R. I. P. Tony 8 August 2015
Although interested in jazz at boarding school Ashby didn't begin playing seriously until arriving in 1951 in New Zealand [from England]. Resident in Darwin, 1960-62, playing in various groups, notably the Hi-Tones which included Ross Anderson (bs), Ashby returned to Auckland, NZ, where he founded the Climax Jazz Band with Bruce Haley. Moved to Brisbane in 1968 where he and Bruce Haley founded the Pacific Jazzmen. This band was important in maintaining a jazz presence in Brisbane during a lean period, and also in becoming the focus of the Brisbane Jazz Club of which Haley was the founding president. The band included at various times Harley Axford (tbn), Denny Olive (bs), Ray Maule (dms), Pat Roche, Rick Purdie (gtr), Percy Cramb (pno), and Barry Webb & Len Little (reeds). It continued functioning into the 70s and played support for Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball during their respective tours. Ashby formed the Brisbane Jazz Club Big Band, and led it for its first two years. Secretary/treasurer to the financially very successful 1976 Australian Jazz Convention, and shortly afterwards joined Ken Herron at the Melbourne Hotel, taking over the band in the late 70s. Left the group in 1980, and freelanced with every major jazz band in Brisbane as well as playing cabaret and dance work. Although most of his opportunities have been in traditional to mainstream, Ashby enjoys working in more progressive styles. Currently active with the Brisbane Jazz Club.
Bruce Johnson, The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987) 87.
Click here to listen to Tony's interview with Alan Western at the Brisbane Jazz Club on Thursday 29 May 2008.
Tony Ashby on his start in jazz
(from a Queensland Jazz Archive interview by Peter Freeman on 16 September 2011)
Were
you formally trained in music?
No. No I wasn’t even into the playing. I
did have a clarinet when I was at school. This photo (below) was sort of hammed up
as it were. There’s me on clarinet, there is Cardew on piano and Barnes on
drums. The cornet just poking out from the left is Seth Cardew’s younger
brother called Ennis Cardew, and I think the guy on ukulele is someone called
Whiteley who wasn’t really a jazz fan. All I can say is I had a clarinet.
I remember once I was trying to play along
with a recording by the Crane River Jazz Band (a 78) and I picked a class room
over the weekend way out of the way. It was a huge school and I was playing
along with it and trying to play with the record which is what the rest of them
did. I didn’t even know if I was in tune or what. The headmaster’s wife came
and said that’s terrible. So I thought that’s most encouraging sign I’ve had
yet. It got a response.
Cardew’s interesting. Seth Cardew was a
nephew of a guy called Phil Cardew who was one of those London professional
musicians who came up in the late 20s/30s and into the 40s. At the time I left
England to go to New Zealand he’d landed a contract to record a series of
sessions on Parlophone which was called Phil Cardew and his Swing Hustlers. It
was actually, a square dance. Square dance was popular. I noticed it was
popular out here for a while in the very early 50s. Seth used to go up to
London on Saturdays to have lessons from his Uncle on clarinet. He would come
back and say “Oh we were rehearsing in this nightclub and this tremendous black
girl singer came in and boy, could she sing.”
So there was obviously a great scene going on there.
So he
could read?
Oh Seth could read. Seth played piano and
he played clarinet. We did perform at a school function with me, would you
believe, on banjo. He had to show me what the chords were and I never could
remember them. I had absolutely no knowledge of theory and no ear in terms of
when you’re on the fourth bar you play a Bb7 and go to Eb or whatever. I had no
knowledge whatsoever. All I knew was I liked listening to music. Seth transcribed one of the Bob Crosby’s
Bobcats 12 Bar Blues, He played the piano, and copied off the Bob Zurke’s
Piano solo.
Before I started playing clarinet I was interested in 78s, jazz books and discographies. When I got to New Zealand, I was still getting the English jazz publications and I wanted to sell 78s. So I wrote to Vogue in London saying can I import your records to sell here? Vogue was a French label and a lot of Bechet tunes came out, and the London Vogue was an offshoot of the French one.
That’s rather entrepreneurial of you Tony.
It was because I liked selling records.
Did you have the mechanism for selling records?
