haines has returned east; in 2012, she released an ironic-provocative hip-hop reworking of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, and she served as artistic director of the opera Daisy Bates at Ooldea at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Cape Barren Bluegrass

1800s. On Cape Barren, a unique stringband tradition developed, led by fiddler Les Brown and his various Brown Boys bands. Singer Murray and guitarist Summers were both born on Cape Barren in the early 1940s and both learnt at the feet of the master before he died in 1974. Along with guitarist Steve Lowery, they were on a mission to preserve their heritage. Stringband music never really died, it just varied all over the country; at the same time the Cape Barren project was taking shape, the Mills family in Darwin was mounting the String Bands and Shake Hands tribute to their equivalent of Les Brown, their uncle Val McGuinness. Two years after the Oyster Cove appearance, in 2000, a CD called Born on Ol’ Cape Barren was released. Adding extra musicians on fiddles, mandolin and piano-accordion, producer Martine Delaney and the core trio brought back to life the unique Cape Barren Island sound. More like Antarctic bluegrass than tropical hula jazz, the set of tracks ranges over traditional dance tunes and ballads, old-timey American hillbilly and even a couple of Les Brown originals. Dorothy Murray sings

throughout and takes the lead vocal on half a dozen tracks, from the country standards ‘Which One is to Blame?’ and Wilma Lee Cooper’s ‘I’ll Be Gone’, through the traditional ‘Convict and the Rose’, to Les Brown’s ‘Mother’. These recordings are a phenomenal act of cultural reconstitution.

Dorothy Murray At the 1998 Oyster Cove festival in Tasmania, the annual event celebrating the 1995 handing-back of the Aboriginal settlement south of Hobart, two local elders, Dorothy Murray and Ronnie Summers, got up amid a bill of the cream of Indigenous Australian music

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talent and performed a few songs from their Cape Barren background. Cape Barren Island, along with Flinders Island in Bass Strait, was where the Tasmanian government shunted the Aboriginal people who’d supposedly died out with Truganini in the late

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Marloo’s Blues Marlene Cummins Between the 1960s and 80s, Queensland was a police state under hillbilly dictator Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and it was this pressure-cooker environment that produced blues singer/songwriter/ sax-player Marlene Cummins. Daughter of prominent Aboriginal activist/ musician Darcy Cummins, Marlene was born in 1954 near Cunnamulla in western Queensland, a GuguyelandjiWoppaburra woman, and she grew up at Cherbourg and in Brisbane around the music of her father’s bands the Ravens and the Opals; it was a little bit country, a little bit rock’n’roll, a little bit jazzy-blues. In the early 1970s, Aboriginal people, after the model of African-American black power, were becoming militant, and the teenage Marlene became the first and only female member of the short-lived Australian Black Panther Party, as documented in the 2014 film Black Panther Woman. She had always dreamed of getting up on stage—one of her idols was Syvana Doolan—but it wasn’t till she saw Veronica Rankine playing sax with No Fixed Address in the early 1980s that she started taking the idea seriously. She was ‘picked by the blues’, she believes. By now a mother with young son Leroy, she moved to Townsville to look after her ageing father, and Eddie Mabo lent her the

money to buy a sax; Darcy taught his grandson to play guitar. After Darcy died in 1988, Marlene moved to Adelaide to study at CASM. Recovering from alcoholism and with the musical support of her son, she started gigging around her new hometown of Sydney. She did a brief stint in the band Amunda, alongside singer Rachel Perkins, and got involved as a broadcaster on Radio Redfern. She completed her education at the fabled Berklee College of Music in Boston, and upon returning to Australia set to recording a debut album. The album, however, would not see release till 2008, and then it was truncated to an EP, albeit containing such classic tracks as her stage favourite, ‘Pension Day Blues’. ‘Blues is not just about singing sad songs’, she told Vibe, ‘it’s about elevating people’s spirits’. Her son Leroy could not have more honourably carried on the family tradition, becoming a gun for hire who’s played with everyone from Mixed Relations to Kev Carmody and elder women like Sibby Doolan and Theresa Creed as well as his mother, who finally released her debut full-length album Koori Woman Blues in 2014, and in 2017 was still presenting her radio show Marloo’s Blues on Sydney Koori station Gadigal 93.7FM every Sunday.

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Coolbaroo Blues, Part 2 Lois Olney One of the stars of the 1996 film The Coolbaroo Club, Lois Olney is a jazz/blues singer from Perth whose career is only a fraction of what it might have been. Born in 1963 at Roebourne, on the northwest coastline of Western Australia, of mixed Aboriginal, Afghan and Scottish descent—Ngarluma on her mother’s side and Yamatji on her father’s—Olney was taken from her parents at eight months of age and put in the Ngala childcare centre in Perth. She was then adopted by the Olney family of swish Cottesloe (her foster father was a judge), and she grew up going to private schools knowing nothing of her Indigenous heritage. Her life was changed by two things: hearing Billie Holliday, and starting the quest every stolen child sooner or later lights upon, searching for her parents. ‘I loved the sound of jazz even at 13’, she said, ‘and asked my mum if I could have singing lessons’. But her biological mother died before they met, and she lost two brothers to deaths in custody. ‘Being a classically trained Aboriginal singer’, she’s recalled, ‘there weren’t very many openings for opera or Indigenous artists, so I decided jazz would be my thing’. Her debut recording was the track ‘Bush Song’ on Josie Boyle’s late-80s compilation cassette 15 Australian Greats. In The Coolbaroo Club, Olney played a blues chanteuse based on the real-life Gladys Bropho. Off the back of the film, she released a debut CD called Blue Sky, Red Earth. ‘I sing “Strange Fruit”; that song is definitely one of my favourites’, she says. ‘I find it appropriate.’ ‘Motherless Child’ is another jazz standard she strongly relates to. Olney has continued to perform occasionally in Perth—helping out the Yowarliny Singers, contributing a track to the Cry Stolen compilation—but she is now increasingly restricted due to suffering lymphodema.

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together publicly with their dad at the Adelaide Festival the same year. They were born to a life on the boards. It was very different to the stolen generations’ lot. But the girls never took their privilege for granted. As Lisa once told Vibe, ‘The bar was set pretty high for us. People knew who we were, we really felt the pressure. We really had to work. We had to write songs’. In the 1990s, both women wended their way through Perth, Rachel to study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and Lisa to appear in the Black Swan Theatre’s production of Jimmy Chi’s follow-up to Bran Nue Dae, Corrugation Road. Both back in Sydney by the late 1990s, the Maza Sisters singing duo became a trio when Lisa Fitzgibbon joined and they changed

their name to Nerkep. Nerkep played at the club that Lisa and their father ran in Sydney, the Rail & Cane, and cut a single, ‘Do You Love Me?’ After their father died in 2000, both sisters seemed to gravitate to Melbourne. Rachel got acclaim starring in Radiance, Cosi and Blood and Ash, and headed the Ilbijerri Theatre Company. She became a core member of the Indigenous supergroup, or super-revue, the Black Arm Band, and starred in its swansong show, Murundak. Both women starred in The Sapphires stage show, at different times. They were reunited in the show Sisters of Galem in 2009, which was in effect their joint autobiography told through song, dance, poetry—and puppetry! They’ve done their dad proud.

Kimberley Dynasties The Coxes and the Pigrams

Sistas of Galem The Maza Sisters Palm Island-born Bob Maza (1939–2000) is the godfather of Indigenous Australian theatre, and two of his daughters, Rachel and Lisa, have carried on the work he started, singing, acting, writing, producing and directing through separate but inevitably intertwined careers. The girls grew up in Sydney singing together from the first. Their father was then involved in setting up the National Black Theatre in Redfern, and in 1976 when the company put on its first production, Bob Merrett’s play The Cake Man, Lisa, aged nine, made her stage debut. The sisters first sang

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In the north-west of the continent, the Kimberley and its coastal centre of Broome, bloodlines run through the songlines. The most famous product of the area is Bran Nue Dae, the musical by Jimmy Chi, but beyond that it boasts an even richer output, with the family names of Cox and Pigram recurring strongly. In the 1980s Kathleen Cox, Lucy Cox and Francis Cox (the boy of the bunch) all released cassette albums in a largely folk-country vein, and the Pigram brothers worked their way through Kuckles and Scrap Metal prior

to forming the Pigram Brothers proper. With the release of her debut album Just Wanna Move in 1999, Kerrianne Cox told Songlines, ‘I find my inspiration through people, places, hard times, good times, whatever moves me. I’m connected to the land, I hear the music through the land’. In 2001, she released a second album, Opening, and in 2006, a third, Return to Country. ‘My songs have been my greatest friend’, she says, ‘and I will continue to sing my spirit free and heal my heart to love my life’. For the Pigram family, the next generation is female:

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Stephen’s two daughters, Naomi and Ngaire. Ngaire, after graduating from

WAAPA in Perth in 2004, appeared in the 2010 film version of Bran Nue Dae, and in 2011 starred in the film Mad Bastards, which her father co-produced and scored; she travelled to London as a member of The Sapphires roadshow. Her sister Naomi fronted bands like One Strum and St. Agnes, along with touring in Corrugation Road, the other Jimmy Chi musical, before forming her own Naomi Pigram Band, which released its debut album Other Side of Town in 2009. With her brother Bart integral to her sound, Naomi—illustrated at left— is a country-soul singer, and her appeal in the roots market could be as solid as a Kasey Chambers or Troy Cassar-Daley. Her classic single, ‘Hurts to Be Me’, opened with the salvo, ‘Well I have skinny legs and almond eyes …’

Under the Clocks Alice Ashley Alice Ashley is an African-American singer who lived in Australia between the 1990s and 2000s, during which time she recorded an album, her debut and only album to date, A Time Will Come, which is as good an old-skool soul offering as any by those among the current revival like Sharon Jones, and as good a soul record to come out of Australia up until that time. Hailing from North Carolina, Ashley grew up under the spell of the two great titans of 1960s soul, Motown and Stax, and after starting out singing in church she got

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onto the professional circuit fronting her own Nite-Tyme Band. When she moved to Melbourne in the 1990s she formed an Australian Nite-Tyme Band and started writing songs for what would become A Time Will Come. The album was produced over a number of years by another expatriate AfricanAmerican in Melbourne, Gil Askey. Askey is a former Motown house arranger-producer who first came to Australia as musical director for Diana Ross in 1973. Seven years after that he married an Australian woman he met

on that tour, and after having a son and working on Motown’s 25th anniversary in 1983, he moved to Australia to ‘retire’. Of course, he could hardly get out of the groove, and soon enough he was teaching, working with Australian bands, and working with Alice Ashley. ‘Old school with a modern feel’ is how Ashley herself describes the album. ‘The original concept was to express love, t he fact that life is not easy and it matters to me to live positively.’ A Time Will Come is a small wonder, and though it wasn’t released till 2009, when that time came it was received with great warmth. Ashley is a hit now on Britain’s northern soul scene.

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Twenty Feet From Stardom Venetta Fields When John Farnham was coming to be known as The Voice in the late 1980s, his concert tours were stadium sellouts. On those shows, though, he was always upstaged—and credit to him for having the generosity to play the game—when he invited Venetta Fields, his lead backing vocalist, up for her own feature number. And every time this statuesque black lady sang ‘Amazing Grace’, she brought the house down. Venetta Fields is a singer that most Australians, and many music fans worldwide, may never have heard of, but have certainly heard. Born in Buffalo in upstate New York, Fields first came to Australia on a Boz Scaggs tour in 1978, and after she came back again with Scaggs in 1980, she effectively never left. She has an extraordinary history that stretches all the way back to the birth of rock’n’roll. She started out in the early 1960s as an Ikette, in the girl vocal group behind Ike and Tina Turner. When Ike got Tina a new set of Ikettes, Venetta joined forces with Sherlie Matthews to form a group called the Blackberries, who would become perhaps THE most ubiquitous BV-merchants in 70s rock, singing on albums from Pink Floyd to Exile on Main Street, Humble Pie, Tim

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Buckley, Joe Cocker, Dylan, all the Steely Dan hits, the list goes on … In Australia in the 1980s, Fields became resident pick-up backing vocalist for all the big American acts that came through on tour, while increasingly appearing on local recordings by the likes of Richard Clapton, Australian Crawl, Renée Geyer, Cold Chisel and, of course, John Farnham. ‘I arrived on a Sunday’, Fields told New Woman in the 1990s, ‘and on Thursday I was doing Swanee’s Temporary Heartache album!’ When her old cohort Sherlie Matthews moved to Melbourne in the mid-1980s, they formed the gospel vehicle Venetta’s Taxi. In 1989, Fields moved to centre stage herself, with a role in the Australian production of Big River, and she subsequently starred in other shows like Blues in the Night, Chess and Buddy: The Musical. She toured her own ‘Gospel Jubilee’ show with the group Nine Steps to Heaven. But it wasn’t till 2002, after 40 years in the business, that she released a debut solo album, fittingly titled At Last. Today, with dual Australian-American citizenship, she is retired from the road and lives on the Gold Coast, still teaching singing.

