These photographs were taken in a city jazz – folk club, which one I’m not sure.  In 1970?
Frank wasn’t expecting me (well, he was but he’d forgotten. I had asked if I could photograph him some days before) and he said he was happy to help a photography student.
But hang on, he just needed to change his shirt. He didn’t have a spare one, somebody from the office lent him the shirt, it was way too long on the sleeves, and he looks awkward and anxious but I couldn’t say that. So I told him to sit down and relax, take off the trad jazz bow tie.


The next few images were much better.


The HIS sign must have had a matching HERS somewhere, but I remember the male toilets were off the main performance space and during the night there was always a distracting queue of guys going to the toilets in the performance space.

I’m not sure I really liked Dixieland Jazz but it was what you went out to, if it wasn’t folk. Neither of them were threatening. I started taking pictures of some of the Melbourne pop performers. I remember small halls in Mt. Waverley where I photographed Bobby and Laurie and Normie Rowe but I can’t find those negatives. Handheld, available light, so maybe they weren’t any good.

And there’s this lovingly compiled history of the early Melbourne Jazz ‘sound’ which includes Frank Traynor and Ade Monsbourgh who I wrote about in the Shirley Jacobs story.