No. None whatsoever. I used to go junk shopping as I told you, and where I worked there was a junk shop just down the road and guess where I was every lunch hour. I came across some interesting records there.
So that was something I wanted to do. In actual fact, although I didn’t do it then I subsequently achieved that goal later on. Before I left New Zealand I produced a 12” LP of recordings taken from concerts of a band I was leading called the Climax Jazz Band. I think one of the tracks is on one of my CDs here. Since coming over here I’ve formed my own little record label called T&T Records. I’ve got two cassettes, three CDs and I have other things planned for that.
So I’ve achieved my goal. Now we can do recordings in my unit here.
So you’ve got your own record label?
Yeh, T&T Records. I don’t have an ABN because when people go through the directory and they see the name T&T Records and they phone me up and they either want to know if I’ve got such and such a record and I say “No. Look it’s something that I started myself. I’m a full-time professional, out of work jazz musician and I make my living by selling CDs to people like you who phone me up enquiring about T&T Records.” And I’ve sold a few that way.
But I’m doing home recording now, and that I enjoy doing very very much. So I guess I’ve achieved my goal. I’ve been a late learner. Everything I wanted to do has come along later in life.
New Zealand
I went to New Zealand and I remember we arrived there on the 21 June 1951. I fossicked around and found there was guy who was actually had polio when he was young he was in a wheel chair, and I had clarinet lessons from him. I bought a new clarinet because the one in that photo was pretty damn useless. I got a new clarinet and there were live musicians who I could go along to listen to. The only regular form of live music which in its day was quite an achievement, they don’t do it now. At that time in New Zealand the broadcasting station (no television – all run by the government – NZBC a sort of corporation, almost like a government department) The politics at the time were such that the main regional areas; Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and I think out there on Hawkes Bay, wherever, they had a radio programme featuring live musicians – big bands mainly. There was a whole series of recordings of small bands around. But, we’d go down on a Saturday afternoon where they had a swing size band playing. The guys would get into the studio in the afternoon, rehearse and at 7 or whenever it was they did a half hour program or an hours program.. So we went down there all the time and it was a great influence.
The Polynesian Club
The Polynesian Club was just off Hobson
Street (in Auckland), up the top before it ran into Karangahape Road. It was
run by a Tahitian guy I think. A guy called Lou Mattie who played sax and
drums. When he played sax it sounded like he had a packing case for a reed. He
played tenor, a big sound and loud. The
other thing was in the course of the night he’d go over to the drums and he’d
do something called the Tahitian Conga. People would just dance around, a very
animalistic sort of dance. Quite good really. It was a jam session on Sunday
and I went down there and that was where I earned my first money which was 10
bob a night. Some famous people played down there over the years.
One Sunday I missed going down and it
turned out that the night I missed there was an argument on stage between, I
think, two vocalists who wanted to sing. One pulled a knife on the other and
killed him. I remember I heard about it and told Dad. He said “Oh, don’t tell
your mother.”
There’s a photo which was taken around
about that time. Around 1954 I think.
It was in the corner of the room. One of
the trumpeters is a guy called Dreamboat who always described himself as the
best drunken driver in town. The other trumpeter there in the front John Daley,
who I believe – he was a great roller skater and a bit of a comedian. I believe
he lives down the coast. He was running a sort of second-hand boutique shop for
a while . He may still be there. I called him once and introduced myself and
passed my name and number on but no-one ever got back to me on that. The guy in
the background is Lou Mattie on
tenor. I don’t know who the Islander is on guitar. A lot of good
guitarists there.
Arrival in Brisbane
Before I left New Zealand to come over here, the two names I knew in Brisbane were Tich Bray and Sid Bromley. So I phoned Tich. He was in the phone book, I told him I was a jazz fan ...
How did you know them ... how did you know their names?
I'd been reading the English Jazz magazines and I was also reading the Australian Jazz magazine at the time. There was a magazine here called Music Maker that used to come out once a month and used to have a Brisbane column.
