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Interview
summary
Interviewee:
Harry
Kay
Interviewer:
Keith
McKenry
This was a whole-of-life
interview. It was conducted at
Harry's home at 24 Katherin Rd Baulkham Hills on 17 March
2004.
The notation "Cont." in the subject listing indicates that the theme
from the previous track carries over into the current track. Where material appears in italics this
normally signifies input from the interviewer.
Brief Synopsis of Subject matter
Family background
Migration to Australia
Parents' marriage break-up
Living in a Boys' Home
Learning the mouth organ
Apprenticeship as electrical fitter
Colour blindness
Eureka Youth League
Communist Party
New Theatre
The Bushwhackers
Reedy River Play
The Bush Music Club
The Rambleers
Unity Singers
Learning instruments and teaching them
Playing classical guitar
Marriage to Ann
Key personalities
John Meredith
Chris Kempster
Alex Hood
Bill Scott
Alan Scott
Brian Loughlin
Edgar Waters
Jack Barrie
Barbara Lisyak
Denis Kevans
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Tape TRC 5101/1 lof 5
Recorded 17 March
2004
Minute
Subject
·
Tape identification, intro.
·
Harry was born in Leeds, Yorkshire.
Harry's uncle (mother's brother) came out to Australia and after he'd
been here for a while he wrote home suggesting others come out too. Harry's mother was keen to come. The brother convinced his parents to
come, and they came out a little earlier than Harry's parents. Harry was born on 23 July 1927. He has a sister Bess was born on 23 June
and was about 8 years older than Harry.
·
Harry also has a brother Fred, 2 and a half years younger than him, and a
brother Tom two years younger than him.
Harry's family came out to Sydney when he was about 2 years old. Harry's uncle and grandfather had
started a poultry farm out at Glenfield near Liverpool and they were settled
there. Harry's
father
3
...... was in the engineering trade. They hit the Depression, and lived in
Bexley for a while, and his father eventually managed to get a job with the
Newcastle steelworks and lived there alone for a period while his wife and kids
stayed in Bexley, visiting occasionally.
They went up in the boat to visit and ...
4
... Harry and his brothers got very seasick. Later they visited by train, and later
went up there to live, leaving Bexley just after Harry turned six. They lived in Douglas Rd Stockton. Harry's parents had troubles when he was
young, and they broke up. Firstly
his mother took them and they lived up in Carrington.
·
Harry started school in Stockton.
Harry's mother's story was that his father would come up to Carrington
and shine a torch in the window, to see if she was with some other bloke or
something. His father's story
however is that...
·
... his mother eventually took the kids to his dad and said, "Here, take
your bloody kids." So they started living with their father, the elder sister
acting as a mother/cook. At one
stage Harry's father had been living in a different flat to his mother, and
Harry had gone to see his father there.
He heard this beautiful music coming over the wireless and his father
said it was a mouth organ. Harry
said he'd like to play that instrument.
·
Some time after then, when they were living at Stockton his father
brought home a mouth organ and he played 'God Save the King' on it. He said, 'Now you have a go.' His father
could play a bit obviously, but Harry never knew how much
and
never saw him play anything else. He wasn't that musically inclined.
His hobby ...
8
... however was making wirelesses.
And he was one of the first wireless makers. He gave the mouth organ to Harry and he
played around with it. They were in
Newcastle for about three years...
·
....and then his father came back to Sydney, bringing the kids. His mother came back to Sydney some time
after. His father got a j oh with a
small arms factory at Lithgow and he had to find somewhere to put the kids - he
wouldn't give them over to Harry's mother of course. So his put the kids in the Church of
England Boys' Homes in Pennant Hills Rd at Carlingford. The Homes are now a Mormon
Temple.
10
... It's a lot different to what it was. It wasn't long after Harry went there
that he had his 1 llh birthday.
When they had gone back to Sydney they lived at
Bexley,
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off Stony Creek Rd on Preddy's Rd. So his father must have been doing
other jobs. So Harry got up to 4 h
class in school at Bexley. That was
around 1938.
1 1 When his
father got a job at Lithgow that's when he had to find somewhere to put the
kids. From Bexley he got a home for
Tommy at Normanhurst, but it wasn't very good and he took Freddy and Harry over
to the Church of England Boys Home.
Harry turned 1 1 soon after going to the Boys Home. Were you Church of England? "Yes, 1 imagine that was the family
religion." But his father really was an atheist, and so was
Harry.
