Australian Rock - 1950s To Early 1960s: The "First Wave" of Australian Rock

1950s To Early 1960s: The "First Wave" of Australian Rock

In the mid 1950s American rockabilly and rock and roll music was taken up by local musicians and it soon caught on with Australian teens, through movies, records and from 1956, television. EMI had dominated the Australasian record market since the end of WWII, and they made British music a powerful force in the late Fifties and Sixties with signings like Cliff Richard & The Shadows, The Beatles, The Hollies and Cilla Black. EMI (Australia) also locally distributed Decca (The Rolling Stones' label) as well as the American Capitol label (The Beach Boys). During this period, however, a number of local companies in Australia expanded into the growing Australian music market, which grew considerably after the emergence of the first wave of American rock'n'roll.

In 1951 merchant bank, Mainguard took over a struggling Sydney engineering firm, retooled and relaunched it as Festival Records. Its main local competition was ARC (the Australian Record Company), a former radio production and disc transcription service that established the successful Pacific, Rodeo and Coronet labels and competed with Festival as a manufacturer/distributor in NSW.

Several major events took place in 1960. In January Festival Records was purchased by rising young media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and a few weeks later, in April, ARC was taken over by the American CBS company, who closed the Coronet label and replaced the Australian CBS label.

Although most of the major labels were based in Sydney, Melbourne's vibrant dance and concert scene powered a local boom in rock'n'roll and pop music and it became Australia's pop capital in the 1960s. During the Fifties luthier Bill May expanded his Maton guitar company, becoming one of the first local manufacturers of the new electric guitars and amplifiers. In 1953 precision engineering company White & Gillespie established a custom recording division, which their company history claims was the first in Australia to press records in the new vinyl microgroove format. The new division soon included the W&G label and studio. In 1960 Melbourne consumer electronics company Astor Electronics created its own record division, Astor Records, which established the Astor label and also became a leading distributor.

All through this period Australia was experiencing the effects of a rising tide of migration, as thousands fled the wreckage of postwar Europe. The majority of migrants were from the UK, and many were "Ten Pound Poms" who were able to take advantage of the Australian government's generous £10 assisted-passage fare. Also, for the first time since the Gold Rush large numbers of "non-Anglo" migrants came to Australia from places like Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain, Portugal and eastern European nations like Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland. These immigrants exerted a powerful influence on all aspects of Australian society and notably in popular music—many major Australia pop performers of the Sixties were the children of migrants from Europe and the UK.

The arrival of American entrepreneur Lee Gordon in 1953 marked a major expansion in Australian entertainment. He established himself with a record-breaking tour by American singer Johnnie Ray and Gordon's now-legendary "Big Show" promotions brought to Australia—in many cases for the first or only time—dozens of the biggest American jazz, rock and popular stars of the era, including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Nat King Cole, Johnnie Ray, Frank Sinatra, Bill Haley & The Comets, Little Richard, Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and many others. He also promoted local talent by using Australian acts as supports on his concerts.

In the mid-1950s Festival Records grabbed an early lead in rock'n'roll by releasing Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" in Australia in 1956 after the single had been turned down EMI/Decca. It became the biggest-selling hit ever released in Australia up to that time, and its success set Festival on its way to becoming the dominant Australian local record company for the next fifteen years.

Soon after, inspired by Elvis Presley and Little Richard, Johnny O'Keefe achieved local stardom after his breakthrough appearances on Lee Gordon's Bill Haley tour. O'Keefe carved out a singular career and became a legend of Australian rock music. He hosted one of Australia's first TV pop shows, Six O'Clock Rock, became a partner in Lee Gordon's record company, Leedon, and was the first Australian rock'n'roll performer to attempt to break into the USA. Iggy Pop acknowledged O'Keefe's importance when he recorded a version of O'Keefe's hit "Real Wild Child" in the 1980s, which he recently re-recorded with successful Australian band Jet. For a few years, O'Keefe and other local rockers like Lonnie Lee & The Leemen, Dig Richards & The R'Jays, Col Joye & The Joy Boys, Alan Dale & The Houserockers, Ray Hoff & The Offbeats, Digger Revell & The Denvermen and New Zealand's Johnny Devlin & The Devils whipped up excitement on a par with their American inspirations.

The success of these 'First Wave' rock'n'roll acts was brief, and by the early 1960s the first boom had begun to fade. Between O'Keefe's last major hit in 1961 and Billy Thorpe's first hit in 1964, the local pop scene became noticeably blander and more conservative. The charts were dominated by clean-cut acts, like the members of the so-called "Bandstand family", most of whom were signed to Festival and were regular guests on Australia's leading TV pop show, 'Bandstand', which explicitly aimed to appeal to anyone "from eight to eighty".

An alternative to mainstream pop was instrumental 'surf' groups, for instance The Atlantics and The Denvermen in Sydney, and Melbourne's, The Thunderbirds. Many of the players in these dance bands had come from the jazz scene, and were also strongly influenced by the R&B and "jump" music of performers like Louis Jordan. Others were inspired by figures like American surf guitar players Dick Dale and Duane Eddy, and particularly by the popularity of The Shadows and American band the Ventures. The Shadows' influence on Australasian pop and rock music of the Sixties and Seventies is still much underrated, and their lead guitarist Hank Marvin.

These instrumental bands cut their teeth playing at the dance venues in Australia's major cities and regional towns. Like Australian jazz bands of the period, these rock'n'roll musicians became extremely accomplished players. Because dance patrons in those days actually danced as couples to traditional rhythms, dance bands in Australia and New Zealand tended to play wide variety of musical styles

Johnny O'Keefe's attempt to launch an American career failed, but British-born singer Frank Ifield was one of the first Australian postwar performers to gain widespread international recognition. He was hugely successful in the UK in the early Sixties, becoming the first performer to have three consecutive #1 hits there, and his biggest hit, "I Remember You" was #1 in the UK and a Top 5 hit in the U.S.A.. Entertainer Rolf Harris also had several novelty hits during this period and became a fixture on British television with his variety show.