Deep Soul Tina Harrod As a singer of deep soul—really, no other faddish term can be applied to it—Tina Harrod has few peers anywhere in the world. She has an almost harsh but magnetic rasp, which has been put to great use on the Australian circuit and over a string of CDs for more than 20 years now. Born in New Zealand of Fijian and Welsh descent, Harrod grew up in Christchurch and first sang in the church choir. She got smitten by disco, and in the early 1980s, aged just 17, moved to Sydney. She scored her first gig in the late 1980s singing with a sort of new wave dance band called Modern Man. Then she joined an all-girl vocal trio called the Honey Bees—and then she met Jackie O, the man who would become her partner in music and life. ‘Jackie O’, of course, was the late Jackie Orszaczky, Hungarian jazz-rock refugee who, in the 1970s, became the bass-player and musical director of Marcia Hines’s super-hot road band, and in the 1980s led his own funk bands Jump Back Jack and the Godmothers. In the 1990s he and Harrod formed Jackie O’s Grandmasters, and this was the funkiest band in the land. In 1994, they delivered their debut album Family Lore. In 1997, Harrod also sang on the double CD by the Orszaczky Budget Orchestra, Deep Down and Out. Family Lore was released in Germany and Jack and Tina went there and to Hungary, although in Budapest, Tina sang not with Jack but with touring Australian world-jazz band Wanderlust. A second Godmothers album, Deserted Downtown, followed in 2001, and in 2004, Harrod dropped her solo debut, Shacked Up in Paradise, which was a small miracle of a record, hard-edged soul for a hard new age. Orszaczky died in 2008, and Harrod released Worksongs, no ordinary collection of covers but one recorded live in a single day, in which Harrod totally transforms songs originally made famous by the likes of Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Nick Drake and Portishead. 2009’s Temporary People, recorded in Los Angeles, saw her taking a very satisfyingly more introspective, jazzier turn, before returning to Australia for 2013’s The Revolution is Eternal. She calls it ‘gutbucket soul’. Fair enough.

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Old Skool Theresa Creed and Cindy Drummond While the young ones around the turn of the millennium were rushing to embrace new urban styles like house, hip-hop and R&B, there were even younger ones, and older ones, determinedly returning to roots. Invariably from the Deep North, women like Theresa Creed, Lexine Solomon and Cindy Drummond kept the classic jazz/blues/gospel/soul tradition alive in the 2000s. Theresa Creed, illustrated at right, was born at the Woorabinda Aboriginal settlement and grew up in nearby Townsville. Her father was a country singer and her brother was John ‘Zonboy’ Creed, leader of groundbreaking 80s reggae-rock band Bapoo Mamoos and the father of Jodie Cockatoo-Creed, who was a member of Yothu Yindi in the 1990s and a driving force on their pro-feminist 2001 album Garma. Theresa Creed was involved in the Brisbane black power movement in the 1970s before she joined the Redfern Dance Theatre, in which capacity she toured the world. After retiring from the stage, she recorded the album Unfinished Business, which even though it does contain one rap, makes a greater highlight of its Oodgeroo Noonuccal adaptations, ‘No More Boomerang’ and ‘Son of Mine’. Lexine Solomon is a much younger Islander who also grew up in north Queensland, and with her gospel roots her album This is Woman combines feminism, funk, and the good word. ‘These songs are about women in our lives’, Solomon told the Koori Mail, ‘and how they continue to love us even when we fail them. They are our mothers, aunties, grandmothers, sisters and friends of all colours and creeds’. Cindy Drummond, like Theresa Creed, was a dancer who, in her 60s, finally released the album Ruby Red Lips in 2005. Recorded with the cream of Sydney’s jazz and rock musicians, including Reg Mombassa, and with Johnny Nicol also on guitar, the album is unique as old-skool jazz vocalising with a breezy tropical Island touch. After stealing the show at the 2006 Deadlies, Drummond also served as vocalist on the 2008 CD Creation, produced by Sydney’s Descendance dance company. In 2012 she dueted with Seaman Dan on a lovely version of ‘Sunny Side of the Street’.

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The Jewel of the North Toni Janke Black women toting acoustic guitars and singing folk songs was never a dominant archetype. Stars like Odetta, Joan Armatrading or Tracy Chapman were more the exception than the rule. But in Australia in the 1990s, after the lead shown by the likes of Ruby Hunter and Tiddas, it became a new norm. While the harder country tradition was kept alive by the likes of Donna Atkins, her niece Shelley Atkins and later Sharon Lane, Sharnee Fenwick, Bec Gollan and Illana Atkinson, there was a whole new breed of confessional female singer-songwriters storming the barricades, from Toni Janke to Kerrianne Cox, Frances Williams, the Maza Sisters, Christine Ward, Deb Morrow, Patricia Clarke, Monica Weightman, Jessie Lloyd, Candice Lorrae, Lorrae Coffin and more. For some of these artists, with their tales of dispossession and sadness, history remembered and rewritten, music was a form of therapy as much as entertainment, and their reach was limited, even as many of them, in the new digital age, were quite capable, with government funding, of releasing recordings. Perhaps the best-known and arguably the sheer best of them all was also the one who in a way forged a

bridge between the first and second waves, Toni Janke, whose debut CD Hearts Speak Out dropped as early as 1993. Toni’s citing of Aretha Franklin and Joni Mitchell as influences is a pointer to her sound—from the first it was highly accomplished, as was her songwriting, and not without a nice mellow sense of groove. Jenke (whose illustration is based on a photo by Tony Mott) was born in Cairns in the late 1960s, with Aboriginal and Islander heritage, and grew up singing with her sister Terri in their bedroom; Terri is now a noted lawyer in Sydney. The family moved to Canberra and Toni, like Terri, graduated in law from the University of NSW. She worked in Canberra in the Ministry for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Affairs, and then in Sydney coordinating the annual Survival Day show and, in 1997, the Festival of the Dreaming. But actually making her own music called her most strongly, and as she married, started a family and moved to the Gold Coast, she produced two more fine albums, 2001’s The Brink, and 2004’s Jewel of the North. The enlightenment to which The Brink’s title refers was consummated in Jewel of the North, with its lush tropical glow.

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Opera Snob Deborah Cheetham Cross-dressing seems to be a recurring theme of this book, and that’s said without going into drag queens such as Mary G, Constantina Bush or Mama Alto. When opera singer Deborah Cheetham started getting around in a man’s suit, as illustrated (based on a photo by David Geraghty), it was like a bookend to Nellie Small! Cheetham grew up in Sydney a ‘white Baptist Abba fan’, as the title of her first recording had it; and it wasn’t till later that her inner gay Koori prima donna came out. Her life was changed, in order, by: seeing and hearing African-American soprano Leona Mitchell; starting to find her sexuality, and meeting her birth mother. She discovered she was actually born, in 1964, at Cummeragunja, her mother Monica the sister of Jimmy Little, no less. When she first met Monica, she once admitted, she was ‘a middle-class snob’ who was horrified not so much that her mother was poor and black but a country and western singer! Cheetham went to the Conservatorium in Sydney, and after graduating formed Short Black Productions, which hit on the festival circuit with a style of opera-lite shows like Death Scenes and Drama Queens and Till the Black Lady Sings. In 1997, Cheetham’s one-woman show White Baptist Abba Fan premiered at the Sydney Opera House, including arias by Handel, Puccini and Dvorak; she toured it internationally for four years and turned it into her first EP. After collaborating in 2001 with Sydney trip-hop act Wicked Beats Sound System for the seminal Corroboration mix album, in 2002 she sang Martin Wesley Smith’s opera True, and in 2005 released her own album, Devotion. In 2006 she appeared in a revival of Porgy and Bess at the Brisbane Festival, and then began on her great work, an opera based on the 1939 walk-off at Cummeragunja. Pecan Summer was first previewed in Melbourne in 2010. ‘Opera is corroboree’, Cheetham told the Australian. ‘Music, dance, costume, drama, that’s what corroboree is. It’s just that we think of opera in its caricature, a stuffy kind of something with Viking helmets that doesn’t relate. We’ve been telling our stories through song for 60 000 years or more.’

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Trey, Ebony Williams, Little G, Lady Luck and Lady Lash were taking it right up to their brothers like Brotha Black, Tribal Link, Wire MC and Native Ryme Syndicate. In 1995, white DJ/producer Morganics oversaw an Urban Theatre production in western Sydney called HipHopera, and one posse involved was the South-West Syndicate, which spawned not only Ebony Williams but also Nadeena Dixon. Rochelle Watson up in Brisbane cut the funky ‘Black to Reality’. The all-female Swanz out in the bush cut ‘Brown Skinned Black Woman’. There was the black boy-girl duo OutCaste in Adelaide, and the all-female Islander/ African MIZ in Brisbane. Little G down in Melbourne, a Greek-Aboriginal woman born Gina Chrisanthoplous, appeared in the 1999 show Bass Anger, and then started work on an album nominally titled Miss Communication; her signature track became ‘Invasion

Day’. But the biggest star is without doubt MC Trey. Born Thelma Thomas in Fiji, Trey grew up in Sydney surrounded by reggae and church music, and started rapping as a teenager at open mic events in the early 1990s. In 1999, she released her debut single, ‘Universal Soldier’, a 12” on her own Tapastry Toons label, and followed it in 2000 with a debut album Daily Affirmations. Along with Ebony Williams, she contributed a track to the seminal Mother Tongues’ 2003 compilation album First Words, and then dropped her second album Tapastry Toons. ‘Hip-hop is about telling your own story’, she said. ‘Lyrics are about your everyday life.’ More recently, Trey joined forces with DJ Nic Toth and Maya Jupiter in the sort-of supergroup Foreign Heights, who released an eponymously titled CD in 2007. In 2013, she released a solo single, ‘Light’, followed in 2017 by ‘Daily’.

Sistas in Rhyme MC Trey and Other Femcees The biggest shift in music since the rise of rock itself was hip-hop, and it was only natural that Indigenous Australians would tune in to this genre that gives voice to a young black underclass. In common with country music, hip-hop is a storyteller’s medium, and one thing Australia has given hip-hop is a strong feminisation. In 1998, the label Mother Tongues became the world’s first allfemale hip-hop collective. Black female rappers or femcees like MC

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Voices in the Wind Shakaya Simone Stacey and Naomi Wenitong met in 1999 when they were both studying at the ATSIC Music College in Cairns, and under the tutelege of local producer Reno Nicastro, they honed themselves into a slick urban-pop/R&B act called Shakaya. It was indeed a bit like the Spice Girls model, where the bubblegum girl vocal group is manipulated by its Svengali. In 2001, Nicastro took his act to Sydney to audition for Sony Music, and it took Sony five minutes to sign them up. In 2002 a debut single, ‘Stop Calling Me’, was released, and with its hook into the rise of both mobile phones and stalking, it was a timely Top 5 hit and the biggest Australian single of the year. The group—whose name apparently means ‘voices in the wind’—produced two more Top 20 singles before their self-titled debut album went Top 5. They became the support act of choice for international mega-tourists, whether Destiny’s Child, Usher or Kylie Minogue. But here the story degenerates into a classic music business tale of woe. The difficult second album became just that. The major record company sees that the way to grow its franchise is to restructure it along more streamlined or manageable lines. In other words, cut the head off, get rid of the troublesome producer/manager, and just take the malleable girls. A re-do of Michael Jackson’s ‘Way You Make Me Feel’ was ill-advised. Sony sent the girls all round the world trying to find the right song, the right sound, for a new album. When the album finally came out as Are You Ready in 2006, it was way past that. The duo broke up. Simone Stacey receded from view, while Naomi Wenitong restarted the rest of her real life as an artist. She got together with her brother Joel Wenitong, formerly of Local Knowledge, to form the Newcastle-based Last Kinection. Opening their account in 2008 with a cheeky hip-hop remake of Peter Allen’s ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ as a highlight of their debut album Nutches, the Kinection are a genuine great black hope, and despite a bad car accident in which Naomi was seriously injured in 2008, their progress hasn’t been slowed. Simone Stacey returned to the scene in 2013 with a new EP and an appearance on The Voice.

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Prison Songs Music Behind Bars One of the most fabled albums in Aboriginal music is Vic Simms’ The Loner, which was recorded live at Bathurst Jail in 1973 when Simms was an inmate there. For Indigenous Australians, as Cherie Watkins put it, ‘Prison’s nothing special’—just worse. Black deaths in custody continue along with disproportionately high and still rising incarceration rates. Fully a quarter of female inmates in Australia are Indigenous, when they number only 2 per cent of the general population. Music is one of the few rays of light inside. When you’re locked down in the hole, you can’t find relief or expression by writing a novel or painting a masterpiece—but you can always sing a song. Prison concert parties are nothing new. But with the rise of digitisation and public radio, more and more inmates’ music is getting more widely heard. Former Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison was involved in programs at Brisbane Women’s Prison that resulted in the 1994 CD Future Release. In Western Australia, Aboriginal musicians Della Rae Morrison and Jessie Lloyd, leading Yowarliny, recorded an album with the women of Bandyup jail. In Melbourne, 3CR started producing its annual Beyond the Bars broadcast/CD in 2002. Organised by local Kooris Shiralee Hood and Kutcha Edwards, it’s about ‘getting voices heard from the inside’ as Hood says, and it’s still going strong today. There are countless official reports and academic papers that attest to the value of such endeavours, but perhaps most powerfully, and humorously, the 2014 SBS documentary Prison Songs has a group of black women at Berrimah Jail in Darwin, under the direction of Shellie Morris, singing a song worthy of the 5th Dimension called ‘At the Berrimah Hilton’! In Blanche Hampton’s 1993 Prisons and Women report, ‘Maree’ says, ‘The best experiences I had in prison were the concerts we organised. We looked forward to making costumes and doing our own props, arranging songs and music. All the women got a kick out of it because they were participating, taking a part. There are a lot of women inside with hidden talent and it’s a shame to see them waste it’. Other typical quotes include: ‘Playing music gets me through each day […] took me away from being in such a dark place […] reminded me I’m human’.