So I phoned Tich and introduced myself and he said phone Sid Bromley. He gave me Sid’s number because Sid was the person who knew what was going on in Brisbane. Sid said (he was a good host) “Come around on Anzac Day. We’re having a digger’s reunion. Bring your clarinet or whatever and we’ll have a blow.” I went around there and Tich was there, Ian Oliver was there, Graeme Tate on piano, Sid played drums, and I think a guy called Rick Henry on bass. Just a bit of a jam session, I didn’t take the clarinet. I listened. Then I heard Tich play. He was an electric player. I thought gee this is really jazz. It sort of reminded me of the days of the Port Jackson Four which I’d heard in Sydney and the Ray Price Quartet. I thought well they never had anything like that in New Zealand. A clarinetist playing that style that hot.
So I started to get a picture of what was going on here. Sid (Bromley) gave us names and we started playing down at the Adventurers Club on a Sunday. This is an early colour photo of down there.
The birth of the Brisbane Jazz Club
So we (Bruce Haley and Tony Ashby) started
the Jazz Club …
At
Kangaroo Point?
No, before that, I noticed there was a
little article in the paper about jazz at a place called the Adventurers Club
on a Saturday night at Newstead. So I said to Bruce “Let’s go on down.” We
wandered in and there was a little trad band playing and I think a guy called
Jimmy Sims on trumpet, can’t remember the trombonist, Mileham Hayes was on
clarinet, Peter Magee was on piano, a bass player, Pat Roche guitar and a
drummer, playing sort of trad. So we introduced ourselves and listened to them
a few times. We got talking to the owner Bill Atkinson who ran the Adventurers
Club and we told him we were musicians. He said “Well would you like to start a
band to play on Sunday. There’s no pay, but it’ll be somewhere to play.” So we
met up with Denny Olive who knew a few people around and got in touch with Ray
Maule, and later on we got Percy Cram on piano. So we played there, Mike
Hawthorne, trombonist, played with us in the early days. Another good pianist
in Brisbane at the time was Terry Hickey
…
How
did you find these people? Was it just word of mouth?
Well Denny knew them.
This
is the Adventurers Club?
Well the Adventurers Club was actually a
club for 18 to 35 year olds. It was set up for outdoor activities and what Bill
was trying to do was to extend their activities to include jazz one night of
the week. We had it down there on the Saturday and we came along and he said
let’s extend it to the Sunday. At one stage they asked us to take over the
Saturday blows which we did for a while. Remembering we weren’t being paid and
there weren’t many people there.
I remember one night down there we had a
couple of visiting musicians playing with us. One was Hans Karssemeyer who was
living up here at the time, and the other was Marty Mooney the sax player from
Galapagus Duck. So we had a great blow that night.
Anyway we took over the Sunday night blow
and shortly after the Adventurers Club moved to their present premises which is
now the Brisbane Jazz Club. The original Adventurers Club was Byres Street
Newstead.
Pre-Convention
In 1975 I think it was Mileham browbeat the ABC into allowing him to put on a jazz program
once a week which he called Stomp Off
Let’s Go. Very good program.
In 1975 he got himself a gig at the
Melbourne Hotel which was televised. The ABC televised it. Also he was writing
for the Courier Mail. So there was a lot going on in jazz in the right places.
By that time we had the Brisbane Jazz Club going and the Vintage Jazz Band was
established. They had the Twelfth Night Theatre. So there was a lot going on.
Mileham
had a lot to do with it, didn’t he.
I remember (and it could well have been
1975) I phoned him to tell him how much I
was enjoying his radio program. We exchanged pleasantries and I said to
him “Mileham, have you ever thought of having a jazz convention in Brisbane?”
He said “Well I’ve been thinking about nothing else.” So I said “OK, you be
president and I’ll be secretary/treasurer and we’ll organize it.” He said
“Yep.” So we sort of picked a list of who would be a committee. Mileham being
very thorough prepared a proposal which I don’t think they’d (Jazz Convention
Delegates) seen before?
What
was Mileham doing at that stage? What was he working as?
He’d qualified as a GP and a clarinetist/Banjo Player and band leader.
The '76 Jazz Convention was filmed.
On the association of older people with traditional jazz:
Do you think now that there’s too much association (of traditional jazz) with older people?
Yes definitely.
Do you think that this is one of the major reasons why traditional jazz hasn’t had a resurgence?
