Women’s History Month: Eve Rees and her Merrymakers!

Eve Rees and her Merrymakers were an all-female dance band from Australia. They were very popular, touring extensively in rural and city Australia in the 1920s and to a lesser extent in the 1930s. Despite their popularity, it’s hard to discover much about them. A dodgy Trove search gives only three hits, and much of what I’ve found comes from books. I know! Today is World Book Day, so it’s appropriate It is not actually world book day, but that’s ok – we shouldn’t wait for WBD to read books :D . In fact, this image (of Eve Rees and her Merrymakers, including Grace Funston, Alice Dolphin, Marion de Saxe, Eve Rees (middle aged woman in centre), Stella Funston, Alma Quon, Gwen Mitchell and Lorna Quon) is taken from the book I’m about to discuss.

I totally forgot to do a post yesterday (yeah, yeah, whatever), so today is something special. A dear friend of mine, Corinne, gave me this book a few years ago:

(Sweethearts of Rhythm: the story of Australia’s all-girl bands and orchestras to the end of the second world war by Kay Dreyfus (Currency Press, Sydney, 1999))

It’s all about Australian all-women bands during the wars. The most famous of these sorts of bands is of course the American International Sweethearts of Rhythm. But there were actually heaps and heaps of these all-women bands in Australia and other countries. Mostly because so many men left for war there simply weren’t enough left behind to fill all the bands playing for the hundreds and hundreds of live music venues all over Australia. Remember, dancing was one of the most important popular entertainments during this period.

But all-women bands also served as titillation for male audience members, and initially as novelty acts for the broader community. Despite these issues, there is no doubting the competency of many of the all-women bands during the jazz and swing eras. After all, the mainstream jazz industry neglected 50% of the musicians on the basis of their sex, so 50% of that population were available for work when the labour pool shrunk.

Eve Rees and Merrymakers were one of the better known Australian all-women bands, managed by Rees, a capable and energetic business woman. Dreyfus quotes Alice Dolphin (who went on to lead her own bands):

The Merrymakers’ dance band at that time was extremely popular and I was invited to join them. The leader of the band was Mrs Evelyn Rees, a charming middle-aged woman who was well-liked everywhere we went. She was just ideal for the job.

What a tremendous amount of work we got! Every night, Mayoral balls, Country Women’s Association dances and balls (this of course meant travelling to country towns), Cafes, Lodges, Clubs, Weddings, Birthday parties, Jewish Greek and Chinese dances, Bar Mitzvahs, twenty first birthday parties and just parties, Military and Air Force dances and receptions of all kinds.

There’s more to be read about the Merrymakers in Dreyfus’ book, and I recommend picking it up.

References
You can read about the popularity of cinema and dancing in: Matthews, JJ, Dance Hall & Picture Palace : Sydney’s Romance with Modernity, (Sydney: Currency Press, 2005).

The Jeannie On Jazz blog proved useful in putting together this post.

Dreyfus has also written ‘The Foreigner, the Musicians’ Union, and the State in 1920s Australia: A Nexus of Conflict’ an interesting article about the role of the musicians’ union in the banning/boycotting of ‘foreign’ (ie non-British, ie non-white) musicians. This of course is relevant to recent talk about the Sonny Clay band and its role in provoking the ban on black musicians. And the Sonny Clay band was mentioned in the latest (third) episode of the Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ abc tv series set in the 1920s.

Cycling in Ashfield

To whom it may concern,

As we all know, Ashfield’s main shopping strip down Liverpool Road favours the pedestrian, and parking a car is not for the faint of heart. I ride a bicycle and walk through Ashfield every day, grocery shopping and running errands.

When I ride my bike, I like to lock it up just outside the shop or business I’m patronising. It’s safest for my bike to be parked in a well-trafficked, highly visible public place. But it also needs to be somewhere it won’t impede pedestrians. It needs to be attached to a high, stable, secure structure that won’t damage it or break easily.

At the moment there is only one bike ‘loop’ in the little alcove near the Commonwealth bank atm, at the front of the Ashfield Mall. Bike loops look like this:

(source)

There is a bike ‘rack’ attached to the wall, but this rack is often full of bikes, and is – more importantly – not kind to my bike. Inserting the front wheel of a bike into the ‘slot’ is a good way to buckle your tire – the weight of your bike, knocked or pushed or falling to one side – will cause the tire (gripped by the rack) to bend. So I avoid this type of bike rack. This rack also requires either an exceptionally long bike lock, or a willingness to lock only your front tire to the rack. I like my entire bike to still be there when I return with my groceries, and my bike lock is, sadly, only of ordinary length.

We really need new bike racks in the Ashfield shopping area. The huge, barren, concrete wasteland in front of the new Council building would be an excellent place for a series of bike ‘loops’, or even – most excitingly! – some well-designed bike racks which could serve as public art as well practical tools for encouraging motorists off the road and onto their bikes. Luckily, the Powerhouse Museum has already conducted a competition for well-designed bike racks.
I am particularly fond of this one, and think it would be the perfect way to populate that space I mentioned:

(Chris Smith and Toby McInnes’ entry ‘Quale’; source)

I await your response to my suggestion with great anticipation,

Yours sincerely,
dogpossum,
Ashfield home owner and resident,
Cyclist.

[I’m experimenting with form and tone.]

Women’s History Month: Susie Edwards!