12
Harry can't recall his mother's religion. Harry's dad was Labor Party, a definite
socialist. He also was in the early
Communist Party. At Stockton,
Harry's mum...
13
... had got interested in another member of the Party, and started
mucking about with him, and that's what broke the family up. She was a Party member too, as was
Harry's uncle Fred. They were all
that way inclined, to the left. In
the Boys Home different church groups would come out and take the boys on a
picnic, and....
14
... one group would come out once a year and give everybody in the homes
a present. And by a fluke of fate
the present Harry got was a mouth organ.
The other ones he'd had had worn out and been forgotten about by
then. So he started again, and this
time he started learning tunes. The
first tune he learned was 'God Save the King'. And then he learned many, many
tunes. He was
self-taught.
1 5
It was the ordinary ten hole mouth organ. They are limited in their range and so
you can only play certain things.
At the end of 1942 he finished third year. In the meantime his father had left
Lithgow and became a government inspector for the Air Force and he had to pass
all the stuff before it could be sent to the Air Force. He
was...
16
... transferred to Brisbane.
While Harry was in the homes the War was on, and Harry made 22 camouflage
nets for the armed forces. So he
did his bit for the War effort when he was in his early
teens.
1 7 Harry left
school at the end of 3d year. Harry
reckoned he wanted to be a marine engineer, but his father wrote back saying
there wasn't a great deal of engineering in Brisbane, not like down south, so it
would be hard to get a job in the
engineering trade. But
it would be OK in the electrical trade, if he became something like an
electrical fitter.
1 8 Harry
thought this was a good idea, but actually it was a terrible idea because Harry
is colour blind - which has caused big problems since. His dad got him a job in a transformer
place but they wouldn't apprentice him.
So his father got him a job as an apprentice at the Sidchronome
Electrical company in Brisbane and they made electric clocks. The colours weren't the best in those
days and this caused Harry some problems.
He can tell certain colours - blue, for example -
but..
1 9
... when you come to any mixture like pink, violet, mauve, they all
appear blue to him. You could kill
yourself as an electrician not knowing the colours of the wires, so it was a bad
choice of profession. But Harry,
while he occasionally did electrical jobs, mainly worked at engineering-type
tasks such as making gears and assembling the clocks.
20
Harry arrived in Brisbane when he was around 15 and a half years old, and
started his apprenticeship when he was old enough, ie 16. Harry lived with his dad in a suburb
called The Valley, where the trams used to come past all
night
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and keep you awake. He
lived there for a couple of years and then his father had to come back to
Sydney. Harry
had...
2 1
... to stay in Brisbane until he finished his apprenticeship. He sometimes came
down to Sydney in his holidays to see his family, and in 1948 he rode
a pushbike from Brisbane to Sydney.
It took five and a half days.
22
While in Brisbane the issue of joining the union came up, and Harry
thought of joining the Electrical Trades Union. But his father was in the Amalgamated
Engineering Union (AEU) and he found out that union also covered
electricians. So Harry joined that
union to be in the same one as his father.
His younger brothers also came up to Brisbane while he was there with his
father, and they were put in a home there.
23
In Brisbane one of Harry's hobbies was riding the
pushbike.
24
While in Brisbane he did play the mouth organ a bit. He joined the Eureka Youth League. Every week the apprentices had an
afternoon a week at the technical college, and there Harry met a bloke who
invited him to the EYL.
25
Harry went along, and played his mouth organ at the EY-L, and became a
table tennis expert. And they did
shows and Harry started acting in plays and playing the
harmonica.
26
The EYL came out of the communist party but was a separate
organisation. And they'd have a
holiday camp out at Southport for a couple of weeks. Mainly social, but left
wing.
27
Harry was in the EYL cricket team and playing table tennis, and
cycling. Harry was left in Brisbane
after his father went back to Sydney.
He boarded with a lady for a while then went over to the West
End.
28
Harry became good chums with Alec Forrester at the EYL. Harry went to the pictures a hell of a
lot, and would stay in the theatre all day. He was lonely he supposes, although
mainly before he was in the EYL.
29
Some in the EYL were not socialist-minded. It was a pretty open organisation. In 1948 Harry did a lot of cycling and
rode to towns a couple of hundred miles around Brisbane and then he and a friend
decided to ride down to Sydney and stay with Harry's sister Bessie. This was in 1948 and Harry still had 6
months of his apprenticeship to go.
