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Specks and spots
Left: Jamming with Auckland trumpet player Jim Warren on the ferry to Waiheke Island in the 1940s are Jim McAllum on guitar and Lloyd Sly on piano-accordion. They are on their way to Atwater’s annual...
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Uncle Albert
In August 1954 there was a fuss about jazz concerts about to take place in Albert Park, Auckland. The comments of the city councillors seem quaint now – especially those of the wonderfully named Hon T....
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Don’t Shoot the Piano
From the Auckland Star of 14 August 1914, the day war was declared. Found at Papers Past.
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Keyboard Capers
When the state-of-the-art deco 1ZB Radio Theatre opened in 1941 on Durham Street, Auckland, among its features was an instrument that exemplified modernism. The Novachord was a keyboard that can be...
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Sad News
In the early 1950s, it was Hawaiian-styled pop that dominated the fledgling New Zealand record industry: players such as Bill Wolfgramm and Bill Sevesi, singers such as Daphne Walker and Pixie...
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Apia, Auckland, Las Vegas
An interview with Mavis Rivers that I did in Wellington in 1990. THE SAMOAN jazz singer has had a career most musicians only dream about. She has recorded duets with Frank Sinatra, had albums produced...
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The Sunny Side of the Street
When looking at a book of photographs of Auckland in the 1950s and 1960s, an older friend commented: “This is how I remember it – when there was sunshine on Queen Street”. The tall buildings have...
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Jam session
I loved what AUP’s designer Katrina Duncan did with the photo I provided that became the frontispiece of Blue Smoke. It showed a jam session that I now know to be at the Auckland College of Music on...
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Dennis Huggard, RIP
A tribute to Dennis Huggard, jazz archivist – without him, Blue Smoke would have been a much thinner and less accurate book. New Zealand’s popular music history is eternally in his debt. Dennis Huggard...
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Dancing in My Socks
Sad news: Pat McMinn passed away on 21 March 2018. She was probably New Zealand’s busiest vocalist in the early 1950s, in concert and on recordings. In fact, she had been in constant demand since...
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