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... And Then There Were Two The Stiff Gins The Stiff Gins followed on in the great tradition of Aboriginal girl groups like Olive & Eva, the Sapphires and Tiddas, a trio of sprightly young black women who were a breath of fresh air when they burst onto the scene at the start of the 2000s. Emma Donovan, Nardi Simpson and Kaleena Briggs all had strong pedigrees when they first met as music students at Sydney’s Eora College in the late 1990s: Kaleena was related to the Briggs women of the Sapphires, and Emma is the cousin of Australian Idol-winner Casey Donovan; Emma and Casey’s grandparents were country music stalwarts Mick and Aileen Donovan. In 1999, the Gins won the Band Competition at Sydney University, and as a result signed a recording deal with Sony Music. It was a long way from Olive & Eva, restricted to house parties in Redfern! Possibly it was too much, too soon. In 2001, the girls released a debut album along with a minor hit single, ‘Morning Star’, but the 2004 release of their second album Kingia Australis, named after the Western Australian grass tree or black gin bush that flowers after a fire, was posthumous. Emma, perhaps inspired by Casey’s success, left the group to

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release a solo CD called Changes. And indeed she seemed to find her truer voice, moving away from folky harmonies and towards a funkier, more soulful sound on songs like ‘Koori Time’ and ‘Gumbaynggirr Lady’. Dropped by Sony, Kaleena and Nardi regrouped as Freshwater, who released an album in 2006, but before long the Stiff Gins were born again, as a duo, and they would go on in 2010 to independently release the album Wind & Water. Emma Donovan, meantime, was a rising star who spread her talents wide through part-time membership of the Black Arm Band, and collaborating with funk/dance acts like Blue King Brown, Wicked Beats Sound System (on their 2008 album Dreaming), the PutBacks, and playing touring shows like the highly successful ‘Barefoot Divas’ with Ursula Yovich and others. After singing with Deline Briscoe and Lou Bennett in Sweetwater, and doing another solo recording, Ngarraanga (Remember), a moving and soulful tribute to the stolen generations, she went into the studio with the PutBacks and in 2014 emerged with the album Dawn, a minor masterpiece that could well propel her onto the world stage.

Aboriginal Idol Casey Donovan Doubtless Casey Donovan looks back on her famous 2004 win of Australian Idol as a blessing and a curse. During its reign Idol may only ever have disgusted the critics—and it did generate way too many histrionics, too many tears and too much overwrought melisma—but still it was an opportunity for talented kids with stars in their eyes, and when Casey Donovan won as a 16-year-old it was perhaps less a victory for Aboriginal performers (because by now Aboriginal performers permeated music and the arts) than it was for a singer who seemed a bit more real; who had the grace, taste, power and humour that most of the other contestants seemed to lack. Born in 1988, Casey grew up in a musical family, and as young as ten she was busking on the streets of the Tamworth festival. She was studying at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney when she auditioned for Idol. She wasn’t the first black aspirant on the show and wouldn’t be the last. Others like Emily Williams, Naomi Parker and Prinnie Stevens would follow, and not least of all, 2009 winner Stan Walker. But Casey was never going to be the Idol 101 required. After the high, the downward spiral: Sony-BMG released the single ‘Listen with Your Heart’ and it went to Number One, and in 2005 released the album For You and the singles ‘What’s Going On’ and ‘Flow’. But as each sold worse, the label lost interest and dropped Donovan. There was then a quite public low played out in the tabloids before Casey found her mojo again. In 2008, she independently released the EP Eye 2 Eye, and it marked her reinvention. In 2009, she was part of Christine Anu’s Women of Soul package tour, and in 2010, she was cast in the second stage production of The Sapphires. She was the star of the show, and carried over into the third production that went to the UK in 2011. She released the single ‘Big, Beautiful and Sexy’ and became a poster girl for big women. With a big heart, a big laugh and a big soul voice, she went on to front NITV music show Fusion and star in the Queen-tribute stage show We Will Rock You, although her recent role in a TV ad campaign for Coles hasn’t gone down well in the Twittersphere.

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Dreamtime Opera Delmae Barton Delmae Barton is one of the few women to have played the didgeridoo with the blessing of the elders. Contrary to popular belief, the instrument isn’t completely prohibited to women, but it is men who largely command it. One of Barton’s great gifts may be that she’s passed on the baton to her son William, who started out playing alongside her as a teenager and is today one of the prime exponents of the instrument. Martin Buzacott wrote in the liner notes to William’s debut solo CD Kalkadungu, on which Delmae sings, ‘The mother-son duo has performed constantly together over the years, Delmae’s emotional vocals— part-classical, part primal wailing— acting like a conscience emanating from a distant past’. Born in Emerald in north Queensland in 1943, Delmae worked as a cook, cleaner, nurse and even dingo-trapper before dedicating herself to art. She gave birth to William in Mount Isa in 1981. Buzacott wrote that with ‘a father who played rhythm and blues guitar, a vocalist mother inspired by Mario Lanza and uncles who were acknowledged as masters of the dijeridu, his was one of the first Indigenous families to become regulars at the local folk club’. Delmae started publicly playing the didj in Brisbane in

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the 1990s. ‘I was given permission from a respected elder of the Wangi Lardyl nation’, she told the Koori Mail. ‘I am allowed to use it so long as it is in a contemporary sense. I do not play traditional songs.’ But with William already overtaking her—in 1997, still a teenager, he debuted with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra— Delmae returned to singing. As a duo called Dreamtime Spirit, she and her son continued to play all over the country, and in 2002 toured to Canada. Together droning, whooping and yelping, they sound like free jazz! While William went on to collaborate with the likes of composer Peter Sculthorpe, Delmae, in 2005, took up the position of elder-in-residence at Griffith University in Brisbane. In 2006, she made the news when she was ignored, because she was black, after collapsing at a campus bus stop. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie apologised profusely. In 2010 she and William travelled to Rome to appear as part of Una Notte Australiana, a concert at the Vatican to celebrate the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. ‘Nothing I do violates any traditions. It comes from within my heart and soul. My music is intended to be spiritually healing.’

Bluestone Blues Liz Cavanagh Liz Cavanagh is one of the last of a vanishing breed, a jobbing jazz singer, inheritor of an Indigenous and very Deep North tradition that stretches all the way back to Georgia Lee. Jazz, of course, has endured many fusions in its modern era, from jazz-rock and jazz-funk in the 1970s through world jazz and acid jazz in the 1990s, to all its samplings in hip-hop. But even if the pure, hard stuff is now a fairly esoteric taste, it’s still very much alive. Born at Babinda just south of Cairns in 1971, Cavanagh has Aboriginal and Islander roots. She started singing at a young age, in church. ‘All my family were singers’, she told the Koori Mail. ‘My uncle Ray Cassidy from Ingham was Australia’s answer to George Benson!’ Cavanagh moved to Victoria and living at Mildura in the late 1980s, started her vocal training and getting into jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Carmen McCrae and Sarah Vaughan. Her first pro gig, with her uncle Ray backing her on guitar, was supporting Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter at the Robinvale Arts Centre. Even before becoming the first Indigenous graduate of the prestigious

Victorian College of the Arts School of Music in 2002, she appeared on the Winter Dreaming concert and CD in 2000. In 2001, when her road band, the Liz Cavanagh Quartet, comprised some of the finest young jazz players in the country (Luke Howard on piano, Ben Johnson on double bass and David Jones, drums), she released her first recording, a self-titled EP in which she covered four classic Australian songs, Coloured Stone’s ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’, Deborah Conway’s ‘White Roses’, Australian Crawl’s ‘Reckless’ and Hunters & Collectors’ ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’. She may have told Vibe that her perfect song was Carmen McCrae’s ‘Save Your Love for Me’, but she made a fair fist of such a set-list. In 2007, she released a second EP called Tabanaba, which comprised four original songs. In 2010 she appeared in Deborah Cheetham’s opera Pecan Summer, and continues to gig around the Melbourne traps. ‘I hope people enjoy my music’, she says. ‘I’d like to give them a different insight to how a contemporary Indigenous artist can evolve. I’m not typecast and my music reflects that.’

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Out of Africa, Part 2 Connie Mitchell When Sneaky Sound System burst onto the Australian scene in the mid-2000s, it made a star out of Connie Mitchell. Miss Connie’s famous fondness for fast cars is only fitting; as a fresh, sassy new face, she was going places and in a hurry. Born in South Africa in 1976, Mitchell is just one of an increasing number of African women now cropping up in Australian music. They’re coming from everywhere— Zimbabwe, the Seychelles, Ghana, Kenya, Sierre Leone, Uganda, the Sudan—women like Charmaine, Sharon ‘Shaniqua’ Makombeshamu, Trevelyn Brady, Grace Berbe, Marsha ChangTave, Vida Sunshyne-aka-Natty Sistren, Joys Ferris, Enushu Taye, Kween G, the Sierra Sisters, Ajak Kwai, sisters Kuukua and Lydia Acqua, Thando, Machehi Komba (or MCK), Aminata Doumbia (or Sister Ami), Tabitha Omaji, Tkay Maidza, Sawrah Attufuah, Yasmin Mohamed and the great Sampa the Great. There is a thriving African music scene in Melbourne especially, with acts like the Black Jesus Experience, Public Opinion Afro Orchestra and Diafrix crossing over with nu funk and hip-hop. Connie Mitchell had already been around the block before joining SSS. In the late 1990s she was a member of Sydney band Primary, a sort of goth pop

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act. After they broke up, and after occasionally moonlighting as ‘Feyonce’ in the outrageous Machine Gun Fellatio, Connie fell in with two ‘dodgy’ Sydney DJs, Black Angus McDonald (who isn’t) and MC Double D, who’d already released a couple of unsuccessful dance-pop discs as Sneaky Sound System. When the first recording Miss Connie cut with them, ‘I Love It’, went to Number 24 in the singles charts in 2006, the deal was sealed. The act’s self-titled first album sold tripleplatinum, and spawned another several killer singles, including the classic ‘UFO’. SSS blended pop smarts and electronic textures with the grunt of pub rock, and as part of a new wave including other such acts as Cut Copy and the Presets, hit home especially thanks to their prowess as a live act. Miss Connie was such a star that in 2007 Kanye West flew her to LA to contribute vocals to his Graduation album. In 2008, SSS’s second album, called 2, went to Number One, and after Double D left in 2009, the truncated duo released their third album From Here to Anywhere in 2011. Miss Connie was last seen speeding around the Sydney streets in her vintage Jaguar XJS V12, high heels hard down on the pedal to the metal.

Darwin Calling Jessica Mauboy Like Casey Donovan, Jessica Mauboy’s point of entry was Australian Idol. In 2006 she finished runner-up (to Damien Leith) but was the people’s choice, and she got a Sony-BMG record deal anyway. Which was actually her second bite at the Sony cherry. Which would cause a bit of Idol drama, of course—but all the better! Born in Darwin in 1989, of Aboriginal and Indonesian descent, music was all around Mauboy growing up, at church and at home, and in 2004, aged just 14, she won a talent quest at the Tamworth country music festival. Which was what earned her a first deal with Sony. But a single, a country version of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, was a false start, and Sony dropped her. The label snapped her up again though after the 2006 Idol race, and in 2007, released her debut album The Journey. Comprising a dozen of her Idol performances, it went Top 5. After a stint in Idol alumni supergroup the Young Divas, she released her first studio album proper, Been Waiting, in 2008. Now it was as if her career was really starting, getting away from the schlock of Idol and into a more contemporary urban/R&B realm. Been Waiting went double-platinum, an

extraordinary feat at a time when illegal downloading was already undermining real sales, and it spawned the Number One single, ‘Running Back’. Mauboy went on to appear in the 2010 film version of Bran Nue Dae, and having grown up herself in a small town with big dreams, she could idenitify with her character Rosie. ‘Wanting to break free to see the world’, she said, ‘having that feeling of being on stage and everybody watching you, we definitely relate to one another’. Her third album Get ’em Girls, recorded in the US, was as the title suggests a sort of feminist call to arms. Starring in the film version of The Sapphires in 2012 merely made her into the sweet-as superstar she’d always threatened to become, and since then she has seemingly not put a foot wrong in her campaign for world domination, racking up the recording, acting and touring credits. ‘Moving away from family and Darwin to Sydney was hard’, she told the Sunday Mail, ‘and now thinking about going to another country is even more scary. But every stage I’ve been through, every session, I feel I’m getting stronger and more in control of where I want the music to go. It’s made me grow up really quick and I’m really enjoying it’.