30
After staying with sister Bessie over the Christmas holidays Harry went
back and finished his apprenticeship and then came down to Sydney and lived for
a few weeks with sister Bessie. And
the first place he went to get known was the EYL in the
city.
3 1
At the EYL he spoke to the secretary and he offered Harry a room at his
place. And for a few years he lived
all over Sydney at different places.
And of the people he'd met in Brisbane was a chap called Kevin Loughlin,
who was Brian Loughlin's brother.
32
And Brian Loughlin was someone he met in Brisbane at the EYL. Harry also used to know Bill Scott
through the EYL, and Alan Scott was his brother, so Harry vaguely got to know
Alan Scott before he left Brisbane.
In Sydney then, he had many jobs - he worked at STC (Standard Telephones
and Cables) and a transformer works somewhere -
33
He had always to find electrical sorts of jobs with engineering. He was an electrical fitter so he had to
find jobs where you didn't go out on the job to houses,but rather he looked for
manufacturing type jobs. So he was
virtually a
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fitter and turner, and so over the years he changed his trade over to
fitting and turning. The EYL met at
40 Market St Sydney.
34
Then Harry also got involved with the New Theatre, which also was
strongly influenced by the Communist Party. It was in Castlereagh St. Harry was keen
on acting and was in different plays in the New Theatre. Then Brian Loughlin came down to Sydney
and so Harry struck up with him again.
And the EYL had these youth camps at Springwood in the holidays, and
Brian was very involved with these, as was Harry and they became good
mates.
35
The EYL had people up to around 25, some might have been older, but it
was mainly a youth organisation.
Harry was in his early 20s.
He turned 21 six months after returning to Sydney.
36
Brian and Harry built toilets together at the Springwood camps - building
great holes with a round thing on top.
They'd all sit there and be social - a bloke would sit on this one, and
another on that one and there were no partitions in between so they'd talk and
it was very social. Harry thinks
they put walls between the ladies ones - possibly for 'good
manners'.
37
They also built a huge swimming pool. They'd go up at weekends as well as
holidays, and they'd sing all the way up in the train, and Harry would play the
harmonica a bit too. They sang all
sorts of songs, including traditional trade union songs and that sort of
thing. Can't remember them exactly,
what they were.
3 8 Harry
became the ambulance officer at the camp, and joined the St John Ambulance
Brigade, and looked after any camper that hurt themselves, bandaging them
up. He even gave people stitches on
occasion. And at the EYL camp he
met Chris Kempster. Harry was
playing the mouth organ a lot, and Chris played the guitar, so they got together
quite a lot. And while they were
there John Meredith used to ...
39
... come up the EYL camps and he started on the button accordion. So John and Harry would get together at
the camps and play together, and Chris would join in too. So the three of them really started
learning to play at the EYL camps.
Brian wasn't in this musical scene, but he was another friend of
theirs. Then one
day..
40
... John Meredith and Brian Loughlin went down to Holbrook where John had
relations. While they were down
there one of the relatives brought out this stick with the bottle tops on. "It was a copy of an instrument from the
British army bands called the Jingling Johnny apparently. And this was the Australian outback
version of it, all bottle tops." They called it the 'Lagerphone'. And somebody there had this empty tea
case with a string on it and a stick, which was plucked
and...
41
... they called it the 'Bush Bass'.
Jack Barrie and John Meredith and Brian Loughlin had started living at
Heathcote, and they started playing together. They all had their own small huts - sort
of houses - down there. Harry used
to go and visit them there.
42
John played the button accordion, Jack played the bush bass and Brian
played the lagerphone. They had
started playing together, and Harry wasn't aware of this initially. Then one day Harry was in the city and
went into the EYL and "Chris Kempster was there and he said, 'I want to see
you', and he grabbed me and he said...
43
... we're forming a group called a bush band. 1 think he actually called
it the Bushwhackers Band..... Apparently theyhad performed at Hurstville. Chris Kempster had joined in with the
guitar and the other three. So
those four had
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started it, you see. And
he said, 'You play the mouth organ and the others want you to come along and
join us. So that was the beginning
of the five us. We became the
Bushwhackers Band."
44
Harry doesn't remember ever seeing the band perform as a threesome before
they had Chris with them. They had
been practising together for a short time, because they all lived together in
these huts. And then they got
together with Chris. There was some
big union meeting like a state conference or something, and they went to it out
there at Hurstville to play for them.
And that started the idea.
