Graeme Bell - Career

Career

Bell became leader of the house band for the Eureka Youth League (formerly the Communist Youth League) and established a cabaret, the Uptown Club, in 1946. After playing at the inaugural Australian Jazz Convention in December, Bell's band was renamed Australian Jazz Band and became the first such band to tour Europe. Australian Jazz Band members were initially, Bell on piano, Roger Bell on cornet and vocal, Monsbourgh on valve trombone, clarinet and vocal, Roberts on clarinet, Silbereisen on bass and tuba, with Charlie Blott, Ian Pearce and Jack Varney on banjo and guitar. They toured Czechoslovakia for four-and-a-half months in 1947, including playing at the World Youth Festival in Prague. "The Lizard", an improvisation recorded in the studio for Regal Zonophone Records in June, was Bell's first composition. Another early recording was his composition, "Czechoslovak Journey", which was started in his studio in Bourke Street, Melbourne and recorded together with 14 other tracks for Czechoslovak Journey by Supaphon Records in Prague on 23 September and 13 November 1947 and released in 1981 on LP.

Australian Jazz Band travelled to the United Kingdom in early 1948 and Bell started the Leicester Square Jazz Club, playing music specifically for dancing, which continued into the 1950s. They played songs outside the standard jazz repertoire and, with their encouragement of dancing, caused concern to local jazz enthusiasts, but were popular with patrons. According to The Age, his "band's music was hailed for its distinctive Australian edge, which he describes as "nice larrikinism" and "a happy Aussie outdoor feel".

During the early 1950s Bell periodically returned to UK and Europe from Melbourne to perform, a later line-up of Australian Jazz Band was Roger Bell (Trumpet), Kitchen, Ade Monsbourgh (Trumpet & Alto), Pixie Roberts (Clarinet), Baron Silvereisen (Bass & Tuba) with Norman "Bud" Baker (Guitar & Banjo), Deryck "Kanga" Bentley (Trombone) and Johnny Sangster (Drums & Cornet). On 1 May 1951 they appeared at Oxford Town Hall. On 15 September 1951, this line-up recorded a concert with Big Bill Broonzy at the Robert Schumann Saal in Düsseldorf, Germany; which was later released as Big Bill Broonzy in Concert with Graeme Bell & his Australian Jazz Band. Whilst touring through Germany, Bell encountered ardent fans:

in the band bus, girls, German girls would hide in the band bus behind the seats, and when the band would take off, in the middle of the snow, on these long journeys, they'd reveal themselves some of them would wear wedding rings so that they could get into the hotels with the members of the band and pose as their wives, and they'd purposely speak bad German. —Graeme Bell, 21 August 2006

After returning to Australia for another national tour Bell met Dorothy in Brisbane in 1955 and she convinced him to relocate to Sydney in 1957. Aside from playing, Bell was one of the leading promoters of jazz in Australia, bringing American performers such as trumpet player, Rex Stewart to Australia. There was some opposition from the Australian Musicians Union to foreign artists joining Australian bands, so Stewart had to play standing a metre (3 ft) in front of them to be classified as a soloist.

After relocating to Sydney, Bell played commercial music and taught piano to supplement his income. Bell and Dorothy married in 1961. In the 1960s, a trad jazz boom in UK encouraged Bell to form the Graeme Bell All Stars and tour there. This band included, Monsbourgh on clarinet, trombone, alto saxophone and second trumpet, and Bob Barnard on trumpet. Bell recalled his approach with the band:

I inherited some of my parents' showbusiness ability to operate from the stage, talk to the audience that was the creative period of my life, really. And I learnt how to try and get the best out of musicians to produce a band and produce a sound. My own piano playing became quite secondary to the whole thing. —Graeme Bell, 21 August 2006

In March 1973, The Who's rock opera Tommy was performed as an orchestral version in Australia with Bell as The Narrator. Other Australian artists were Daryl Braithwaite (as Tommy), Wendy Saddington, Doug Parkinson, Billy Thorpe, Broderick Smith, Jim Keays, Colleen Hewett, Linda George, Ross Wilson, Bobby Bright, and Ian Meldrum (as Uncle Ernie in Sydney).

After researching for five years, Bell wrote Graeme Bell, Australian jazzman : his autobiography in 1988. It contains a discography compiled by Jack Mitchell. Bell was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 1997 alongside The Bee Gees and Paul Kelly. By 1999, Bell had made over 1,500 recordings and performed in thousands of gigs in Australia and internationally.