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sang in the studio with new electronic dance acts like Endorphin and P’nau, and she sang on a track called ‘Heaven’ by UK dance producer Ian Pooley, which was a hit in Germany. She started selling her songs to artists around the world. She signed with the independent production company Workstation and in 2004, her debut solo single ‘You Make Me Weak’ snuck into the Top 50. The follow-up, 2005’s ‘So Hot Right Now’, was, and it went Top 20. The single was just a taster for the album to follow, and when the self-titled Jade MacRae arrived, it confirmed the singer’s arrival. But then the wheels fell off. Amid preparations for a second album, she and her partner in life and music Tim Purcell spiralled into a very public break-up.

The new album was delayed while MacRae regained her composure. One unanticipated benefit of these travails was that they brought MacRae back closer to her family. In 2008, all of them, including her brother Moses, were reunited in a special gig at the Basement in Sydney—and even Jade had to concede that her mum stole the show! Now getting back on track, the second album was prefaced by the single ‘In the Basement’ (not the old Sugar Pie de Santo stomper, nor a tribute to the above gig), and by the time Get Me Home was finally released in 2008, Jade had a new boyfriend in a new town (Melbourne), and a renewed career. When she appeared on ABC-TV music quiz show Spicks and Specks, she performed her father’s ‘Funky Gibbon’.

Swept Away Funky Daughter Jade MacRae In January 2005, Billboard magazine, the bible of the record business, put Jade MacRae on the cover as the face of Australian R&B. Georgia Lee made the cover of NME, Wilma Reading Jet, Marlene Cummins Drum Media—but Billboard was the big time. MacRae was on her way. But then maybe she always was. She is musical royalty, after all. Born in London in 1980, her father was Dave MacRae, jazz pianist, arranger to the stars, acid folkie and creator of the Goodies’ immortal ‘Funky Gibbon’, and her mother was Joy Yates. Jade finished her HSC at the Con in Sydney, and she got out on the road. She sang in a band with Mahalia Barnes, daughter of Jimmy Barnes, and sang backup vocals with the aforesaid Barnes himself plus other stars like Renée Geyer. She

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Shellie Morris Shellie Morris, whose debut EP was released in 2000, rose above the usual run of faltering singer-songwriters thanks to, if nothing else, ‘Swept Away’, an epic ballad so good it survived even being swamped by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. But there’s so much more to Morris than that. She is a songwoman of deep significance. Born in 1965 and adopted out as a baby, Michelle Morris grew up in Sydney with a white foster family she still loves dearly. But like all dispossessed children, she had to find her biological

parents, a search that eventually led her to Darwin. She started out in church, singing gospel, and it was this that first took her to the Territory. She went back down south to become the good suburban wife, but something kept nagging at her, and eventually it just swept away her whole old life; she returned to Darwin for good. Unfortunately her father died just before she got there. But she happily connected with the rest of her extended Wardaman-Yanyuwa family at Borroloola on the Gulf of Carpentaria,

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and it was this—plus working in health, education and music for the Fred Hollows Foundation, in which capacity she’s learnt no fewer than 14 languages—that informed her eventual step up to writing her own songs. After her first EP, she delivered a debut album, Waiting Road, in 2006, which

was a great showcase for her magnificent soaring voice. She was asked to join the Black Arm Band, and ‘Swept Away’ became one of the highlights of the part-time supergroup’s set, as it took its show Murundak all round the world and, by 2010, onto the silver screen. In 2008, along with her semi-protégé Leah Flanagan and a cast of visiting Liberian women, she appeared in the Darwin Festival show Liberty Songs; in 2010, she appeared in the Melbourne Festival show Seven Songs to Leave Behind, before starting on what is her great life’s work, the Borroloola Song People’s Sessions. Back in her homelands, Morris oversaw not just the preservation of some of the traditional language and music of the area, but also extended it into the realm of the contemporary. The double-CD Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu: Together We Are Strong was released in 2012. ‘And that’s a gift’, she told radio presenter Richard Fidler. ‘I don’t do the work I do for … I just do it for them. So much joy, you can hear the music coming out of the houses, there’s no better feeling in the world.’

Bluestone Blues, Part 2 Deline Briscoe Melbourne is a magnet to musicians. Not only Australia’s music capital, it is one of the world’s most vibrant live music cities, and bands flock there from all over the country. It’s a cool world

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move south. Deline Briscoe, originally from Mossman in far north Queensland, is exactly the type of player who can benefit from Melbourne’s vast circuit of gigs. Briscoe started out in Cairns in a trio with her sisters Naurita and Merindi, which was called, funnily enough, the Briscoe Sisters. With an orthodox folk vocal group sound, the girls played the festival circuit, released an EP called Check It Out in 2004, and as a last hurrah before breaking up in 2006, released the album Live @ the Tanks, recorded at the fabled Cairns venue. Moving to Melbourne in 2008, Deline began collaborating with Airi

Ingram, PNG log-drumming legend, and he in return added some beats to what she calls her ‘acoustic soul’ sound. She became part of the extended Black Arm Band family and then also joined Melbourne world music fusion group Sol Nation. Led by Timorese singer Paulo Almeida, formerly of the Dilli All Stars, with whom Deline shared lead vocals, Sol Nation released an exuberant self-titled EP in 2010. With Iranian-born singer/dancer/percussionist Neda Rahmani and Jessie Lloyd she formed a vocal group called the Sunshine Sisters. Lloyd originally hailed from Cairns too, and found her way to Melbourne via Perth, where in the late 2000s she partnered with Della Rae Morrison in the acoustic duo Djiva and fronted the NITV music show Chocolate Martini. The Sunshine Sisters came together to bring a warm light to Melbourne. They play gigs in their own right but also share equal billing with Melbournebased TI drummer/songman King Kadu in his band. In 2013, Deline, Airi Ingram and Emma Donovan joined the Bart Willoughby Band to record the album Proud, while Deline also sang on Willoughby’s monumental Melbourne Town Hall pipe organ project, We Still Live On. In 2014, she sang as part of Sweetwater with Emma Donovan and Lou Bennett, guested on Jessie Lloyd’s track ‘Other Side of the Room’ and recorded the ‘Wanju Afrobeat’ single with Voodoo Dred.

away from the tropical balm of the Deep North, but still Indigenous women like Liz Cavanagh, the Maza sisters, Deline Briscoe, Jessie Lloyd and others have been prepared to make the permanent

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Magpie Blues Ursula Yovich The phenomenal ascent of late Arnhem Land singer-songwriter Mr. G. Yunupingu is but one marker of the maturation of the music scene in the Top End. Others are the emergence of Darwin’s very own indy label, Skinnyfish (for whom Mr Yunupingu recorded, along with Ali Mills and others), and of a wave of especially female performers, and not just black ones like Jessica Mauboy, Shellie Morris, Leah Flanagan and Ursula Yovich but also others like Tracey Bunn and Jess Ribiero. Ursula Yovich was born in Darwin in 1978, of Aboriginal and Serbian parentage. From Darwin she went to Perth to study at the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts, and after graduating in the late 1990s moved to Sydney. She is the classic contemporary slasher—a singer/actor/dancer—whose music is much better than the average hoofer’s; she has a real talent for torch songs and blues’n’soul ballads. She contributed fine tracks to the compilation albums Songlines (1997) and Sending a Message (2003); starred in Wesley Enoch’s stage musical The Sunshine Club (2000, a sort of Darwin equivalent of the Perth film The Coolbaroo Club); and in 2004 she starred in the original production of The Sapphires and released her own first standalone CD, Sketches. After minor roles in the feature films Jindabyne (2006, in which she also sang the haunting closing theme) and Australia (2008), she reunited with director Enoch for her real coming out, the one-woman show Magpie Blues, which was a hit she spent a couple of years touring. Ursula and Enoch made a good team—they reunited again in Perth in 2011 on David Milroy’s stage musical Waltzing the Willara. Yovich has also toured with the Black Arm Band and with the revues Singaot Sista and Barefoot Divas, and more recently taken more acting roles that look like making her a true star. ‘I really loved the significance of black and white feathers’, she’s said of the autobiographical Magpie Blues, ‘I come from two strong cultural backgrounds and I don’t know either. The word “blues” is not necessarily the genre of music but the heartache and loss of language, loss of family. Music for me fills the space’.

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Cut-offs and a Ukulele Leah Flanagan Leah Flanagan has the three ‘I’s in her blood—Irish, Italian, and Indigenous. She was born in Darwin and grew up in a family full of football-mad men, and though she too enjoyed sport, music was her real love. Even before she’d reached her teens she was busking at the Parap markets. Encouraged by Shellie Morris, she ended up going to the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide to study classical singing. She told Timber & Steel: ‘I went away for ages, I was writing songs, travelling around and playing and, as well as being homesick, I realised that what I had at home is really unique. And I was just like, actually, this is what I know so I’m going to start writing about it’. She threw in opera to get back into her ukulele and a pair of denim cutoffs. Her first album was a live recording released in 2007, which showcased a sound in many ways updating the classic saltwater stringband tradition. Flanagan was charming everyone—a measure of her wide appeal is appearances at festivals as diverse as Tamworth, the Adelaide Fringe, Byron Bay, and the Dreaming stage at Woodford. She told Andy Hazel: ‘The music scene in Darwin is predominantly Cold Chisel cover bands—it’s unusual for us not to be

reggae or country or a cover band—but it is changing thanks to festivals and more bands coming up. I had a lot of support playing music though it doesn’t mean I haven’t had to win people over’. In 2009, her life and career were changed by the death of her Melville Island-born grandmother, and by joining the Black Arm Band, with whom she toured Dirtsong as far afield as Berlin, and by getting a grant to record a second album. That album, Nirvana Nights, named after a much-loved Darwin restaurant where she used to work and where bands still play, was released in 2010, and saw her songwriting step up a level. ‘A lot of the songs are about aspects of Darwin, my stories, stories of my grandmother’, she says. ‘It wasn’t very easy for immigrants and Indigenous people back in the day. So many people have stories here, and that’s what songwriting is all about, telling stories.’ In 2013, her storytelling bent took yet another step deeper when she collaborated with Murri poet Sam Wagan Watson on a Sydney Festival adaptation of his book Smoke Encrypted Whispers, and in 2016, she released her second solo album Suadades, and was one of the stars of the touring Buried Country stage show.

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Housewife Superstar Kylie Auldist and Melbourne Nu Funk If the biggest part of the reputation Melbourne enjoys as one of the world’s great music towns is based on rock and country—punk rock and country-rock— it was in the 2000s that the bluestone city opened out to much more dance music. The hip-hop scene produced the unique Melbourne Shuffle steps, and the pub circuit produced a whole new wave of blistering old-skool nu-funk bands like the Bamboos, Saskwatch and Blue King Brown, which even the very discerning Japanese market can see as easily the equal of the American leaders of this world-wide revival like Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. In these bands the classic line-up is white boys backing a black female singer, many of them Māoris or Islanders, some African, who in a previous life might have fronted showbands. It is so with Nkechi Anele fronting Saskwatch, Candice Monique fronting the Optics, Mighty May Johnston fronting Deep Street Soul (after Tia Hunter left), Emma Donovan fronting the PutBacks, Natalie Pa’apa’a fronting Blue King Brown, and Kylie Auldist fronting the Bamboos, the undisputed kings and queen of the scene. Hailing from a farm in NSW near Hay and having Samoan

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heritage, Auldist calls herself ‘a suburban wife and mother by day, superstar soul singer by night’. She started out in Hay singing country, and moved to Melbourne where she started working with hip-hop and soul acts like Polyester and MegaBias, and singing BVs with Jimmy Barnes and Renée Geyer, before joining the Bamboos. The Bamboos were formed by New Zealandborn guitarist Lance Ferguson in 2000. Linking up straight away with the ultra-hip UK label Tru Thoughts, the Bamboos introduced guest vocalist Auldist on their second album, 2007’s Rawville, and she joined proper to tour the release around the world. In 2008, she dropped her debut solo album Just Say to go with the band’s third album, Side-Stepper and the live album Listen! Hear!! Live!!! In 2009, the album Made of Stone was credited as the Bamboos Present Kylie Auldist. Since then, with two more Bamboos albums and Auldist’s second solo album Still Life, the whole juggernaut has become simply one of the hottest live acts in the world. In 2016, she went all the way to Number 2 on the UK charts as the voice on the deep-house remix single ‘This Girl’, by DJ Kungs v. Cookin’ on 3 Burners.