"I think they must have only done one performance before they decide
'we'd better get on to Harry Kay.
He plays the mouth organ."
45
The band was then booked all over Sydney. They were going for quite a while then
Alan Scott came down to Sydney and he joined them. He was playing the
4
snoz-whiz' - the nose whistle.
46
The Bushwhackers were performing all over the place, and then eventually
the New Theatre in Sydney discovered this play Reedy River which had been performed in
Melbourne. Then they decided that
the Bushwhackers, combined into it, would be good. So the band joined into Reedy River, and
Ces Grivas who they happened to know- Harry thinks he was an EYL member too - he
was a good singer and an actor, and he played the part of the swagman. So he got involved with the
Bushwhackers, too. So they were
doing shows all over Sydney, different organisations were booking them for
concerts everywhere. It was
voluntary work.
47
They were having the fun of their lives. Then Alan Scott came down from
Brisbane. And a friend of Harry's
called Laurie Norris he played the violin and Harry played with him a lot too,
but that was separate from the Bushwhackers.
48
After they had been performing Reedy River at the New Theatre in
Castlereagh St - it had broken all records. The Bushwhackers all played parts, not
just as a band. Harry was a
shearer, John Meredith was a shearer, and the best acting Harry ever did in his
life, they were standing there and ...
49
.... the others are drinking a glass of beer, and Brian passes a glass of
beer to Harry and he has to drink it.
"And I've always said that the best acting I've ever done in my life is
to drink beer and pretend that 1 liked it.
Because 1 hate the dammed stuff. 1 can't stand the taste of it! That and Marmite, or Vegemite." Then
they started getting booked to perform the play in different areas, and the
Bushwhackers Band separately started performing all over the
place.
50
Who made the bookings for the
band? 1 don't know, 1 think John Meredith, mainly. "He was more-or-less the boss of the
show." While they did get together for rehearsals sometimes, a lot of it was
'rehearsals on the way and things like that'.
51
The sold the Castlereagh St hall or something, and the waterside workers
had rooms down towards the Quay,
and Reedy River was then done there, and they
52
... started then performing it in different areas as well as the main
performance down at the Waterside Workers' Hall. Some of the actors were different. They did start performing it up at
another hall in Kings Cross at one stage, too. And while they were doing the
performances at the Waterside Workers Hall the also went out and did a
performance out at Blacktown or somewhere.
And Alec Hood happened to come along to a performance, and he saw the
show and loved it so much and wanted to join the band. He couldn't play any instrument, and so
they
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53
....started him off and he leant to play the bones. Then later of course he leant the guitar
and became a fantastic guitarist.
So the band got larger, with eight people involved. They performed as a band for quite a
while, 'and then found it was getting too much for us. Too many jobs for us. We were getting asked to do this and
that, and we were going to work during the day and it was getting too much for
us and so we decided - 1 don't know whether it was John's idea or what - we
decided to start a club...
54
... to teach other people how to perform these songs for people." John
Meredith all the time was involved in collecting Australian folklore. They used to go around collecting -
Sally Sloane for instance, they collected a lot of songs off her. "I'd go with him occasionally and we'd
be interviewing these people and they'd be singing the old songs, the old
country songs they knew, you know - shearer's songs and that sort of thing - and
we'd record them. And this became
part of our repertoire - we built it up." We were studying the Australian
history, musically. The Australian
folk history - we got involved with Henry Lawson things, and all
that.
55
"A lot of it was to fight the strong American influence that was coming
in. We were trying to show 'this is
Australia, you know'. You can see
how we got beat, cos there's no such thing as a 'bloke' any more, they're all
'guys' and so on. 1 wrote a song about that actually."
End of tape.
Tape TRC 5101/2 Tape 2 of 3
·
Tape identification. Alec
Hood played the bones at first.
They took Reedy River out to the people, performing the play at various
locations.
1.
It was on one such occasion that Harry's future wife, Anne Louise Jones,
a young girl of 15, came out and saw the show. Her mother's boyfriend, who was living
with her mother, was also involved with the show somehow. They brought Ann along to see the show,
Harry thinks at a performance out at Blacktown.
2.
Somehow on that occasion Harry got to meet Ann Jones. Another group that was formed around
that time that they were part of, and which Ann's mother was part of, was the
Unity Singers (or some name like that).
It was a choir and they'd sing Australian songs. Harry was in it, but not very
strongly. But it was through that
choir...
3·
... that Harry got to know Arm.