I remember a number of years ago when I was the Queensland representative on the Jazz Convention Steering Committee (that’s the committee that advises the Australian Jazz Convention Trustees)I put up a proposition saying this very thing because every time there’s a convention everybody moans about all the oldies falling off the perch and the people who go along to listen will probably fall off the perch pretty soon anyway and you end up having to play “Hello Dolly” for the crowd and you don’t really want to play “Helllo Dolly” . But, yes, old musicians playing music of … well … good quality to an old crowd. And again the kids are not going to go along if they’re going to run into their parents or grandparents. My proposition was (to the Trustees) from their surplus get a band from Melbourne like the Hotter than That – a trad band which is made up of basically (compared with us) young musicians … and great musicians. No argument about it. There were a couple of bands down there and I said get these bands and sponsor them to play at a rock concert. Now I firmly believe that the music those young guys play is infectious. And I think if you had a whole mass of people suddenly listening to Hotter than That in full blast, or some of those young bands, they’d think “Hey this is good music” Because you don’t hear it on the local radio, you don’t hear it on the radio of the kids, in other words I was reversing an economical principle of supply and demand by saying let’s create a supply and let the demand catch up. Let’s start off with the supply. This what we play. This is how we do it. And I reckon it was taken out … well you know what committees are like. It was a bit too difficult for them to contemplate. So it didn’t get off the ground.
But that should answer your question “could it come back”. Yes, I think it could. And I remember years before I went on one of those Minghua cruises – remember we went on one with the Vintage (Jazz and Blues Band). Well, the one before that I went on as a passenger and Graeme Bell was playing. And he had a band, Noel Crow had a band, and there was the Tony Ansell Quartet – pretty good bands there, and I was privileged to have a lot of time talking to Graeme. I said “Graeme, I can well see a time arriving in the future, whether we’re still around or not I know not, where people will do to you what they did in the early 40s when they went back to the recordings of the 20s and said “Hey, we’ve just come across a record by King Oliver. Hey, this is what they did” I reckon it needs some academic nut to go through the archives and say “Gee, I came across this recording. It was a 78 of Graeme Bell playing a number called “Smokey Mokes” or “South” “Tess’s Blues”. That’s great music, and you know you spread it out and people say “Hey, that’s good music”.
Do you think it takes an academic? Do you think people listen to academics?
I don’t know. Well, I’ll take it a stage further and I cite the case of the Fire House Five plus Two, it was a Hollywood jazz group. Quite a good one, which was made up of Hollywood executives. And (this works in with some of the things we were talking about, and it’s a nice story … ) but they used to meet in the office of this guy, the trombonist, Ward Kimble it might have been, and they had 78s. And they used to spend their lunchtime playing along with the records. You’d have a trumpet, clarinet and whatever, and they spent their time playing along with these records. They had a ball. And one day the story goes that the 78 player broke. So they said “Let’s do it without the record”. That was the beginning of the Fire House Five plus Two. It just so happened that one of the musicians was into vintage cars and he had an old Fire Unit. So they had the hats and they dressed up and said OK the Fire House Five plus Two there were seven of them. And that was another of those revivalist bands that I told you about before. They weren’t academics. OK, they were executives, but let’s not hold that against them. I mean if you look through jazz now you’ll find some of the most brilliant professionals in medicine are good musicians. The guy in New York called Ronny Odrick plays a baritone (I’ve got an LP Of him) plays phenomenal clarinet … he’s a dentist. Even Moe Schneider who played on the West Coast Sessions according to Dick Cary recorded with the Bob Crosby crowd, is an accountant. So you come across musicians in a variety of professions and that’s why whenever I’m talking to young musicians I’d say to their parents “Well look, if they’re interested in music, no matter what music, (if it’s jazz so much the better), encourage that. Because I’ve been told that kids who study music methodically end up achieving more. Their grades in school are better because they’re taught the discipline of music … and it works on maths to a certain extent … four beats to a bar etc, … and if you can discipline yourself to play 20 minutes of music, 20 minutes of English, say you’re doing your homework, another 20 minutes music, another 20 minutes maths, that’s the homework out of the way. They develop much better. Now I’m not in that scene so I don’t give a darn, but that is what I’ve been told. So if you can get youngsters to work in a disciplined environment you get good musicians.