Ethnopostmodern Tribalism Borroloola Songwomen For many Aboriginal tribal groups, traditional songs have survived especially thanks to field recordings by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists. Daisy Bates isn’t the only such white woman to have worked with Aboriginal people, although she is the only one to be the subject of an opera. In 1959, the Philips label released a single of field recordings of stories and songs made by Julitha Walsh in north Western Australia. More recently, musicologist Linda Barwick has produced a string of important CDs of mainly women’s music, firstly, in 2000, Yawulyu Mungamunga: Dreaming Songs of Warumungu Women, from Tenant Creek, and then in 2004 Awelye Akwelye: Kaytetye Women’s Songs from Arnerre, Central Australia. More recently, musicians have collaborated with communities to fuse the traditional and contemporary. In the late 2000s, Shellie Morris and Alice Springs country singer Warren Williams got involved with the Song People’s Project in the Northern Territory. At the same time there was a similar project taking place on the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin, led by the local Strong Women’s Group in collaboration with Sydney musician Genevieve Campbell— Ngarukuruwala: We Sing Songs extended from collecting traditional songs to

assigning kids to remix them with drum machines and sequencers. In the centre in 2012, Warren Williams collaborated with Warumungu Songmen on the Winanjjara album. In 2015, the Wangka Maya Language Centre in the Pilbara had elder Walmajarri women preserving songlines on the CD Nyangumarta Massacre, and Rosie Williams and Rita Simpson singing on Punmungka Turlku. For the Borroloola Songwomen’s sessions, Shellie Morris collaborated with elders and youngsters from her grandmother’s country. In 2011 she took her all-female troupe through the Melbourne Festival, the Deadly Awards and the Territory’s Desert Harmony Festival, and then in 2012 the doubleCD Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu: Together We Are Strong was released. The album featured, among others, octogenarian Numbulwar sisters Fannie, Bessy and Topsy Numamardird, who sing in the Marra language. Fannie, illustrated, said: ‘Our culture and law doesn’t change; it’s there all the time. The song comes first. It’s in everything—the country and the animals. If we lose these songs and ceremonies we won’t have an identity. Singing is really important, out of those songs comes our history. It makes me really happy I am passing that knowledge on to kids and younger generations’.

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Bird of Paradise Ngaire Joseph Papua New Guinea is Australia’s nearest but still quite unknown neighbour. In the 1990s, after his band Not Drowning, Waving had gone to Rabaul to record the album Tabaran, Melbourne’s David Bridie built a musical bridge, mounting the Sing-Sing series of concerts in Australia, producing George Telek and eventually directing Wantok Musik not just for Papuan but also Aboriginal artists. Today, there is a thriving Papuan community in exile in Melbourne especially; to whom, as the 2009 film Strange Birds in Paradise demonstrates, music remains a link home and to the struggle against Indonesian oppression. Albino jazz pianist Aaron Choulai came and went, but drummer extraordinaire Airi Ingram, broadcaster/DJ Namila Benson aka Sista Selekta, singer Ngaire Joseph, and the band Tabura, fronted by the three Rumwaropen sisters (Lea, Petra and Rosalie), add yet another dimension to Australia’s live circuit; balladist Tania Walker moved from PNG to Perth, while the Tribes of Jubal formed in Cairns. Ngaire Joseph is perhaps the one most-likely-to. Coming to Australia at only 16, she studied jazz-singing at the Central Queensland Conservatorium in Mackay

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before moving to Sydney in 2004. After a requisite shot at Australian Idol, she joined Blue King Brown as a backing singer. As a guest vocalist, she’s starred on singles by Paul Mac (2006’s ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’) and Telek (2010’s ‘West Papua’, produced for Wantok by Airi Ingram). She launched her solo career in 2009 with two EPs, Two Minds and Songs for No One, which showcased a fresh sound, as much future-folk as dancefloor-friendly soul. In 2010, wielding a ukulele, she starred in the roadshow Singaot Sista, alongside Emma Donovan, Merenia Gillies and Ursula Yovich, and in 2012 reprised the whole thing with the Barefoot Divas tour. She went to Japan to work on her debut album proper, Lamentations, with Aaron Choulai, who’d moved to Tokyo. ‘Music to me is a very spiritual thing’, she told music blog Dearhead Press. ‘I’d like to be known as someone who isn’t scared of taking risks and stays true to what they believe in. I grew up in Papua New Guinea where all you had were your dreams, and there was no money for kids to follow those dreams. So I’d like to be someone who encourages people to follow their dreams and goals no matter what the circumstances.’

Devil’s Music Olive Knight Olive Knight was fully 50 years of age before she first heard blues music, in the early 1990s—and now she is probably Australia’s only (ever‽) solo acoustic Indigenous blueswoman. She’s doing something so arcane it seems almost like a throwback, but with a bit of magic about her, she’s taking the world by storm. Born a Walmatjarri woman on a station outside Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley in 1946, she can still remember traditional songs lulling her to sleep beside the campfire before she was taken from her parents. Growing up on the mission, she learnt her first couple of guitar chords off Slim Dusty songs. But it was when she started singing in the gospel choir at church— and she remains a committed Christian—that she started to really appreciate the power of music. She married, became a missionary, a linguist, an outstation pioneer, a writer (author of the book There Were Good Times …), and a tireless health worker. It was after her husband died that she stumbled across the blues when she saw Ivan Zar busking in Derby, and her life was changed. ‘I love the sound’, she told ABC local radio in the Kimberley. ‘I used to listen to the greats from the

United States like, you know, BB King and all the others, and I thought, well, that’s my style of music.’ Collaborating with Zar, who first started leading blues bands in Perth in the 1960s, the first song she wrote was ‘Why Carry A Load, Sister?’ Living now at the tiny community of Wangkatjungka, south of Fitzroy Crossing, in 2010 she released her debut album, Gospel Blues from the Edge of the Desert. Which is precisely what it says it is. In 2011, Hugh Jackman flew her to New York to sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ with him on Broadway! ‘It’s quite daunting for me’, she said, ‘because I come from an isolated community of 100 people’. When she got home she had to explain to her 20 grandchildren that the Wolverine was a regular guy without claws! Knight’s music is about the extra burden Aboriginal women carry. ‘I’m all for getting healing into the youth’, she says, ‘that’s the love of my life really. It’s a big issue because we haven’t got our elders, our men are all gone, the old men are gone. But it seems the women are more stronger now, so we tend to have to hold the fort’. In 2015, she released her second album Heroes & Laments, and was already at work on a third.

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Femcee Guttamouth Sky’High In a business overloaded with hype, it’s rare that a record company issues a CD with a caveat, or apologia, but that’s precisely what Australian hip-hop label Elefant Tracks did in 2012 when it released the debut album by Sydney MC or femcee Sky’High. Sky’High is hardcore; she makes MC Trey look like a Sunday school teacher, and Elefant Tracks feared some would hear only the rough and not the diamond. But the album made a serious impact and Sky’High stormed to the forefront of a scene that was now crowded with such black female rappers as Lady Lash, Lady Luck, Dizzy Doolan, Killaqueenz (featuring Kween G), Sista Native and Kylie Sambo, daresay even reggae-style ‘toaster’ Natty Sistren. Sky’High was born Skh’ai Gerrey in Sydney, and grew up running wild in the streets of the southern beachside suburb of Maroubra. Her Fijian grandmother was a go-go dancer, according to her record company bio, and her mother ran clubs in Kings Cross. She cites as one of her influences Bobbi Sykes, a one-time Kings Cross go-go dancer-cumwriter and activist. Sky resisted the drugs and violence and turned to rapping. When she heard MC Trey and her track ‘Reality Tales’, she realised there was an Australian voice that she too could claim. With her gutter-mouth and hard-bitten attitude, she is a gangsta girl made good. She didn’t go to drama school and she’s never got a government grant, but she’s making music much more vital than so many of her sisters who have. 2011, she went over to New Zealand to record her debut album, and after just two weeks in the studio with producer P-Money, emerged with Forever, a coruscating glimpse into young black urban life. ‘My upbringing’, she says, ‘was a bit crazy but I am still living and breathing so I can’t complain. For me hip-hop was there when no one else was, and gave me an outlet to express myself. I ain’t about to put on a bikini or a miniskirt, I want more respect than that’.

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Gail Force Gail Page As much as the TV talent-quest shows like Australian Idol and X-Factor are a regular fount of overripe adolescent histrionics, they usually allow for a token older contestant or two. But when honey-hued 50-something blues singer Gail Page hit The Voice in 2015, it was with a force that is rare even on the professional circuit, such was her musical dynamism and raw emotional maturity. ‘I was the loser’, she told the Illawarra Mercury, ‘but I won plenty. When you are a musician you don’t arrive, you evolve. The moment you think you make it, you’re done, it’s over’. Of course, Page was no naïf—she was already the proud winner of several Australian Chain blues awards, thanks to her superb debut album of 2008, Colours that Run—but what makes her achievements generally so extraordinary is that singing is something she’s only ever done on an on/off basis. Originally from Sydney but now resident in South Australia via the NSW south coast, Page has Aboriginal and Irish heritage and is the mother of two. Music to her is a ‘sacred place’ and she numbers among her influences classic R&B voices like

Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Nina Simone. She started really finding her own voice only in mid-life, almost as a form of therapy after a failed marriage, and she first got up on the semi-pro stage in 1993, with blues veteran Parris Macleod’s band the Mix. With a regular gig at the Beachcomber Hotel at Toukley on NSW’s central coast, the Mix was an institution in Australian blues, and Page couldn’t have found a better way to cut her teeth. But then she threw it in to move to South Australia to be nearer to family. Then she took it up again. She re-united with Parris Macleod, who produced Colours that Run, and it was a superb album that propelled Page back into the spotlight. She first auditioned for The Voice in 2012, didn’t make the cut, but got through in 2015. On the show she sang songs like Billie Holliday’s ‘Strange Fruit’, and it was all just a bit too real. She returned to (ir)regular gigging and as long as there’s artists like Gail Page around, the blues will never die. ‘Yep, I’m a rockin’ mamma’, she said in 2015. ‘I’m 51, I’ve got a big bum but hey, I can sing!’

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Crystal Method Crystal Mercy/Lady Lash It used to be a standard ploy in the US blues scene mid-last century: artists would work under a number of different names so they could record for different labels, the better to improve their chances of having a hit or maybe even getting paid. So, John Lee Hooker variously went as Johnny Lee, Texas Slim, Delta John and the Boogie Man, among other handles. Now though, a dual identity is a very deliberate strategy that allows artists to pursue separate career strains. And so in the same way that Jacinta Price, from Alice Springs, sang country ballads under that name and hip-hop raps as Sassy-J, Crystal Mastrosavas, from Ceduna, now based in Melbourne, goes as Lady Lash as a femcee, and Crystal Mercy as a soul diva. With Greek-Aboriginal bloodlines, Mastrosavas, illustrated above in a homage to Reko Rennie, first lit out of Ceduna

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as a backing vocalist with Coloured Stone. The Stone, the pride of Ceduna’s Kooniba mission, was Bunna Lawrie’s band that hit in 1983 with the classic country-rock-reggae single, ‘Black Boy’. Moving to Melbourne in 2005, Crystal became Lady Lash. Lady Lash collaborated with hip-hoppers like Macromantics and Skitzo Beats, and in 2008 she launched a parallel career as singer with the band Funk in Public. In 2010, the Lady released a debut solo EP, Pearl, that showcased her original hip-hop/soul sound, most notably on the dancefloor stomper ‘Busy Bee’. Separating out yet another new persona in Crystal Mercy, the singer concentrated on recording what would become her first full-length solo album,

the superb Fisherman’s Daughter, which was eventually released in 2014. ‘I wanted the album to be about finding your own sound’, Crystal told Deadly Vibe, ‘it’s pretty hard to define but I wanted to keep it very soul and explore a lot of vocal talents I have’. Not that Lady Lash has been killed off though: in 2015 she released the (dark-hop) album Milky Way. Now also a young mother, Crystal Mastrosavas appreciates the importance of striking the right balance, between family, music, work—and between Lady Lash and Crystal Mercy! ‘The message is definitely to follow your dreams and be positive, because there’s always a story to tell. If you believe in yourself, you’re going to do what you do and keep moving forward.’

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Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Dizzy Doolan And so, finally, will the circle be unbroken? Indeed. The songwomen pass on the torch, and its light continues to burn, although the shape of the sound is constantly shifting: from plantation melodies through spirituals to jazz and blues, country and soul, and now on to hip-hop and beyond. Dizzy Doolan is the niece of Syvana Doolan. If her aunt was denied opportunities, Dizzy and her contemporaries leap off the shoulders of such pioneers. Born Charmaine Doolan-Armstrong in Townsville in 1986, Dizzy’s dad was Shann Doolan who, like his sister Sibby Doo and their father Fred, was a musician. ‘My mob are the Tjaka Laka, Wakka Wakka and Euroman people’, Dizzy told Green Left Weekly. ‘My father’s side of the family were all music-oriented. I was influenced at a young age by my father and aunties and uncles and I fell in love with music. My Aunty Syvana Doolan taught me a lot about singing. I would sing and rap to my mates at lunchtime. I wrote my first song with my father when I was eight years old.’ In the early 2000s, the 18-year old Dizzy moved to Brisbane, where she’s still based. She balances a day job as a community and arts worker with her own performing career. She is one of a new wave of ever more

assertive femcees sometimes tagged ‘gutta’, which includes Sky’High, Emily Blake and fellow Brisbanites KayEmTee and Kaylah Truth. In 2009, Doolan starred in the short film Mah, whose theme was not dissimilar to that of one of her most powerful tracks, ‘Women’s Business’. Domestic violence against women is a burning issue in black communities, as in the white. In 2012, Doolan guested with Yung Warriors on the track ‘Standing Strong’, a hip-hop hit to rival ‘Everything’ by Impossible Odds featuring Georgia Corowa, and she started cutting tracks of her own towards a long-awaited debut album. Those tracks include some that have so far been released digitally like ‘Shadows’, ‘No Shame’ and ‘Time’s Running Out’. The first two are about conquering demons, and the last ‘about life being too short to waste’, as Dizzy puts it. ‘Time is precious and irreversible, so make the most of every day and embrace each special moment you have.’ Dizzy Doolan’s motto is Effort + Patience = Success. With such an obviously wise head on her young shoulders, she has already achieved a good degree of that success. She recently posted on YouTube a great version of her auntie Sibby’s song ‘Sad Moon’, making the circle complete.

