Joy of Music

Do you know when you start a story and half way through it someone says, “Oh, that reminds me of…”. Well, this is one of those tales.

I had started with a story about a charity event in 2003 I had been involved in organising. The event included works of art and their artists, entertainers and other personalities. It reminded me of the connection I had with one of those entertainers which went back to my youth. Before I knew it, I had slipped down a rabbit-hole to find 12-year old Mike and tell the tale. So, I’ll get back to the charity event a little later but first let me tell you about my early connection with popular music, hit parades, transistor radios, guitars and rock and roll.

There was always a piano in our house. Unlike the McCartney family however, where Paul’s dad was a pianist and the leader of a jazz band, or the Joel family where Bill’s dad was an accomplished classical musician, no one in our house could play a note.

This is not entirely true. My mother was a great fan of Winifred Atwell and had visions of one of us becoming a family entertainer with a repertoire of ragtime party pieces. Jean was persuaded to have piano lessons. The determined child persevered for about a year but struggled to advance much further than a painstaking version of Handel’s Largo. I hasten to point out that this is no reflection on Jean’s ability. Mum was looking for someone to lead the way with Roll out the Barrel and when that didn’t happen overnight, she thought of better things to do with the tuition fees.

That said, when it was my turn to learn a few of the basics of music theory it was nice to pick out a few notes on the keyboard while sitting on the piano stool with a cheap Ibanez guitar working on the melody to Red River Rock and Forty Miles of Bad Road. It’s not that much different in 2024, just a different guitar and piano and maybe an ever so slightly improved rendition.

As far back as I can remember there was always music in our house. My mother would sing along to Della Reese or the music of South Pacific. My Dad liked nothing better than scraping away on a güiro while standing on the little stage accompanying the house band in Hides Hotel Lounge Bar.

We had an HMV gramophone from which the sounds of Mantovani, Charlie Kunz, or something from Dad’s Big Band collection would regularly emanate. On good days, when Dad wasn’t just sitting in his cane chair, puffing on his pipe and reading his book, he would whisk her into his arms and gently foxtrot her around the room to the mellow sounds of Moonlight Serenade.  Some of that Glenn Miller stuff was pretty good, and there was a 78 of Pee Wee Hunt’s Twelfth Street Rag which I liked, but other than that, there was little to stimulate the appetite of a 13-year old.

Then along came rock. Bill Hailey first of course, then Elvis and all those early movers and shakers Chuck Berry, Crash Craddock and of course Johnny Cash.

After we had been in Cairns for about a year, my parents sponsored Mum’s younger sister, Doreen and her family to emigrate. Aunt Doreen was one of the most wonderful human beings I ever knew. In later years, during my visits to the UK as a young man, she was a second mother to me, and I have lasting affectionate memories of her. Aunt Doreen and Uncle Gordon arrived in Cairns with my two cousins, Geoff and Roger similar in ages to my brother and me. They were in Cairns for just two years before the heat and homesickness resulted in their return to England.

Geoff and Roger where highly gifted scholastically and would both go on to have successful academic careers, but it was Geoff’s combined passion for popular music and his obsession with music facts, that soon had us compiling and analysing each week’s Top Ten on local radio 4CA’s Hit Parade. We could not get enough of Green Door, That’ll Be the Day and the one that had me jumping and bouncing on the furniture, Jailhouse Rock.  

The reaction from my Dad to this of course, was always, “Bloody Rubbish!”. This from a man who would get the spoons out of the kitchen drawer at the drop of a maraca and bash away on his knees to such meaningful lyrics as “Aba, daba, daba, said the Monkey to the Chimp.” There was always music.

To earn some cash, Dad convinced me of the benefits of having a paper round. Each morning, six days a week I rose at 3.30 and cycled into the city to collect 100 copies of The Cairns Post literally hot off the press. Each one was folded over a wooden purpose-built frame which was fitted to the crossbar of my bicycle and distributed, sometimes randomly if I’m honest, to subscribers along my allocated route. I didn’t do it for long (no one did), but I earned enough to purchase a  “trannie” – a National Panasonic 6-Transistor radio. About the size of a small library book, it sat for years in its leather case on my bedroom table. Late at night and in the wee hours, quietly so as not to wake the rest of the house, it would churn out “4BC – Radio Beatle Beat!”, while I sat at my desk, stuffing No-Doz into my face, and cramming for looming tests in Engineering Chemistry and Elementary Heat Engines.