And gradually they got together, and hit it off well even though she was
a lot younger than Harry. On one
occasion, at a big dinner or something, Harry and Ann got together and Harry was
about to take Ann home in a taxi when her brother Paul, who was also present,
jumped in the back as well. He
didn't want Harry taking her home alone.
4·
They eventually decided to get married, and because Ann was under age -
about 15 and a half - they had to get legal permission. They got married in a registry office at
Hurstville. Harry was going on 27
at the time. And this year it's
their 50,h wedding anniversary, on the 27h of August.
5·
The Unity Singers, or whatever it was called, had a lot of people in
it. They started doing things all
over, wherever they were invited.
6·
Harry had joined the Communist Party fairly early on, around when he
returned to Sydney. As a result of
being in the EYL he had met somebody who was in the Party and they got him into
it.
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7
When Harry's father moved out to Jannalli-way, at Oyster Bay, Harry
stayed with him and lived with him at times. And Harry became the President of a
local branch of the Communist Party at that time. Harry was also involved with the AEU
union, and would go to that every week or every fortnight.
8
Describe a typical lBranch meeting
oft the Party. They'd just
discuss the things happening in different unions, or locally, and they'd try to
influence people, and they were advocating socialism - that seemed to be the
right thing at the time and Bob Menzies wanted to ban the Communist Party and so
that united them.
·
Harry got booked by the police for sticking a bill against Menzies on a
post. He can't remember now but
thinks he got a small fine, about 2 pounds perhaps. Harry used occasionally to stand on a
street corner at Hurstville selling Tribunes. The Party wasn't dictatorial but rather
was extremely democratic.
10
The Party was definitely working class, fighting against the boss. With the unions. The Waterside Workers for instance were
very socialist-inclined.
1 1 When at the
pictures for example you were expected to stand for "God Save the Queen" Harry
would stand, it was more manners than anything. But they never worshipped the Queen or
anything like that at Party meetings - because they were in favour of getting
rid of sovereignty and wanted government by the working class. They were behind the Labor Party to a
great extent, like a leftwing of the Labor Party.
12
Can only vaguely remember the Queen came out in 1954. Didn't pay any attention to that, but he
remembers going to see the Queen when his wife and he went to England on a
holiday. This was about 1992. Surprised Harry had time for a choir, given the Bushwhackers and work
and everything else. "Well, 1
didn have a nervous breakdown at one stage. 1 was going to different meetings
all over the place, and there was the Bushwhackers and all those sort of things,
and...
1 3
... and naturally it took it out of you. He'd met Ann and they were just married
and trying to make a home as well.
They were boarding out Hurstville way in a couple of rooms in the front
of a place that used to be a chicken hatchery, and a knock on the window, and
it's Chris Kempster outside, saying "We've got a job to do. Get ready." It was early in the
marriage, and they had a young son too.
14
... so it was a hectic life.
So eventually they had to drop out of that sort of thing. The Bushwhackers made a lot of
recordings on Wattle.
1 5
Comments that a later Melbourne band called themselves the Bushwackers
and stole a lot of their thing.
They made a lot of records and people often said they knew the
Bushwhackers but it wasn't us it was them.
Harry sang the lead on some of the songs in the
Bushwhackers.
16
They were making all these records, and around about that time they were
performing so much Harry had a nervous breakdown, and the burden of performance
was weighing on all of them. There
was a performance for Mary Gilmore, and much later even had a meeting with Larry
Adler.
17
Anyway, the bushwhackers got together and decided they had too much work
to do and they said they should start a club and teach other people how to play
these instruments, and they could have Bushwhacker bands all over the
country. That was the idea. And so that was the beginning of forming
the Bush Music Club. The first
shared a hall...
1 8
... with June Dally
Watkins or someone, a lady who was into ladies clothing,
somewhere in Castlereagh St, and they did alternate bookings. And one day they
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both turned up so they combined and played for them while they did
their thing. That hall was
unsatisfactory, so they found a hall over at North Sydney, and they went for 3
or 4 years there.
1 9
And John Meredith and Alan Scott then wanted to break the Bushwhackers
group
up and just play as the Bush Music Club. The Band was too much for them and so it
was sort of dissolved. But Chris
Kempster and Harry Kay and Alex Hood they wanted to go on, they were having a
great time with performing and thought they were doing well. So we decided we'd play together. At this time Edgar Waters was an
influence on us too, and one night we went to a place to discuss it, and Edgar
Waters was there and Alex and Chris, and they decided they would continue
on.