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Discography A chronological listing of recordings made by black women in Australia—and, in the case of Wilma Reading, Candy Devine and Heathermae Reading, by black Australian women overseas—between 1949 and 2013, by which time, with digitisation’s murder of the plastic object, the whole concept of crate-digging becomes different if not kind of redundant anyway. After superseding shellac in the late 1950s (‘78’ in this listing denoting a 78rpm 10” single), vinyl became the dominant medium for two decades (as either a ‘45’, a 45rpm 7” single, or an EP, a 45rpm 7”er comprising four tracks, or an LP, a 12” 33rpm long-player), until the ascent of cassettes in the 1980s (‘CC’ here denotes a compactcassette album). With the entrenchment of CDs at the end of the 1980s, ‘CD’ here denotes an album while ‘SP’ denotes a single-play compact disc, itself a counterintuitive format. Towards the end of the list, ‘SP’ might mean a CD issue, a download, or video on YouTube. The irony of course is the still-growing vinyl revival, which means a return of ‘45’ and ‘LP’ at the end of this list! Albums by ‘Various Artists’ under the VA category list the title of the album first. Any release not flying under a record-label banner simply goes without that credit.

Part One 1949 Georgia Lee w Graeme Bell ‘Mean to Me’ 78 (Parlophone)

1951 Georgia Lee w Bruce Clarke’s Quintones ‘St. Louis Blues/Blue Moon’ 78 (Jazzart)

1955 Olive & Eva ‘Old Rugged Hills/ Rhythm of Corroboree’ 78 (Prestophone) Mabel Scott w Les Welch Orchestra ‘I Wanna Be Loved, Loved, Loved/Just the Way You Are’ 78 (Festival) – ‘Boogie Woogie Santa Claus’/ ‘Mabel’s Blues’ 78 (Festival) Nellie Small ‘End of the Affair’ 78 (Mercury)

1956 Georgia Lee w Graeme Bell ‘Basin Street Blues’ EP (Swaggie) Olive & Eva ‘When Homeland’s Calling/Maranoa Moon’ 78 (Prestophone) Virginia Paris Spirituals LP (Spotlight)

1959 Winifred Atwell ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’ 45 (Decca) ‘Let’s Have an Aussie Party’ 45 (Decca) Barbara Virgil w Embers Quintet Jazz at the Embers LP (Columbia)

1960 Wilma Reading ‘Nature Boy’ 45 (Rex) ‘My Little Corner of the World’ 45 (Rex) Mona Wiki w Hi-Liners ‘Gold Mine in the Sky’/’Rose in Her Hair’ 45 (Rex)

1961 Georgia Lee … Sings the Blues Down Under LP (Crest) Wilma Reading ‘Only Came to Say Goodbye’ 45 (Rex) Barbara Virgil Just Barbara EP (Telefil)

1962 Mona Wiki w Māori Troubadours A Little This … A Little That LP (Rex)

1963 Eartha Kitt ‘You’re My Man’ 45 (RCA) Rena Pohe w Māori Hi-Five Māori Hi-Five LP (Leedon) – Serenade in Blue LP (Leedon) Little Joy Yates w Jimmie Sloggett Combo ‘South Street’ 45 (Viking)

1964 Winifred Atwell ‘Revival’ 45 (Bluebird) Keri Summers w Quin Tikis ‘Enchanted Sea’ 45 (Philips) – ‘Get Me to the Church’ 45 (Philips)

1965 Winifred Atwell … at the Silver Spade LP (RCA) Keri Summers w Quin Tikis ‘Keep on Lovin’ Me’ 45 (Philips)

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1967 Keri Summers w Quin Tikis Make Friends with the Quin Tikis LP (Sunshine) – ‘You’re the One’ 45 (Sunshine)

Part Two 1970 Auriel Andrew s/t EP (Nationwide) Candy Devine … Sings LP (Spin [Ire.])

1971 Auriel Andrew Just for You LP (Nationwide) Winifred Atwell … with Blue Mink Rhythm Section LP (RCA) Kiri Parata ‘The Message’ 45 (Raven) Heather Pitt w Red Garters Red Garter Down Under EP (Red Garter) – Red Garter Revue LP (RCA) Wilma Reading ‘My Way’ 45 (Vicor [Ph.])

1972 Winifred Atwell Honky Tonk Woman LP (RCA) Heather Pitt with Doc Willis The Duke’s Men LP (Harmony) Wilma Reading On Fire LP (CNR [NDR]) – ‘If You Hold My Hand’ 45 (CNR [NDR])

1973 Dalvanius & the Fascinations ‘Love Train’ 45 (Reprise) – Souvenir EP (Reprise) Wilma Reading ‘One More Mountain’ 45 (Pye [UK])

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1974 Dalvanius & the Fascinations ‘Respect Yourself ’ 45 (Reprise) Wilma Reading Take a Closer Look LP (Pye [UK]) – ‘Down at Our Place’ 45 (Pye [UK]) – ‘Something About You’ 45 (Pye [UK]) – ‘Play It Again’ 45 (Pye [UK]) – ‘Looking for Another Pure Love’ 45 (Pye [UK]) Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts ‘Home-Made Didgeridoo’ 45

1975 Winifred Atwell It’s Ragtime LP (RCA) Dalvanius & the Fascinations ‘Canberra, We’re Watching You’ 45 (Infinity) Marcia Hines ‘Fire and Rain’ 45 (Wizard) – Marcia Shines LP (Wizard) – ‘From the Inside’ 45 (Wizard) Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts ‘Nullarbor Prayer’ 45 (Angelwood)

1976 Winifred Atwell In Concert LP (RCA) Candy Devine ‘God Rest Ye Merry’ 45 (Glen [Ire.]) Marcia Hines Shining LP (Wizard) – ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself ’ 45 (Wizard) Heather Pitt w Dr Jazz Band Dr Jazz: Highlights from the TV Series LP (EMI) Heathermae Reading ‘You Don’t Need Me’ 45 (Atlantic [NDR]) – ‘Keep on Dancin’’ 45 (Atlantic [NDR])

Wilma Reading Wilma Reading LP (Pye [UK]) – ‘It’s Over’ 45 (Pye [UK])

1977 Chelsea Brown Number 96 Party Music LP (King) Dalvanius & the Fascinations ‘Checkmate on Love’ 45 (Interfusion) Delilah ‘My Guy’ 45 (Miracle) Marcia Hines ‘What I Did for Love’ 45 (Wizard) – Ladies and Gentlemen LP (Wizard) – ‘You’ 45 (Wizard)

1978 Dalvanius & the Fascinations ‘Ecstasy’ 45 (Infinity) Delilah ‘Where is the Love’ 45 (Miracle) Heathermae & Warwick ‘You’re Really Something’ 45 (BovemaNegram [NDR]) Marcia Hines Live Across Australia LP (Wizard) Joyce Hurley Joyce LP (44 Records) Yirara Pitanjatjara Girls ‘Alatjiringuna/Goodbye Mukulya’ 45

1979 Winifred Atwell The Entertainer LP (RCA) Vi Chitty ‘Awakening’ 45 (Homegrown) Marcia Hines Ooh Child LP (Wizard) – ‘Something’s Missing’ 45 (Wizard) Esther King Save the People LP (Gospel Outreach) MonaLisa & Terry Young ‘Wanna Make It with You Tonight’ 45 (Miracle)

Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts Harry Williams and the Country Outcasts LP (RCA) VA 4th National Aboriginal Country Music Festival CC Includes: Doreen Franey, Sheena D’Angelo, Norma Stanley, Debbie Williams, Carol and Glenys Yarran, Margaret Stewart, Wilga Willams First Australians LP (Aboriginal Artists Agency) Includes: Cherie Watkins, Wilga Williams

1980 Kim Hart ‘Love at First Night’ 45 (EMI) – Kim Hart LP (EMI) – ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ 45 (EMI) – ‘You’re the One’ 45 (EMI) – ‘It’s So Easy’ 45 (EMI) Kathy Ryder My Hopes CC

1981 Auriel Andrew Chocolate Princess LP (Opal) Kim Hart ‘Young Girl’ 45 (EMI) Marcia Hines Take It from the Boys LP (Midnight) MonaLisa and Terry Young ‘Moments/I’m Gonna Get You in the End’ 45 (Miracle) Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts Harry and Wilga Williams and the Country Outcasts LP (Hadley) Coco York Come On Everybody LP (Janda)

1982 Winifred Atwell Winifred Atwell Collection LP (RCA)

Discography

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Chelsea Brown On the Rocks LP (Manhattan) Tina Cross ‘Never Say I Didn’t Love You’ 45 (Laser)

1983 Winifred Atwell Winnie Plays Solo LP (RCA) Marcia Hines Love Sides LP (Midnight)

1984 Vi Chitty Tall Trees CC Kim Hart ‘Heartbeat’ 45 (RCA)

1985 Auriel Andrew Mbitjana CC (Imparja) Josie Boyle Warburton Mountains CC Kathleen Cox Through My Eyes CC (Northlake) Lucy Cox Kimberley Legend CC Tina Cross w Koo De Tah ‘Body Talk’ 45 (PolyGram) –‘Too Young for Promises’ 45 (Mercury) VA 15 Australian Greats CC Includes: Donna Atkins, Sandy Atkins, Josie Boyle, Anne Leuba, Lois Olney

1986 Donna Atkins Donna Atkins CC Josie Boyle Dinky Di Aussie CC – Wongatha Gospel CC Tina Cross w Koo De Tah ‘Think of Me’ 45 (Mercury) – Koo De Tah LP (Mercury) ‘Missed You All Along’ 45 (Mercury) Robyn Green He is the Answer CC (Alpha/Omega

1987 Mills Sisters (Darwin) Arafura Pearls CC Venetta Fields ‘Only One’ 45 (Fenner)

1988 Tracy Lee Gray ‘Clicketty Clack’ 45 (Enrec) Robyn Green Volume 2: Good News CC (Focus) Sharon Mann ‘Far Away’ 45 (Enrec) VA Country Gospel CC Includes: Josie Boyle, Judy Butters, Glenise Ward Koori Classics: The Girls CC (Enrec) Includes: Sarina Andrew, Tracy Lee Gray, Kathy Kelly, Sharon Mann, Judy Quinlan Papal Concert CC (CAAMA) Includes: Auriel Andrew, (Darwin’s) Mills Sisters, Shireen Malamoo Wama Wanti: Drink Little Bit LP (CAAMA) Includes: Rhonda Ross

1989 Ruby Hunter Koori CC Joanne Jackson Woman of Substance LP (ABC)

1990 Deborah Dotson Livering Beyond Goodbye LP (Rich River Records) Sharon Mann Reach Out CC (Enrec)

1991 Deni Hines w Rockmelons ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ SP (Mushroom)

1992 Josie Boyle and Anne Leuba Where Are the Children CC Robyn Green Shine On CC (Alpha/Omega) Deni Hines w Rockmelons ‘That Word (L.O.V.E.)’ SP (Mushroom) – ‘It’s Not Over’ SP (Mushroom) Tiddas Inside My Kitchen EP (Blackheart) Yvonne Winmar Memories Are Forever: Country Style CC

Part Three 1993 Christine Anu w Paul Kelly ‘Last Train’ SP (Mushroom) Christine Anu w Rainmakers ‘Sing Your Destiny’ SP (Mushroom) Alice Haines ‘One Law’ SP Toni Jenke Hearts Speak Out EP Mills Sisters (TI) Frangipani Land CD (Newmarket) Tiddas Sing About Life CD (iD) – ‘Waiting/Inanay’/‘Long Time Now’ SP (iD) Brenda Webb ‘Little Black Girl’ SP (Republic) VA Blackfellas OST CD (Festival) Includes: Donna Atkins, Lorrae Coffin Noongar Voices Singing Strong CD (ABMusic) Includes: Donna and the Dimes Walking Along the Edge CD (Jovial Crew) Includes: Irene Jimbidie, Rosita Shaw

1994 Auriel Andrew Let’s Get Together CC (Xtra)

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Christine Anu ‘Monkey and the Turtle’ SP (Mushroom) – ‘My Island Home’ SP (Mushroom) Vika and Linda Bull Vika and Linda CD (Mushroom) Tina Harrod w Jackie O’s Grandmasters Family Lore CD (Vitamin) Marcia Hines Right Here and Now CD (Warner) Ruby Hunter Thoughts Within CD (Mushroom) Sharon Mann My Home in Joskeleigh CD (Enrec) Maroochy Mongungi: Modern Tribalism EP (Daki Budcha) Tiddas Real World EP (Phonogram) – Flat Notes and Bad Jokes CD (Phonogram) Brenda Webb ‘Melting Pot’ SP (Republic) Joy Yates w Dave MacRae Trio Midnight Blue CD (Mistyville) VA Bran Nue Dae CD (Polydor) Includes: Syvana Doolan, Alice Haines, Leah Purcell