I’m a big fan of hokum, mostly because I’m a big fan of clowning for its subversive power, and I love blues sung by arse kicking women. Susie Edwards (née Hawthorne) was one half of the husband and wife team ‘Butterbeans and Susie’, performing with her husband Jodie Edwards on stage, in vaudville, theatre and records. Riverwalk Jazz did a fun radio program about them a little while ago, and you can learn more about them there.

My favourite Butterbeans and Susie song is ‘Papa Ain’t no Santa Claus (and mama ain’t no christmas tree)’:

(Papa Ain’t No Santa Claus (Mama Ain’t No Christmas Tree))

The duo also recorded ‘He Like It Slow’ with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five in 1926.

Women’s History Month: Una Mae Carlisle

One of my absolute favourite singers, Carlisle has brilliant timing, really adding a good, solid swing to the small groups she worked with. Apparently Fats Waller ‘discovered’ her (well, I imagine Carlisle was a bit like America – there long before some man realised she existed), but the two share a nuanced musical sensitivity.

You can see her singing and playing the piano in this clip (sorry, I don’t know any more about this little film than this):


(I’m A Good Good Woman – Una Mae Carlisle)

This 1938 song Don’t Try Your Jive On Me is bit more fun.

Women’s History Month: Bessie Smith!

Composer, musician, singer, EXTREME BADARSE PERFORMER. There are dramatic stories about Smith seeing off violent white men in her tent shows, about her numerous lovers of both sexes, and about her violent death. My favourite is the one about working with a young Louis Armstrong, where she demanded that he play a little less enthusiastically as he was cramping her style. I have no idea whether it’s true or not. But the influence of Smith’s performing style on instrumentalists like Armstrong should not be underestimated.

Bessie Smith performing ‘You gotta give me some’, accompanied by Clarence Williams and Eddie Lang in 1929

Women’s History Month: Clora Bryant!

Another suggestion from a friend. Again, I’d never heard of Clora Bryant before she was recommended by the Buggzor (herself a brass instrumentalist of Repute). But now I have.

Clora Bryant was born in 1927 and is a trumpeter. She played with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and you can listen to her play a bunch of nice songs in this video Clora Bryant /Gal With A Horn 1957:

(Photo at the top of this post taken by Loomis Dean in 1954, and lifted from the Life Magazine collection on google)

Women’s History Month: Billie Holiday!

(image by Gjon Mili in 1943, New York, from the Google Life Magazine collection

Happy International Women’s Day! Today I’m doing Billie Holiday, even though she’s hardly an unknown, because she is my favourite.

Billie Holiday, singer, actress, performer.

(Billie Holiday – The Blues Are Brewin’)

Happy International Women’s Day: equity and inclusiveness can be easy

As you may or may not know, I’m teaching lindy hop with a female friend. That means that the students have two female teachers, one leading and one following. So far it hasn’t seemed to make any difference to their learning or relationship with us – beginners are too busy worrying about their feet to actually notice that the leader teacher has boobs. One of the nicest parts about our class has been that we see regular women leaders and a male follower – all very serious about learning.

One of the things we worried about when we started planning classes which welcomed – normalised! – female leads, male follows and generally genderflexed approaches to dance roles was how we’d handle some problems. We welcome women who don’t feel comfortable dancing with men (for whatever reason), and we also welcome men who’d rather dance with men. But we weren’t sure how we’d make clear who was leading, who was following, and who wanted to dance with whom.

My first instinct is ‘everyone dance with everyone else – we’re a safe, welcoming place’, but I also understand that many women simply don’t feel safe or ok being touched by men. And that some men would really rather dance with other men, because the opportunities to social dance like this with other men are so few and far between. So how were we to accomodate all these variations in partnering?

Well, we haven’t solved those particular problems (we are currently just encouraging everyone and hopefully modelling a dancing partnership where each partner is treated with respect, and dancers learn to touch in a respectful way), but other problems have turned up. For as long as I’ve been leading, I’ve never been in a class where no one has remarked on the fact that I’m a woman leading (rather a man). Until this past weekend at the Sweet n Hot workshops, where nobody commented, and even I forgot that I was doing something unusual. Until I had to ask (reluctantly, and with trembling-scardycatness) for the teachers to use gender neutral pronouns because I was getting confused. Generally, though, I’m placed in a position where I have to respond to endless, endless comments about the fact that I’m a woman. I’ve always replied with lighthearted explanations.

I suspect that the students in our classes have had similar experiences. We usually mention the fact that we welcome students in either role, though we are still figuring out a way to do this that doesn’t imply that male leaders and female followers were/are ‘normal’, because they have always been just one option of many. But students are obviously still dealing with curious comments.

I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks, though, that the students have figured out their own solution. They just write ‘leader’ or ‘follower’ on their name tag, underneath their name. Simple, and effective. Why haven’t I ever thought of that? #doofus

Happy International Women’s Day! Some problems need big, complicated, difficult solutions. But others just need a little practical thinking.

Women’s History Month on Riverwalk Jazz

How perfect! The Riverwalk Jazz radio show has a Women’s History Month special on women in jazz this month: Blues Queens, Cakewalkin’ Babies & Songbirds: A Riverwalk Jazz Salute to Women’s History Month.

The radio show blurb reads:

To honor National Women’s History Month, vocalist and actor Carol Woods joins The Jim Cullum Jazz Band to salute leading women in early jazz. …This week on Riverwalk Jazz, Carol Woods portrays women who were seminal figures in jazz with dialogue based on their first-person accounts, and presents important songs from their careers.