Cairns may not have been the beating heart of rock and roll, but when Rock Around the Clock played at the Tropical Theatre in the late 1950s, the image of wired teenagers jumping about and singing was not limited only to the Victory in Sydney’s Broadway. Included in that group were Mike and Garry, two excited 12-year olds who having had enough knot-tying for one night had raced from the Sea Scout Hall on the Esplanade across the road arriving just in time for the main feature.

Not long after this we had the opportunity to see local Australian talent when the stars from Sydney and Melbourne started touring the country. Although TV had arrived in Australia in 1956, the good people of Cairns waited another ten years before FNQ10 was launched so our access to popular music (or popular anything) was via the cinema, radio and The Australasian Post.

The first television set I ever saw was an impossible prize at a knock-‘em-down stall at the annual Cairns Show. Patrons stood distracted from all else and stared at the tiny hissing snow-filled screen, a thousand miles from anything approaching a signal.

Not for one second by the way, am I suggesting that Cairns was a cultural wilderness. Indeed, my mother’s appearance in the chorus of The Mikado put on by the Little Theatre Company must surely still be talked about today. But the prospect of big-name performers, Johnny O’Keefe, the Delltones and Col Joye visiting our city was a revolution for teenagers after years of saturation from Reg Lindsay, Buddy Williams and God bless-em, the Māori Troubadours (as entertaining as they all undeniably were).

So here we are on a Friday afternoon, Garry and I (the same Garry with whom I went AWOL from Gannet Patrol and knots for Lisa Gaye’s jiving and Haley’s Comets) outside the Hibernian Hall staring at the big poster publicising tonight’s performance of Col Joye and the Joy Boys – tickets seven shillings and sixpence.

We are looking through the half open door watching people moving a piano, when a tall red haired young man in jeans and tee shirt catches sight of us, stops what he is doing and heads towards us. We get ready to skedaddle when he says, “Hi fellas, would you like to earn a couple of tickets for tonight. Just come and help us shift some chairs.”

Who wouldn’t want to come and see Col Joye perform. There are a pile of folding chairs propped against walls and lying on the floor, and for the next couple of hours Garry and I and the red-haired guy convert the empty hall into a seating area for about 300 people.

As we go about our work the young man is friendly and chatty asking us what school we go to, how we like living in Cairns, and what music we enjoy. He is Kevin Jacobsen, pianist and manager of the Joy Boys and Col’s older brother.

There will be two shows tonight, the first at 6 o’clock and a later one at 9. Garry goes home with his ticket and comes to the concert with a family member. I turn up on my own, and ask if I can sit back stage, instead of in the audience and Kevin agrees saying, “Just make sure you keep out of the way”.

This is the most exciting night of my life. The band members are all welcoming and clearly enjoying their celebrity, none more so than Col. To his multitude of fans and to the readers of Teenagers’ Weekly he may be a 22-year old heart throb, but to me that night Col Joye is like an older brother. So I sit in the wings beside the stage, cradling his white Strat while a few metres aways he sings, Oh Yeah, Uh Huh on his Col Joye Special acoustic archtop. There is nowhere else in the world I want to be.

So that was my “that reminds me” moment. The next time I saw Col was 45 years later. He had generously volunteered to act as guest of honour at a Stroke of Art charity dinner at NSW Parliament House. He wasn’t singing to a crowd of screaming teenagers in a country town, or an arena in Sydney. He stood in front of a group of well-heeled business men and women, strumming along on his ukulele to Bye Bye Baby and very soon they were all singing along with him. He was still that same friendly, engaging entertainer enjoying making music, putting a smile on our faces and asking us to dig deep into our pockets to support the cause. The Stroke of Art dinner was held annually over several years. Col was always there, donating his time and sharing with us the joy of his music.

And just in case you are wondering whether he remembered that 13-year old part-time roadie.  

No. Of course he didn’t.