Now the point I’m making is, “Yes they may want to be an engineer or a scientist, but if they still keep up with their music they can go back to that later. I studied as an accountant and at the end of 1988 I gave it to be a full time professional out of work jazz musician. At that time by the time I’d left I’d already done a successful TV Series on the ABC with the likes of Bob Barnard, Graeme Bell, Ken Herron and they had all those great guest stars. So the point I’m making is you can do two things, you can do both professions, and you can earn money from both, and even the taxman says you can have as many as you like, and if, when you get into your later years and you find that your chosen profession is starting to stuff you and you’re going to die, give it up and carry on with music. So you can do both.
More to come ...
More to come ...
Eulogy delivered by Peter Freeman at Tony's Memorial Service Wednesday 19 August 2015
They threw away the mould when they made Tony Ashby.
He was one of a kind.
Nothing was ordinary about Tony.
Although he probably wouldn’t admit it, Tony had a very
distinguished career. He was one of the prime movers behind
the creation of the Brisbane Jazz Club, he started the Brisbane
Big Band, he was Treasurer of the Queensland Jazz Archive, he
played with many of the best jazz musicians, not only in
Australia but also New Zealand and was generally very well
respected as an excellent jazz reeds player, conductor, organiser,
innovator and an instigator of priceless musical endeavors.
But it was his witticisms and quirky outlook on life that really
captured people’s imagination. For instance, when I first met
Tony, in my formative jazz years, for almost any tune we’d play
he’d say “Be-Bop. Be-Bop.” I wasn’t sure back then if that was
what we were playing or if he just wanted us to play Be-Bop.
Several years ago I did a recorded interview with Tony, and at
the start of the recording for a spoken identification I said: “OK.
Today is the 16 September … and I completely forgot what year
it was. Quick as a flash Tony said: “It’s written down
somewhere, Pete …”
Tony’s early experiences with jazz were mainly listening. He
recalled one day at boarding school in England, just after the
war, he was in the common room with one of his mates, Seth
Cardew, who said “Hey Wheeze … (that was Tony’s nickname
because he had asthma) … he said “Wheeze listen to this.” Seth
had one of the old wind-up gramophones there and he’d wound
it up and as Tony remembers he just lowered this needle onto
the 78. … Tony thought “That’s fabulous!” It was Louis
Armstrong playing “Alligator Blues.” He said “I’d never heard
anything like that. I was just transfixed. I came out in goose
pimples. … That was very, very nice.”
Tony was hooked on jazz from that point on.
Tony was also an avid collector of jazz recordings. When he got
to New Zealand in the early 1950s, there were several junk
shops around and he used to ferrett through those and come out
with what he called “the gems of jazz.” He recalled that you’d
go into a junk shop, you’d go right down the back, and sure
enough there’d be a stack of 78s. That was where you found the
gems. They would have been purchased in the 20s and 30s and
no-one knew anything about them. He said “Junk shopping was
a very good past-time. I increased my collection … I think in the
end I ended up with a couple of thousand.”
Tony was always encouraging to younger musicians. He’d
certainly paint the realities of a musicians’ life, but he’d never
try to talk anyone out of it. He’d say “Yes you may want to be
an engineer or a scientist, but if you still keep up with your
music you can go back to that later. You can do both
professions, and you can earn money from both. Even the
taxman says you can have as many (jobs) as you like, and if,
when you get into your later years and you find that your chosen
profession is starting to annoy you and you’re going to die, give
it up and carry on with music. So, he said, “You can do both.”
This positive attitude towards the certainties of life – death and
taxes – of course was responsible for another famous Tony-ism:
“Happiness is an allowable tax deduction.”
When Tony was in Auckland in the early 60s there was a club
there called The Polynesian Club. It was run by a Tahitian guy
called Lou Mattie who played sax and drums. Tony described
his sax playing as “sounding like he had a packing case for a
reed.” Apparently there was a jam session on Sundays and Tony
went down there and that was where he earned his first money
which was 10 bob a night. Tony recalled that “One Sunday I
missed going down and it turned out that the night I missed
there was an argument on stage between, I think, two vocalists
who wanted to sing. One pulled a knife on the other and killed
him.”
