[Dixielandjazz] Graeme Bell

[Steve Voce]

My obituary for Graeme appears in The Independent today. It's been 
edited for space considerations.

Steve Voce
>

The pianist, composer and band leader Graeme Bell was the only 
Australian jazz musician to become well-known in Europe. In 1947 Bell 
and his amiable adventurers had recklessly travelled to ravaged post-war 
Europe to play jazz as the Graeme Bell Australian Jazz Band (always 
firmly insisting on "Australian" in their billing). With no work 
arranged in advance, they spent four and a half months touring in 
Czechoslovakia, where they played at the World Youth Festival in Prague. 
Bell must have been a convincing hustler, for the band was paid to 
record a dozen tracks for the otherwise classical Czech Supraphon label.
On its first trip to England in 1948, the band moved into Humphrey 
Lyttelton's house. Lyttelton, who had never met them before, remarked 
that he "had Australians the way other people had mice." In February 
1948 the band began to play at the Leicester Square Jazz Club. Although, 
like the European jazz bands, the Bell band's rhythm section swung like 
a lead balloon, there was a unique freshness to their music. It was in 
part due to the emancipated nature of their repertoire – which included 
show tunes and folk songs – but also to the more imaginative playing of 
the front line. Bell echoed the work of pianist Jelly Roll Morton in his 
playing, and the horns drew their influences from further afield; they 
had more than a touch of Chicago style.

In those days in Britain serious jazz devotees listened to the music 
quietly, and with reverence. The original function of jazz as dance 
music was out of the question, but under the Bell band's influence 
dancing to jazz began again at the Leicester Square Jazz Club. The 
results were sensational; crowds flocked to see them, and as a result of 
the music's new popularity it became possible for a musician to earn a 
living by playing only jazz, which led eventually led to the great Trad 
boom of the next decade.

The Bell band stayed in London for nearly a year. Bell and Lyttelton 
quickly became friends and when Bell and the band returned to England 
for a more extended stay and tour from autumn 1951 until the spring of 
1952 the two bands combined to record for the Parlophone label. In 
retrospect it's obvious that the Australian free-thinking influenced 
Lyttelton's progress away from traditional New Orleans jazz and into the 
music's mainstream.

Graeme Bell was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1914 and began 
classical piano lessons when he was 11. When he was in his mid-teens his 
trumpet-playing younger brother Roger persuaded him to turn him towards 
jazz. In 1941 the two led a small jazz group in residence at a café in 
Melbourne. By 1943, by now under Graeme's leadership, the band played 
regularly for the Hot Jazz Society of the communist Eureka Youth League 
in the city. By 1947 the band had become nationally known through 
records and broadcasts.

In 1947 Bell made the first tour of Europe and after his return to 
Australia, founded, in 1949, the Swaggie label, which to this day still 
sells jazz albums across the world. Bell – a pioneer in the places he 
played – visited South Korea and Japan in 1954-55 and finally settled in 
Sydney in 1957, where, indulging the first of his many hobbies, he 
opened an art gallery.
Throughout the 1960s he led the Graeme Bell All Stars, which held 
residencies in Sydney and toured nationally and overseas. In 1975 Bell 
established another record label, Sea Horse. In 1993 he returned to 
Britain to be reunited with Lyttelton at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival.

I had first met Bell in 1952, when he gave me a photograph of the band 
which he had signed for me. In 1998 BBC Radio Two produced a two-hour 
programme in celebration of Humphrey Lyttelton's jubilee. In addition to 
the Lyttelton band and its many alumni, Bell took part, being delighted 
when the BBC flew him and his wife first class from Australia. I 
presented the programme, and Bell insisted on signing the original 
photograph once more "...and here we are again, Steve, still going strong."

"Going strong" indeed, for Bell continued travelling and meeting his 
many friends into his nineties. Latterly, following several operations 
on his back, he used a walking frame and a wheelchair in the various 
pubs, but his brain remained as sharp as ever it was and he thoroughly 
enjoyed the final years of a most gregarious life.

In 2008, when he finally gave up playing the piano, in celebration of 
his 94th birthday he returned to his birthplace, Melbourne, to introduce 
a concert made up entirely of his jazz and non-jazz compositions, which 
was later issued on CD.

Bell was made MBE on 1 January 1978 for "valuable service to jazz music" 
and an Officer of the Order of Australia in June 1990 for "service to 
music, particularly jazz." Throughout his career, Bell was renowned for 
treating his musicians with kindness and understanding.

Graeme Emerson Bell, musician: born Melbourne, Australia 7 September 
1914; MBE 1978 married 1942 Margot Bliss (marriage dissolved), 1946 
Elizabeth Watson (one daughter, marriage dissolved) 1961 Dorothy Gough 
(one son); died Sydney 13 June 2012.