20
People complained because they had started performing and they still
called themselves the Bushwhackers.
Alan Scott especially complained, saying 'You aren't the Bushwhackers',
so they were talking to Edgar Waters about it and they thought they should get a
different name. And Edgar Waters
started reading out a Henry Lawson poem, and the poem goes something like, "we
are the rambleers, the rollicking ramblers" and Alec looked around at Harry and
Harry looked back at Alec, and ...
2 1
... Alec said, 'Do you think we should call ourselves the Rambleers?' And
that's more or less what Edgar obviously had in mind. And so from then on they decided to call
themselves The Rambleers. And they
started singing the Australian songs everywhere. And folk music was going on in the world
- there was Pete Seeger over in America, and there was big movements about 'folk
songs'. And negro spirituals was
very important in it. So they were
singing the Australian songs but then they broadened their horizons and they
used to have meetings down at Barbara Lisyak's place and they'd sing there and
Barbara sing and they got her in with them and ...
22
... later on another chap called Denis Kevans he came into it, and so the
five of them formed a group which was more a singing group but they still played
the instruments. Harry sang The Old Bark Hut on a record, and they
made records. And so they became as
popular eventually as the Bushwhackers Band. And meanwhile the Bush Music Club was
still going, and they decided...
23
... to get a band, and they started to call themselves The Bushwhackers -
which was wrong - they stopped up from doing that and then they started doing
that and they had Jan-de Carlin in it and he wasn't one of the original
Bushwhackers at all. But they were
stil ldoing a good job,doing what had to be done,popularising the Australian
folk songs. And then the Bush Music
Club lost the rooms they had over there on the north side, and they eventually
got a hut down ...
24
....near Marrickville - there's a lot of huts down there, used to be old
army huts. And the Bush Music Club
got entrenched there. Did the Rambleers go to Bush Music Club meetings? Yes, we went to club meetings, on
and off. They were part of the Club
still.
25
One night they were at the Club and had their baby Peter in a basket, and
Chris Kempster trod on him. Can you recall there being a meeting where
the Bushwhackers formally broke
up? "I think that might have
been one of the meetings when we were over in the hall.
...
26
....I think 1 remember we got together and got a sort of a meeting, but
I'm very vague about it." The decision was to stop and just continue on as the
Bush Music Club. There was a lot of
hard feeling about it at the time.
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27. There was a
lot of bad feeling in the early stages of the Bush Music Club between different
people. Did the Rambleers get paid for their
perfonnances? 1 don't know. We
might have been paid something for some performances but it wasn't a general
thing, definitely not.
28
We were in the folk music movement, and we for the workers of the world -
the working class - and they wanted to spread our influence as a working
class. Harry can't remember the
exact time the Rambleers kept performing.
"We did go for quite a while."
29
Then Chris Kempster and Alex they both developed and both were performing
by themselves.
End of tape.
Tape TRC 5101/3 Tape 3 of 3
·
"at sort of bloke was Merro? That's hard to say. He was very engrossed in what he was
doing, which was collecting the music. 1 went with him collecting music at
times, from people like Sally Sloane.
1 He
was very much engrossed in it. He
was a bit bossy in a way. He
considered he was right all of the time.
He took us forward with the formation of the Bush Music Club. His way was the way then, but it was
just that we wanted to go on singing. Who
were his close friends? As far
as 1 know, we were.
·
Him and Jack Barrie and Brian Loughlin built these separate huts out
there at Heathcote, and they were close friends as far as 1 know. Even when Meredith moved to Balmoral
...
3
....Alan Scott followed him to the area. Alan Scott followed John Meredith quite
a lot. When he first came down
Harry thinks he wrote to John Meredith first. Meredith had said, 'This is Alan Scott
and he is going to be in the Bushwhackers.
That's how it happened as far as 1 know.'
4
Meredith was strict in how he wanted the songs performed, he was the boss
to some extent. And he was the
collector, and he wanted to put them over how he thought they should be. He didn't sing much himself, certainly
not on the Wattle records.
·
He was the leader of the group and he played the music. He was wrapped up in the button
accordion and the collecting of the songs and the history of them, that was his
interest. Was there much of anideological push
behind the Bushwhackers? I
think it was partly to show the people of Australia that they have their own
songs. See, wireless had been
invented, and most of the stuff people were singing was stuff that came from
America, overseas stuff and that.