As Tony said (often) … It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry!
After Tony arrived in Brisbane in 1968 he noticed there was an
article in the paper about jazz at a place called the Adventurers
Club on a Saturday night at Newstead. So he said to his fellow
musician Bruce Haley “Let’s go on down.” So they (as Tony
recalled) “wandered in and there was a little band playing “sort
of trad.” After introducing themselves, they got talking to the
owner Bill Atkinson who ran the Adventurers Club and told him
they were musicians. Bill said “Well would you like to start a
band to play on Sunday. There’s no pay, but it’ll be somewhere
to play.” So they met up with bass-player Denny Olive who
knew a few people around and got in touch with other musicians
(some of whom are with us today) and started playing down at
the Adventurers Club on a Sunday.
Shortly after this The Adventurers Club moved from the original
location at Newstead to a delightful spot right on the river at
Kangaroo Point … which is now better known as the
Brisbane Jazz Club.
At that stage Tony also founded the Pacific Jazzmen. Bruce
Johnson mentions in his Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz,
that the Pacific Jazzmen were “important in maintaining a jazz
presence in Brisbane during a lean period and in becoming the
focus of the Brisbane Jazz Club. Some of the original members
of the Pacific Jazzmen included: Ray Maule (drums), Percy
Cramb (piano), Barry Webb & Len Little (reeds).
In the mid-1970s there was a lot happening jazz-wize in
Brisbane. The Brisbane Jazz Club was up and running, Mileham
Hayes was writing about jazz for the Courier Mail and had
organised an ABC televised gig at the Melbourne Hotel, the
Vintage Jazz Band were playing to packed crowds at the
Twelfth Night Theatre, and Andy Jenner was putting a band
together that he called the Caxton Street Jazz Band.
To top it off, Tony phoned Mileham Hayes to tell him how
much he was enjoying his weekly ABC radio program called
Stomp Off Let’s Go. Tony said to him “Mileham, have you ever
thought of having a jazz convention in Brisbane?” Mileham said
“Well I’ve been thinking about nothing else.” So Tony said
“OK, you be president and I’ll be secretary/treasurer and we’ll
organize it. Mileham said ‘Yep.’ So we sort of picked a list of who
would be a committee.” In the end, after Mileham had prepared
a proposal the likes of which the Jazz Convention Delegates had
never seen before, the 1976 Australian Jazz Convention was
held in Brisbane at The University of Queensland. Tony’s idea
had come to fruition.
At that time Tony was also playing at the Melbourne Hotel for
the ABC TV series On Jazz with musicians such as Bob
Barnard, Graeme Bell, Ken Herron, Bob Watson and Horsley
Dawson with guest stars such as Margaret Roadnight, Charlie
Munro, and Jack Wyard. I mentioned to Tony that the Youtube
video of him playing from this TV series had had a lot of hits.
Tony looked at me, … smiled, and said “I think most of them
are mine.”
There are many more of Tony’s musical exploits such as his
joining the Vintage Jazz Band on board the Minghua Cruise
ship in the early 80s, his leadership of Tich and Tony’s Yerba
Buena Jazz Band in the late 1980s, and after Tich’s death in
1988, the New Yerba Buena Jazz Band. At this stage Tony also
gave up his job as an accountant to become, as he described, “a
full-time, professional, out-of-work jazz musician.”
In later years Tony worked as a freelance musician playing with
some of the best Brisbane jazz artists, many of whom are with
us today. One musician who can’t be here today, Mal Jennings,
has sent this tribute:
Mal says:
“I was so sorry to hear of the death of my
good friend Tony. We had many fun gigs
together and lots of laughs. He truly was a
well-known identity on the Jazz scene and
will be greatly missed by friends and musos
alike. Please accept my condolences.”
Mal Jennings.
If you’d like to hear some more about Tony I’d like to remind to
you that at 6pm you’re all welcome to the Brisbane Jazz Club to
celebrate the life of Tony Ashby RQF, partake in some ho-ho
juice and have an absolutely super time.
Today we’re celebrating Tony’s life.
It’s his time.
He’s done it.
You don’t get a more generous, honest and respected person.
But most of all one thing’s for sure …
In the end Tony Ashby - You made a difference.
