3. Vaudeville and Vice
The Australian Jazz Age and its antecedents, respectable banjos, popular modernity, a Hollywood tragedy, and a saxophonist at the heart of a racially-charged international scandal heralding Australia’s inward turn.
Silent films boomed in the aftermath of the Great War, with cinemas attracting more attendees than churches. Wallace Reid, the matinée idol of the silent film era, was well-known to Australian audiences and stars in this 1920 production. He would often incorporate the saxophone into his films, and can be seen doing so here at 20:18. Reid would tragically become the first Hollywood star to succumb to substance abuse, dying from a morphine addiction in 1923.
Paramount Pictures, Excuse My Dust (1920)
The Six Brown Brothers, a Canadian saxophone sextet with comedic stylings, toured Australia in 1924–5 as their worldwide fame waned. They were well known to Australian audiences for their recordings, and through parodies of art music by the likes of Grieg (and, separately, skits mocking the mannerisms of John Philip Sousa) contributed to an ‘oppositional’ culture of the Australian Jazz Age which asserted cultural values from below, rather than above.
Victor 18562.
Six Brown Brothers, Peter Gink (Apologies to Grieg) (1919)
The Six Brown Brothers’ Australian tour spawned local imitators on the vaudeville circuit, most notably the Tom Katz Saxophone Band. Although originally marketed as ‘Masters of Syncopation’, the group’s cosmopolitan and jazz-centred identity would evolve into something more parochial in the late 1920s.
Tom Katz Saxophone Band, Down South Medley (1928)
The twenty-strong Ingenues all-girl band from the US Midwest graced Australian stages across 1928–9. Their performances won praise for their extraordinary versatility – a 12-piece saxophone band could be formed from its members – and ability to maintain their respectability in the face of the ‘flapper’ image that was redefining gender roles across the decade.
The Ingenues, The Band Beautiful (1928)
Following a racially-charged international scandal and the deportation from Australia of members of Sonny Clay’s Colored Idea troupe in early 1928, this piece was recorded and released on the Vocalion label. A saxophonist from the ensemble was mentioned in the press as having been at the centre of the incident, and a saxophone can be heard solo here at 2:04.
Vocalion B15641.
Sonny Clay and His Orchestra, Devil’s Serenade (1928)
The fittingly-named Paul Whiteman was famed for a symphonic form of jazz that found favour with audiences in the 1920s. Whiteman had cancelled a possible 1929 Australian tour to record The King of Jazz sound film, and via the ‘canned method’ Australian audiences were treated to the ‘Melting Pot of Music’ scene (1:24:18), which appropriates the ‘melting pot’ metaphor of New Orleans jazz for an all-white US monoculture. The scene culminates with a craze of synchronised saxophonists, whose instruments serve as a defining acculturative symbol.