And so our main...
6 ...
thing was to show that there's Australian stuff, why be copying the yanks all
the time, why can't we sing our own songs?
That was the motive in collecting them, and going back and teaching
Australians their history through the songs, cos the songs do show you the
history, what's happening in the shearing sheds and things like that. That's probably what his motive
was. At that time all the popular
songs were American songs.
7 Do you recall as the Bushwhackers ever
having a meeting or a conference to discuss what you were doing and why you were doing
it? Oh yeah, we did often, we
had our meetings and our discussions and that sort of thing. That's how the Bush Music Club came to
be formed, really. We were all in
agreement about that sort of business.
8 The
greatest curse these days is television, cos it's changed our language. Nobody says anything is 'good' anymore,
they say it's 'fine'. Sing us the bit you can remember o the song you've written. "Why can't we be fair dinkum
Aussies, a bloke
is a bloke please don't call him a guy...
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... and if it is made in Australia, it is surely the best one to
buy. Now a girl should be just
called a shiela, not a chick, or a hen, or a bird, and let us put our rubbish in
the garbage, to put it in a trash can is absurd."
10 Was there any discussion in the Bushwhackers
about Marxism, or that you were doing
this for some political purpose ?
No. We used to have Bush Music Club meetings. The main thing was to show the people
that we're Australian, to be proud of our own country and our tradition, we're
trying to promote the Australian tradition, rather than copy the overseas stuff
that comes mainly from America.
That was the main political thing.
We felt we were being overrun by the yanks. When we started it was the early stages
of television, it was very much America.
11 "at about the relationship between Merro and
Chris? There was certain
tensions between us, but 1 can't recall anything being really bad about it. Naturally you got differences of opinion
in different things.
12 The Bushwhackers
breaking up was naturally a bit of a blow to us, that's why we wanted to keep
going. So we started performing as
the Bushwhackers and Alan Scott complained and he said, 'You're not the
Bushwhackers, the Bushwhackers have broke up'. And so we became known as the
Rambleers.
13 There was some
animosity towards the Rambleers, because we wanted to go on and they wanted to
stop. And perhaps too, because they
went a different way and became sort of international folk, not just Australian
folk for a period. They were
singing...
14 ... negro spirituals and that sort of thing. Perhaps it was too because they had
Barbara
Lisyak and the type of songs she was able to
sing.
15 Dicusses
interchange ability of terms 'mouth organ' and
'harmonica'.
16 The first mouth
organ player who made Harry want to learn the instrument was Larry Adler. Harry actually met Larry Adler in later
years and had a little discussion and session with him. He always played the chromatic
harmonica, and Harry told him how he mainly played the
diatonic.
1 7 Did you ever listen to an English player,
Cole? 1 know the name Cole, but 1 can't place him. Did you ever listen to AL Lloyd singing? 1
know the name, but can't recall what he sang, now.
1 8 The Weavers was what
influenced the Rambleers when we started with Barbara Lisyak. Three blokes and a lady, and we did the
harmony that way. That's where we
moved away from the bush music a bit.
19
Harry played concertina on some of Alex Hood's recordings. When did you pick up instruments apart from the mouth organ? When in the Bushwhackers he took an
interest in the button accordion which Meredith was playing, and 1 liked the
instrument. The English
concertina...
20
..I don't know how 1 came on that, but it seemed like a very good
instrument because of the way the notes are placed. Getting on to the other instruments,
that's another story.
21
Harry was very happy to be part of the history that formed the Bush Music
Club. A lot of poetry was recited
too, Harry did some himself.
22
Heard a bloke in Brisbane recite a poem called 'The Loony
Cove'.
23 Remembered
Leonard Teale's reciting, and he inspired Harry to recite.
24
The Rambleers moved to different places and were apart, and they all had
their different lives. Can't
remember a definite end of the group.
25
Harry transferred over bit by bit into engineering work, getting jobs as
a fitter and turner.
26
Harry made his living at his trade while in the Bushwhackers and
Rambleers...
27
The Rambleers kept in contact with each other now and then but were
finished as a group.
28
Harry had to make a living, and was getting into different jobs and
decided...
29 ... he had to get more money somewhere. So he was looking in the Herald for a
parttime job, looking under "M" for machinist...
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30 ... and he saw
an advertisement for "Music teacher" and this set him thinking. He answered the ad and said to the chap
he could play the English concertina and the button accordion and the mouth
organ. The chap said they taught
the mandolin and the guitar...
