RECOLLECTIONS OF THE FOLK BOOM IN PERTH (cont.)

Malcolm J. Turnbull

 

Within a few months, the Shiralee had become the focal point of organised folkmusic in Perth. It was an intimate, if inconvenient, cellar venue which seated around 40 people. Patrons had to grope their way downstairs past the performers to get to tables: the nearest toilets were three floors up. Journalist Tony Thomas profiled the cafe in the local press:

I pushed open the door and the coffee-shop patrons stirred uneasily as an importunate flow of cold air got in first ... Synthetic hurricane lamps eased a mellow, ochre light through the smoke and shade, making friends with the chocolate sideboard, the grandfather clock ticking pendulously against the wall, and the yellow-striped awning under which coffee machines emitted fitful gleams of chrome. Only a bright red advertisement for cigarettes was off key ... The room was packed with the duffle-jacketed young, curiously inanimate. One girl sat still as an artist’s model, her expressionless face sixpence-pale in its frame of long black hair.

    The west corner was the focus of prestige. There sat the entertainers, in manly open-neck shirts or cuddly lambswool pullovers … A young man in brown, forehead gleaming where the hair had receded, rose to prominence. He flapped his right hand on the strings of a banjo while his left strutted bird-like on the fingerboard. He began to sing [‘John Henry’] ... The company looked wholesome: fresh-faced boys, only two with beards; a couple of washed-out businessmen; dulled office-workers such as myself … The audience were not the transistor set, certainly; but neither did they seem particularly protest-minded ... The folksingers sang of bums on the railway (‘Hear the whistle blow-ohhh’) and mournful work-songs (‘Yes I work alla week inna blazing sun’). Cars swished by outside. The yard of the garage opposite was full of the Holdens, Valiants, Datsuns and odd sports cars of the coffee parlour inmates. We drove off along the highway. The muted strains of American ballads followed us a little way [Tony Thomas, ‘Coffee with the Folk Song Set’, undated newspaper clipping, source unknown, courtesy Nick Melidonis]. 

    There appears to have been a quite marked rivalry between the Shiralee and the  Quitapena; a rivalry that extended to the audience at each club. According to Hans Stampfer, the Shiralee attracted a more mature crowd (including the “yuppie element”). The “real folk enthusiasts” went there. The Quitapena was more beatnik-oriented (“girls in skivvies”), “much more a restaurant than the Shiralee”. The WCT had a solid corps of “disciples” in Howard Street while The Twiliters played to an alternative, equally partisan public in Hay Street.

The Twiliters appealed to the teen market ... We were pop-folk singers. They [The WCT] were more up-market, I would have to say more musically sophisticated, but they didn’t have the same raw energy ... generally more in the style of The Wesley Three.

Exclusivity was unsustainable within such a small scene, however, and there was inevitable crossover of performers.  Nor (notes Melidonis) was the W.A. scene ever large or diverse enough to support more than token ethnic vs. commercial factionalism, “tall poppy” targeting (or overt political radicalism). Musically, the most visible demarcation was between rock’n’roll (in one camp) and Folk and Jazz (in the other).

Perth was a country town. University students were relatively subdued. It was a different scene over here. We were so isolated that if anyone ever “made it” over there, they sort of looked up to you rather than scoffed at you.      

    By September 1964, Music Maker was informing its readers that jazz  “as a business” had collapsed in Perth, and many jazz-lovers had become “folk nuts”:

... now that the boot is off the two-beat and on the grass-stomping foot, just about everybody’s strummin’ a guitar or pickin’ at a banjo in the hope that some day they’ll be seated in the bright gloomy corner, breathing soft lyrics into a microphone for an appreciative audience.

The folk scene itself was judged uninspiring. According to Murray Jennings, the rank and file of performers were raw, lacking in training or technique (and frankly) “unready for entertaining”. Jennings conceded some notable exceptions, however.  One was The West Coast Trio. Another was The Yellowstones, a “very smooth trio, two boys and a girl” (Barry Bradbury, Suzanne Brown and Bill Greble), which drew heavily on PP&M (but without “the slickness of the famed trio”) as well as country standards like ‘We’ll Sing in the Sunshine’, ‘Abilene’ and “Wabash Cannonball’. A visiting Englishman, Dave Cole stopped off in Perth long enough to impress audiences at the Quitapena with a mix of folk-hits and lesser-worked material like the black badman ballad ‘Poor Lazarus’, the comic ‘Grandpa’s Grave’, a driving ‘John Henry’, and a sprightly ‘Robin Hood and the Pedlar’. English-born Lindy Leslie performed creditable versions of ‘Bethnal Green’, ‘Waly Waly’ and ‘Four Strong Winds’ and was promoted as Perth’s own Joan Baez. (“Tell you what”, confessed Jennings, “I like Lindy’s work better than I do Baez’s, even though L.L. is inclined to crack at the high ones sometimes”). Inspired by the music of Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, Ray Hoff and Andre de Moller, both veterans of the rock scene, teamed up to cater for hard-core blues fans, and played to packed Thursday night houses at the Quitapena before trying their luck in the east. Local blues harmonica virtuoso Shane Duckham also attracted positive responses on his infrequent returns home from the more lucrative music scenes in the east. Hans Stampfer notes:

Blues people hung out in Malcolm Street. That part of town was a virtual catacombs of seedy people. There was a tremendous amount of posing as to who knew about the true blues greats like Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly, etc. ... De Moller was the quintessential bullshit-artist but he played the guitar very well, Travis and Chet Atkins finger-picking style ... Shane Duckham played blues harp like you wouldn’t believe ... He was cool because he had malnutrition sores.

Other musicians active at the Shiralee, Quitapena and elsewhere in the mid 60s included Melbourne-born Peter Ransom, husband and wife duo Bruce & Romanie, banjoist Lionel Cranfield, another duo Ian & Yvette, stage actors Ross Bar & Gerry Atkinson, Indonesian student Zaid Aliff, singer-monologuist and TV entertainer Peter Harries, Singapore-born Mervyn de Souza (a commercial artist once described as a cross between Cy Grant and Harry Belafonte), Michelle Edwards, Marie Roberts, The Triads, Roslyne Gray (former lead-singer with the pop group The Shamrocks), The Wayfarers (not to be confused with the popular Brisbane group of the same name), the duo Ron Barnett & Cec Kelly, The Wilson Sisters, John Zanden, The Sandgropers, and a solo girl singer named Olga Salverinos (who performed American bluegrass in a voice which sounded like a cross between Skeeter Davis and veteran Ozarks folklorist Almeda Riddle).  For a while, a popular local rock ensemble, The Vagrants, dabbled in pop-folk anthems like ‘Green Green’ in a bid to maximise the group’s appeal (and work options). The Eureka Jug Band briefly combined the talents of jazzman Des Kirk, singers Peter Ransom and Carl Schnoor, and Wilkins and Melidonis of The West Coast Trio.  Rod Popham, a trainee architect at the University of W.A., was an all-round folk-entertainer who combined singing at coffee lounges with folksong recitals for schools on ABC radio, and would later spend several seasons as an entertainer on P&O cruise ships. Popham, who learned to play guitar and banjo as a child, remembers being turned on to folkmusic by hearing a folk group (unnamed) at the Quitapena.

Exposure for local folk artists was provided by the W.A. branch of the A.B.C. (ABW 2)  with two live TV specials, Folk Song, produced by John Tyrrell in August and October 1964. Compere John Joseph Jones was joined by The West Coast Trio, Jean Allen (who sang ‘Dark as a Dungeon’ and ‘Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye’), The Yellowstones and Lindy Leslie. More ambitious was the half-hour Folk Cellar which lasted three series and was compered by actor James Smillie. (Smillie sang ‘Fair and Tender Ladies’ on the first episode). Folk Cellar was set in an imaginary coffee lounge (known as Robbie’s) with students making up the audience. During the boom, groups like The West Coast Trio also found work at Floridata in Wellington Street (Perth’s only real nightclub of the period), on Sundays at the Fox-Hole (a “late night coffee lounge” at the corner of Hay and George Streets), at the Roo on the Roof restaurant in Fremantle, as support acts for visiting celebrities like Johnny O’Keefe or Eartha Kitt; and even for civic functions at Government House.  Folksingers were part of major variety events at the Perth Town Hall or the Supreme Court Gardens (playing to an estimated 6000 listeners at the latter), drew lunchtime audiences to the Playhouse, or took part in the annual Fremantle Spring Festival (most notably a major folk concert, Folk Sing - Folk Song, at Fremantle Town Hall in 1964).  

The Shiralee, which offered a mix of jazz and folk, went so far as to host a modest folk festival, over three consecutive Tuesday nights, in 1966. Unfortunately, the advertised star attraction, Adelaide’s Doug Ashdown, could not make it to Perth, and customer response to the (local) replacement line-up was only “reasonable”.  The club stayed in operation throughout the 60s; although by the end of the decade it was appealing mainly to the jazz crowd and offering folksinging only one night a week. Another basement venue, the Folk Cellar, operated out of a building in Allendale Square for a couple of years. The Red Castle Brewery, an old brewing house near the Causeway, offered regular folk nights in 1965-6. (Members of The Seekers and Peter & Paul of the legendary trio were among visiting celebrities who dropped by and jammed there on occasion).

[continued ... ]