1995 Christine Anu ‘Come On’ SP (Mushroom) – Stylin’ Up CD (Mushroom) – ‘Party’ SP (Mushroom) – ‘Sunshine on a Rainy Day’ SP (Mushroom) Vika and Linda Bull Mouth of the River CD (Mushroom) Mary Duroux w Evie Pikler motherearth, fathersky CD (Lunasol) Deni Hines ‘It’s Alright’ 12” (Mushroom) Lois Olney Blue Sky, Red Earth CD Mills Sisters (Darwin) Sing Along with the Mills Sisters CD

Discography

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VA Our Home, Our Land CD (CAAMA) Includes: Christine Anu, Lou Bennett, Mills Sisters (TI), Rachel Perkins, Frances Williams

1996 Margie Evans Drowning in the Sea of Love CD (Rufus) Deni Hines Imagination CD (Mushroom) – ‘Imagination’ 12” (Mushroom) – ‘I’m Not in Love’ SP (Mushroom) – ‘I Like the Way’ 12” (Mushroom) – ‘Joy’ 12” (Mushroom) Maroochy Aborigine CDEP (Daki Budcha) Mills Sisters (TI) Those Beautiful TI Girls CD (Zuna) Tiddas Tiddas CD (Mercury)

1997 Vika and Linda Bull Princess Tabu CD (Mushroom) Tina Harrod w Orszaczky Budget Orchestra Deep Down and Out CD (ABC) Deni Hines ‘Dream Your Dream’ 12” SP (Mushroom) – ‘Delicious’ 12” (Mushroom) – Remix Your Imagination CD (Mushrooom) Maroochy Once Upon a Dreamtime CD (Daki Budcha) MC Trey with DJ Bonez Projectiles CC (Tapastry Toons) Frances Williams Frances Williams EP VA Songlines CD (ABC) Includes: Kerrianne Cox, Syvana Doolan, Ruby Hunter, Toni Jenke, Ursula Yovich

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1998 Trude Aspeling Joy of Being Alive CD (JOBA) Shirley Davis with Grand Wazoo Band of 1000 Dances CD Deni Hines Pay Attention CD (Mushroom) Rita Mills Blue Mountain CD (Newmarket) Connie Mitchell w Primary Vicious Precious EP (Warner) Tiddas Lethal by the Kilo CD (Fresh Tracks) Christine Ward and Jack Walker Nirnoma Munera EP VA Didj’Un: Singer Songwriters from the Kimberley CD Includes: Lorrae Coffin

1999 Shelly Atkins Shell CD (CAAMA) Lou Bennett ‘Imagine Being You’ SP Vika and Linda Bull Two Wings CD (Mushroom) Kerrianne Cox Just Wanna Move CD Marcia Hines Time of Our Lives CD (Warner) Connie Mitchell w Primary This is the Sound CD (Warner) Deb Morrow Flight of the Emu CD Rochelle Pitt Black to Reality EP (Junga/Vonu) Stiff Gins Soh Fa EP (Sony) MC Trey ‘Universal Soldier’ SP (Mother Tongues) Christine Ward Spirit of Our Land CD VA Living in Jagera Country CD (4AAA) Includes: Dawn Daylight, Diane Draper, Natalie Lewis, Charmaine Morton, Doreen Morton, Rochelle Watson

Making Tracks CD (Songlines) Includes: Illana Atkinson, Christine Ward The Sunshine Club CDEP Includes: Ursula Yovich Sydney Jazz Concerts 1947– 1951 CD (ScreenSound) Includes: Nellie Small Yabun CD (Gadigal) Includes: Karleena Briggs, Marlene Cummins, Ktatja Henaway, Leah Purcell, Jodie Raquel, Seveka, Ebony Williams, Frances Williams

2000 Christine Anu ‘Come My Way’ SP (Mushroom) Lou Bennett Imagine Being You EP (I-Sonic) Roseina Boston Aunty Roseina and the Gumleaf CD-ROM Vika and Linda Bull Live and Acoustic CD (Mushroom) Deborah Cheetham White Baptist Abba Fan EP Jodie Cockatoo-Creed w Yothu Yindi Garma CD (Mushroom) Lorrae Coffin & Kerrianne Cox ‘The Listening Skin’ SP Deni Hines ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ SP (Mushroom) Ruby Hunter Feeling Good CD (Mushroom) Beulah Joseph w Jadida Gypsies in an Urban Desert CD Barbara Morrison Live Down Under CD (Blue Lady) Dorothy Murray w Island Coes Born on Ol’ Cape Barren CD (TAC) Lexine Solomon This Is Woman CD Tiddas Show Us Ya Tiddas CD (Fresh Tracks) MC Trey Daily Affirmations CD (Tapastry Toons)

Monica Weightman Calm Before the Storm EP (Sound Vault) VA Culture: Music from Black Australia CD (ABC) Includes: Mills Sisters, Leah Purcell, Stiff Gins Which Way CD Includes: Fay June, Mirror Child (Luanna Pitt) Winter Dreaming: Concert for Reconciliation CD (Boite) Includes: Lou Bennett, Liz Cavanagh, Carole Fraser Yawulyu Mungamunga: Dreaming Songs of Warumunga Women CD (Larrikin)

2001 Lou Bennett Time Out CD (I-Sonic) Liz Cavanagh s/t EP Kerrianne Cox Opening CD Theresa Creed Unfinished Business CD (Kurityityin) Nikki Doll w Jive Bombers Swing that Cat CD Tina Harrod with Jackie O’s Grandmasters Deserted Downtown CD (Vitamin) Deni Hines ‘Frenzy’ CDSP (FMG) Toni Jenke The Brink CD Mereki Kangaroo Club CD Rita Mills Mata Nice CD (Zuna) Connie Mitchell w Primary Watching the World CD (Warner) Elverina Murgha-Johnson New Beginnings CD Stiff Gins Morning Star EP (Sony) – Origins CD (Sony) MC Trey w Fatt Dex ‘Creepin’’ SP (Sony) Gina Williams Into the Night CD

Discography

239

VA Corroboration CD (Festival) Includes: Deborah Cheetham, Jodie Cockatoo-Creed, Little G, Stiff Gins, Billie Court

2002 Vika and Linda Bull Love Is Mighty Close CD (Mushroom) Venetta Fields At Last CD Deni Hines A Delicious Collection CD (Mushroom) Jade MacRae w Ian Pooley ‘Heaven’ SP (Ministry of Sound [DDR]) Shellie Morris s/t EP Roxane w Rockmelons ‘I Ain’t Playin’’ SP (Mushroom) Shakaya s/t CD (Sony) – ‘Stop Calling Me’ SP (Sony) – ‘Sublime’ SP (Sony) – ‘Cinderella’ SP (Sony) Enushu Taye w GOJAM World in a Jam CD VA Living in Jagera Country 2 CD (4AAA) Includes: Maggie Walsh, Theresa Creed, Jessie Johnson, Lexine Solomon, Tabatha Saunders, Jodi Terare, Maureen Watson

2003 Christine Anu 45 Degrees CD (Mushroom) – ‘Jump to Love’ SP (Mushroom) – ‘Coz I’m Free’ SP (Mushroom) Trude Aspeling Sublime CD Patricia Clarke Keep the Home Fires Burning CD Natalie Gillespie My Hetti Prince CD (Vitamin) Deni Hines w Supafly ‘Erotic City’ SP (Subliminal) Beulah Joseph w Jadida World Confusion CD

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Shakaya ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ SP (Sony) MC Trey Tapastry Toons CD (Tapastry Toons) Ursula Yovich Sketches EP VA Sailing the Southeast Wind: Maritime Music from Torres Strait CD Includes: Cessa and Ina Mills Sending a Message CD (ABC) Includes: Emma Donovan, Ursula Yovich, Romaine Morton, Kerrianne Cox Whichway: Music from Indigenous New South Wales 2 Includes: Cindy Drummond, Nadeena Dixon

2004 Briscoe Sisters Check It Out EP Vika and Linda Bull Tell the Angels CD (Mushroom) Billie Court Billie EP Djiva s/t EP Casey Donovan ‘Listen with Your Heart’ SP (Sony) – For You CD (Sony) Emma Donovan Changes EP Tina Harrod Shacked Up in Paradise CD (Vitamin) Deni Hines The Definitive Collection CD (FMG) Marcia Hines Hinesight CD (Warner) Deniece Hudson Black Opals CD Toni Jenke Jewel of the North CD Ajak Kwai w Wahida Why Not Peace and Love CD Jade MacRae ‘You Make Me Weak’ SP (Sony) Jessica Mauboy ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ SP (Sony) Stiff Gins Kingia Australis CD (Didgeridoo) Enushu Taye w GOJAM Back on Earth CD

Monica Weightman Lost Generation CD VA Awelye Akwelye: Kaytetye Women’s Songs from Arnerre, Central Australia CD (NRP) Natives of the Land and Sea CD Includes: Gillian Boyd, Aven Nowah, Annika Pitt Nobody’s People CD Includes: Phyliss Bin Bakar, Lorrae Coffin, Naomi Pigram Saltwater Songs: Indigenous Maritime Music from Tropical Australia (CQU) Includes: Brenda Hall Sending a Message Volume 2 CD (ABC) Includes: Kelli Howell, Deniece Hudson, Maza Sisters, Stiff Gins, Catherine Sumner

2005 Christine Anu Acoustically CD (Mushroom) Shirley Davis with Deepface ‘Been Good’ SP (Warner) Casey Donovan ‘What’s Going On’ SP (Sony) – ‘Flow’ SP (Sony) Cindy Drummond Ruby Red Lips CD Alice Haines Matter of Time CD Ruby Hunter Ruby CD (Mushroom) Jade MacRae Jade MacRae CD (Sony) – ‘So Hot Right Now’ SP (Sony) – ‘Superstar’ single (Sony) June Mills I’ll Be the One CD (Skinnyfish) Rhubee Neale ‘Goin’ to Waterloo’ SP – ‘White Sheets Like Cockatoos’ SP – ‘Travelled So Far’ SP Norma Jean No Boundaries

CD (Pindaroo) Natalie Pa’apa’a w Blue King Brown s/t EP (Roots Level) Virginia Paris … in Australia CD (Lyric) Shakaya Are You Ready CD (Sony) – ‘Are You Ready’ SP (Sony) – ‘We Ain’t Going Down’ SP (Sony) Gina Williams Brilliant Blue CD Rosie Williams and Rita Simpson Punmungka Turlku CD (Wangka Maya) Walmajarri Women Nyangumarta Massacre Songline EP (Wangka Maya) VA Best from the Mob at Redfern CD Includes: Rhubee Neale Break’n’the Silence CD (Loud Noise) Includes: Monica Weightman, Fay June Ball Tarerer: Welcome to Country CD (Goanna) Includes: Patricia Clarke, Amy Saunders Young, Black and Deadly CD (Gadigal) Includes: Nellie Dargan, Aimee Hannan, Lillie Madden, Bonnie Riley

2006 Briscoe Sisters Live @ the Tanks CD Vika and Linda Bull Between Two Shores CD (Liberation) Kerrianne Cox Return to Country CD Shirley Davis with Deepface ‘Feel the Love’ SP (Warner) Sharnee Fenwick s/t EP Deni Hines Water for Chocolate CD (MGM) Deni Hines and Marcia Hines ‘Stomp’ SP (Liberation) Marcia Hines Discotheque CD (Liberation)

Discography

241

Ngaire Joseph w Paul Mac ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’ SP (EMI) Natalie Pa’apa’a w Blue King Brown Stand Up CD (Roots Level) Connie Mitchell w Sneaky Sound System s/t CD (Whack) – ‘I Love It’ SP (Whack) – ‘Pictures’ SP (Whack) Lexine Solomon Strike a Pose CD Christine Ward Beauty for Ashes CD VA Stealem Away CD Includes: Charmaine Bennell, Tahnee Carrie, Alice Haines, Gina Williams Yabun Volume 2 CD (Gadigal) Includes: Stiff Gins, Briscoe Sisters, Emma Donovan, Marlene Cummins, Cindy Drummond

2007 Christine Anu Chrissy’s Island Family CD (Mushroom) Kylie Auldist w the Bamboos Live at No Standing CC Liz Cavanagh Tabanaba EP Lorrae Coffin All I Am CD Theona Councillor Sweet Black Man EP Shirley Davis w Deepface ‘I Want to Live’ SP (Warner) Delilah Delilah Sings Gospel at the Basement CD Djiva Yowarliny CD Casey Donovan Eye 2 Eye EP Sharnee Fenwick ‘Kiss that Boy’ SP Leah Flanagan s/t CD (Vitamin) Neda Slippery EP Jess Harlen Street Level Soul EP Deni Hines w James Morrison  The Other Woman CD (MRA)

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Marcia Hines Life CD (Warner) Sharon Lane Left It All Behind EP Candice Lorrae Think of Reality EP Jade MacRae ‘In the Basement’ SP (Sony) Jessica Mauboy The Journey CD (Sony) Shellie Morris Waiting Road CD Connie Mitchell w Sneaky Sound System ‘UFO’ SP (Whack) – ‘Goodbye’ SP (Whack) Gail Page Colours that Run CD (Sunball) Roxane ‘Sexy’ SP (Universal) MC Trey w Foreign Heights Foreign Heights CD (Central Station) Sky Waiata w Tjudin Band Koori Visible EP (MAV) VA Cry Stolen CD Includes: Candice Lorrae, Shellie Morris, Lois Olney, Stiff Gins