3 1 ... and the Hawaiian
guitar. Harry said that if they let
him have a loan of those instruments for a month or two he would learn them and
then teach them for them. The man
rang back a week or so later and said they had discussed Harry's position, and
said he could come down and get his instruments, and when he'd had a bit of a go
they'd get a class ready for him.
Harry did so, and...
32 ....they had 4
lessons a night, the first lesson is on the mandolin for the young ones, the 2d
and 3d lessons are on the guitar, and the 4th lesson is on the Hawaiian
guitar. He said they would start
him off on one class on the mandolin and two classes on the Spanish guitar - the
ordinary guitar.
33 Harry taught
himself - they send him the books they taught out of, the Beresford School of
Music Guitar Book. Harry had to
learn what was in the book to teach the pupils. They got Harry together with a class at
Lidcombe. He had to tune all the
guitars. There were supposed to be
30 in each class, although the mandolin class was smaller.
34 The charge was
85 cents a lesson, of which Harry got 15 cents off each pupil. It worked out a fair bit for Harry, in
addition to his day job. This was
in the 1970s.
35 Harry needed the
additional money. Harry practised
as he went, learning all the time.
After a few weeks he was way ahead of the pupils.
...
36 The class was
going for a couple of months, and they rang Harry up saying one of their other
teachers had left, and they wanted Harry to take on additional work. He had to teach the Hawaiian guitar
too. Harry ended up working four or
five nights a week, in different parts of Sydney.
37 The course was
83 lessons. When they finished the
83 lessons the students wanted to know where they went from there. So Harry got the idea of teaching the
advanced lessons at home. After a
while he thought he should do the teaching for himself. So he'd go to work in the day and at
night would have classes of 6 or 7 at home.
38
Cont.
39 Harry and Ann
came to their present home in 1967.
It would have been around 1972 or 1973 that he started the
classes.
40 Harry was
teaching guitar within a month of first picking it up, keeping a few lessons in
front of his pupils. As time got on
he got further and further ahead of them.
After a while he enjoyed guitar so much he decided to learn classical
guitar. What he was teaching on the
guitar was melodic, rather than the chords. The Beresford system was based on
teaching melody first.
41 So they learned
to read music and pick out the notes.
42 And once he was
established teaching at home people would contact him about instruments. Someone asked about the autoharp and
Harry decided he could work out where the notes are, and so he gradually learned
these other instruments and taught them.
The 5 string banjo was another.
And Harry got a threesome together from one of his students and someone
else, and they did some performances.
43 Then Harry
wanted more knowledge of music, so he went to the conservatorium to study
musical theory. And he found he
wanted to get better on the guitar, so he decided to get a music teacher who
knew all about the instrument...
44 ... so he went to a classical guitar school in George St, and the
chap who took him on was fantastic.
"What he taught me about how to hold the guitar, and the way to play it
and the correct way to hold the guitar and what to do with your fingers improved
my playing overnight. It was
remarkable what he taught me." Harry then went back to the conservatorium to
join their classical guitar classes.
45 This was in 1982. It
was 5 full days learning the classical guitar. At the end of the week they put on a
concert.
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46 In 1983 he did
it again. He got really involved in
classical guitar at that stage, and taught advanced classical guitar as well as
beginners. Harry got to the stage
where he was making more money from teaching than from his trade, so he chucked
work in and taught during the day as well.
47 Harry then saw
an advertisement for a music teacher.
As a result of this he got a job teaching at a catholic school over at
Fairfield. He wasn't teaching them
the guitar though, he was teaching the keyboard.
48 He worked for
the catholic school for a couple of years, and they had him teaching computers
too! They weren't worried he didn't
have any training. They were just
after music teachers and it was hard to get them.
49 And he then did
relief teaching in music.
50 And he was back on
the harmonica. He got onto the
factory ...
5 1 ... where they made
harmonicas and they put him on to the competitions, where Harry won a
prize. This was in Europe - players
from all over the world sent in recordings and sent it to
them.
52
Cont
53 Discusses
reunions of the Bushwhackers and Rambleers.
54
Cont
55 Harry did some
solo performances after the Rambleers broke up.
56 Harry comments
on his being colour blind and his wife being tone deaf.
57 Comments on
success of their marriage, after they both came from broken
families.
58 Wind
up.
End of recording
D:\Keith's Documents\FOLKLORE\NLA Interviews\Harry Kay
summary.doc