2008 Christine Anu & Deni Hines ‘Takin’ It to the Streets’ SP (Hairitage) Kylie Auldist w Bamboos Just Say CD (Tru Thoughts) – Side-Stepper CD (Tru Thoughts) – Listen! Hear!! Live!!! CD (Tru Thoughts) – ‘Community Service Announcement’ 45 (Tru Thoughts) Grace Barbe Kreol Daughter CD Lou Bennett Hold My Hand? CD Charmaine s/t EP Marlene Cummins Which Way is Up EP Shirley Davis w J’Nitti

‘Xplode’ SP (Hed Candy) Shirley Davis w Overzero ‘In My Bedroom’ SP (Azuli) Shirley Davis w Grand Wazoo Soul Monster CD Evelyn Duprai Free to Be Me CD (Kindred) Sue Ray Best Beware CD (Plus One) Cindy Drummond w Descendance Creation CD Merenia Gillies Libertine CD (Catalyst) Tina Harrod Worksongs CD (Vitamin) Jess Harlen w Muph & Plutonic ‘Beautiful Ugly’ SP (Obese) King Sisters ‘Koori Girls’ SP (Heaps Decent) Ajak Kwai w Wahida Come Together CD Lady Lash w Funk in Public ‘Twisted Tales’ SP Sharon Lane Second Chance CD Jade MacRae Get Me Home CD (Sony) – ‘I Wanna Be in Love’ SP (Sony) Jessica Mauboy ‘Running Back’ SP (Sony) – Been Waiting CD (Sony) – ‘Burn’ SP (Sony) Connie Mitchell w Sneaky Sound System 2 CD (WEA) – ‘Kansas City’ SP (WEA) – ‘When We Were Young’ SP (WEA) Nadene Pita Turning Arrows into Flowers CD (Planet) Wilma Reading Now You See Me CD (Australian Sun) Vida-Sunshyne w Burro Banton ‘By the Way’ SP (Savona) Naomi Wenitong w Last Kinection Nutches CD (Elefant Tracks) VA Black Arm Band: Hidden Republic CD (Arts House)

Includes: Shellie Morris, Emma Donovan, Tiddas, Ursula Yovich Burraay: Dreaming Them Home CD (NSDC) Includes: Kerrianne Cox, Ruby Hunter, Leah Purcell, Tiddas Madjitil Moorna: Singers of Aboriginal Songs CD Includes: Della Rae Morrison, Jessie Lloyd, Lily Radlof, Cathie Travers Yulukit Wilam Ngargee CD (Salt) Includes: Christine Ward, Maza Sisters, Deline Briscoe Young Black and Deadly Vol 2 Includes: Kyarna Cruz, Nelly Dargan, Allera LaFerla, Lilly Madden, Madeline Madden, Bonnie Riley, Annabella Tavares

2009 Kylie Auldist Made of Stone CD (Tru Thoughts) – ‘It’s On’ 45 (Tru Thoughts) Paula Baxter Experience EP Shirley Davis w Pitch Dark ‘Can You Feel the Music’ SP (Vicious) Emma Donovan Ngaraanga EP KillaQueenz SistaHood CD (Central Station) Miss Hood Lady Luck EP (Payback) Ngaire Joseph Two Minds EP – Songs for No One EP Jade MacRae w Space Invadas ‘Life’ SP (Grooveshark) Bianca May Meant to Be EP Connie Mitchell w Sneaky Sound System ‘16’ SP (WEA) – ‘It’s Not My Problem’ SP (WEA) Old Flames Band Blackfulla Boogie CD Naomi Pigram Band Other Side of Town CD Ruth Rogers-Wright Haunted EP

Discography

243

Skye Taikato Skye’s the Limit EP Tiann Williams ‘Gonna Be on Top’ SP Vida-Sunshyne w Chasm ‘For All You Knew’ EP (Obese) Wildflower Manginburra Bininj CD (Skinnyfish) VA Beats from the Street CD (Redfern Records) Includes: Edie Coe, Aletha Penrith, Angelina Penrith Making Waves: Hip Hop CD (Gadigal) Includes: Deline Briscoe, Dizzy Doolan Making Waves: A Compilation of Indigenous Singer-Songwriters CD (Gadigal) Includes: Casey Donovan, Sharnee Fenwick, Leah Flanagan, Sharon Lane, Krista Pav Songbird Calling CD (Redfern Records) Includes: Nadeena Dixon, Rhubee Neale

2010 Nekichi Anele w Bagatelle Find You EP Christine Anu ‘Come Home’ SP Deline Briscoe w Sol Nation s/t EP Casey Donovan ‘Big, Beautiful and Sexy’ SP – ‘Last Regret’ SP Leah Flanagan Nirvana Nights CD (Vitamin) Gambirra (Ilume) The Unknown CD Jess Harlen Neon Heartache CD (Obese) – ‘I Go’ SP (Obese) – ‘Watch the Water’ SP (Plethora) Jess Harlen w Saskwatch ‘I Thought This Was Love’ 45 Marcia Hines Marcia Sings Tapestry CD (Universal) KillaQueenz Break the Rules

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EP (Central Station) Olive Knight Gospel Blues from the Edge of the Desert CD (Mood of Blues) Lady Lash Pearl CD Jessica Mauboy Get ’Em Girls CD (Sony) Ali Mills Waltjim Bat Matilda CD (Skinnyfish) Candice Monique w Optics In My Soul CD (Freestyle) Natalie Pa’apa’a w Blue King Brown Worldwize CD (Lion House) Krista Pav Keep On Keepin’ On EP (Gadigal) Kira Puru and the Bruise The Liar EP Stiff Gins ‘Diamonds on the Water’ SP (MGM) – Wind and Water CD (MGM) Kylie Sambo ‘Muckaty’ SP Enushu Taye w Black Jesus Experience Yeluinta CD (BJX) Emily Williams ‘Spellbound’ DD Ursula Yovich Live CD (Cicada) VA Black Harmonies CD Includes: Ajak Kwai, Aminata Doumbia, Michelle Belesy Too Solid CD (WAMI) Includes: Kerrianne Cox, Candice Lorrae, Djiva, Gina Williams, Alice Haines

2011 Paula Baxter w Rephrase ‘About That Time’ SP Juniliy Bobongie ‘Seeing You’ SP – ‘First Australian’ SP

Georgia Corowa w Impossible Odds ‘Everything’ SP (Impossible Odds) Shirley Davis w Deep Street Soul ‘Greenbacks’ 45 (Freestyle) – ‘Masterpiece’ 45 (Freestyle) Nadeena Dixon Butterfly EP Carol George ‘Changed My Ways’ SP (Skinnyfish) Jess Harlen w Saskwatch ‘I Thought This Was Love’ 45 (Northside) Tia Hunter w Deep Street Soul ‘Kick Out the Jams’ 45 (Freestyle) ‘Look Out, Watch Out’ 45 (Freestyle) May Johnston w Deep Street Soul Look Out, Watch Out CD (Freestyle) Connie Mitchell w Sneaky Sound System ‘We Love’ SP (Modular) – ‘Big’ SP (Modular) – ‘Really Want to See You Again’ SP (Modular) – From Here to Anywhere CD (Modular) Moana Dreaming ‘Desert Feet’ SP Pat Morgan In His Foot Steps CD (Florea) Ngaratya Together EP Sue Ray Red Roses CD (Plus One) Ruth Rogers-Wright The Book of Ruth CD Megan Samardin and John Rodgers Little Birrung CD Sierra Sisters ‘Shake It’ SP (Lion Mountain) Sista Act Women of Country CD (Stamp) Vida-Sunshyne w Dash Villz ‘Falling Over Everything’ SP Vida-Sunshyne w Thundamentals ‘Check My Fresh’ SP

Naomi Wenitong w Last Kinection Next of Kin CD (Elefant Traks) Emily Williams ‘You’re Mine’ SP – ‘Never Alone’ SP Joy Yates w Dave MacRae Trio Songs from Lady Day CD (Mistyville) VA ABMusic Compilation CD (ABMusic) Includes: Lorrae Coffin, Elisabeth Gogos, Maxine Hansen, Jessie Lloyd, Bianca May, Old Flames, Ulla Shay Jazzart Collection Vol. 4 CD (VJA) Includes: Georgia Lee Snapshot CD (CAAMA) Includes: Jacinta Price

2012 Grace Barbe ‘Tou Lannwit’ SP (Afrotropik) Delmae Barton w William Barton Kalkadungu CD (ABC) Jess Beck Hometown Dress EP Nikki Doll and the Penny Drops Tropical Theatre EP Dizzy Doolan w Yung Warriors ‘Standing Strong’ SP (Payback) Gununa Girls ‘Time to Party’ SP Kira Puru and the Bruise ‘When All Your Love is Not Enough’ SP Ajak Kwai w Wahida Rieuke Piu EP Sharon ‘Shaniqua’ Makombeshamu w Quashani Born to Shine CD Jess Harlen Park Yard Slang CD (Obese) Makuwa Girls ‘Doomadgee L.O.V.E’ SP Nkechi Anele w Saskwatch ‘Don’t Wanna Try’ 45 (Northside)

Discography

245

– ‘Your Love’ 45 (Northside) – Leave It All Behind CD (Northside) Ngaratya Together EP Ulla Shay Better Place CD Emily Williams Uncovered SP VA Desert Divas CD (Sweetjam) Includes: Catherine Satour, Jacinta Price, Cassandra Williams, Kylie Sambo, Courtney Singleton, Sherelle Young, Kirra Voller, Rita Tomlins, Kaya Jarrett, Jessica Laruffa Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu— Together We Are Strong CD Includes: Shellie Morris and the Borroloola Songwomen Sapphires OST CD (Sony) Includes: Jessica Mauboy, Lou Bennett Snapshot II CD (CAAMA) Includes: Jacinta Price, Catherine Satour

2013 Nkechi Anele w Saskwatch ‘I Get Lonely’ 45 (Northside) Auriel Andrew Ghost Gums CD Nikki Doll and the Penny Drops Nothing Rhymes with Orange CD Bec Gollan Band s/t EP Kankawa Nagarra (Olive Knight) Kan-Kawa: Contemporary Gospel and Blues CD (Desert Feet) Ngaire ‘Dirty Hercules’ SP Thelma Plum Rosie EP (Footstomp) Simone Stacey My Pledge EP Yasmin Mohamed and Fanous Wana Lafi CD Tina Harrod The Revolution Is Eternal CD (Vitamin) Krista Pav Free Spirit EP

246

Deadly Woman Blues

Barefoot Divas Walk a Mile in My Shoes CD (VGM) Emily Williams ‘Get It’ DD VA Sounds of AustraNesia CD (MGM) Includes: Rubina Kimiia, Trevelyn Brady, Nicole Lampton, Rochelle PittWatson, Mayella Dewis, LaDonna Hollingsworth, Merindi Schreiber, Peta Tautu

Clinton Walker has been called ‘our best chronicler of Australian grassroots culture’ by Sydney’s Sun-Herald. Born in Bendigo in 1957, he is an art school drop-out and recovering rock critic who has published nine books, and has worked extensively in television as well as journalism. The fact that many of his books, including Inner City Sound, Highway to Hell, Buried Country, Golden Miles and History is Made at Night are still in print, sometimes decades after they first came out is a measure of their traction. After starting out with his own punk fanzine in the late 70s, Walker established his reputation in the 1980s when freelancing for newspapers and magazines like RAM, Rolling Stone, the Age, Stiletto, the Bulletin, Inside Sport, New Woman and Playboy. For ABC-TV, he was the presenter of latenight live music show Studio 22, and co-writer and principal interviewer on the hit 2001 Oz-rockumentary series Long Way to the Top. For SBS-TV, in 2000, he wrote the film version of Buried Country; he produced soundtrack CDs for all three shows, and for 2005’s expanded edition of Inner City Sound. He has annotated scores of anthology CDs and box sets, and produced others including 2013’s celebrated Silver Roads. In 2015, after Buried Country was born again in new, expanded editions of the book and the CD album, he got involved as the writer/director of a live-concert iteration of the story that’s still successfully touring the Australian festival circuit. Walker lives with his family in Sydney and is currently completing two other new books, The Suburban Songlines and Shadow Dancing, and working on his return to the visual art where he started out, of which this book is the first major product. Photo with the late Auriel Andrew by Ryan Osland, Newcastle, 2016. www.clintonwalker.com.au

About the author

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A NewSouth book Published by NewSouth Publishing University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA newsouthpublishing.com Text and illustrations © Clinton Walker 2018 First published 2018 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Walker, Clinton, 1957– author. Title: Deadly woman blues : black women and Australian music / Clinton Walker. ISBN: 9781742235660 (hardback) Subjects: Aboriginal Australians—Music. Music—Australia, Central.

Cover and other illustrations, all by Clinton Walker: Front cover—Syvana Doolan; half-title page—Betty Fisher; opposite title

Design Hugh Ford Printer Everbest

page—Heathermae Reading; back cover (top to bottom on left, then

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to

right)—Cheryl Bracken,

use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in

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some cases copyright could not be traced. The author

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welcomes information in this regard.

Kelly, Jodie CockatooCreed, Natalie Gillespie,

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

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