The Lion Roars: The Musical Life of Willie 'The Lion' McIntyre

About The Lion Roars: The Musical Life of Willie ‘The Lion’ McIntyre

By day a mild-mannered accountant, by night a roaring jazz pianist and singer.

A boogie and stride pianist, Willie ‘The Lion’ McIntyre was a leading figure in the traditional jazz boom in Melbourne after World War II. He sang in a Fats Waller style or shouted the blues, and was a key member of Tony Newstead’s Southside Gang and the Portsea Trio.

Together with clarinettist George Tack, he developed a series of comedy sketches in the tradition of Australian vaudeville and was one of the great characters on the Melbourne jazz scene in the 1940s and 1950s.

This is the story of a unique figure in the history of Australian jazz who grew up during the Depression, served in a medical unit in World War II and became a great entertainer.

For Marie

Contents

About The Lion Roars: The Musical Life of Willie ‘The Lion’ McIntyre

Dedication

Foreword by Dick Hughes

Preface

Mildura 1985

1 The boy from Benalla

Methodists and music

Piano lessons

Jazz influences

The Spirit of Progress

2 Melbourne 1936–42

First band

Learning jazz piano

Bill Miller

Fawkner Park Kiosk

Origins of the South Side Gang

3 At war 1942–46

Papua June 1942–May 1943

Queensland May 1943–November 1944

New Britain December 1944–December 1945

4 Melbourne jazz postwar

1946

1947

1948

5 1949: A busy year

A lion in the city of churches

Rex Stewart visit

Leggett’s Ballroom

The Tijou session

The 1949 Convention

Chicago style jazz

6 The 1950s

The 1951 Convention

Portsea Trio

The scene changes

Party man

7 The later years

8 Harmonium blues

9 The gag merchants

10 An evaluation

Coda

Notes

Interviews

Recordings

Bibliography

Songs

About Phil Sandford

Copyright

Foreword

Pianist/singer Will (Willie The Lion) McIntyre was one of Australia’s greatest jazz entertainers. He was an instrumentalist/vocalist, so this puts him in a group which includes Louis Armstrong, Wingy Manone and Fats Waller. It was Ade Monsbourgh, the multi-instrumentalist of the best of Graeme Bell’s earliest bands, who dubbed Will the Fats Waller of Australia.

I shall never forget Will at the sixth Australian Jazz Convention, December 1951, playing Viper’s Drag. Will was one of very few Australian pianists who played stride, that robust style centred on the left hand, which was personified by Fats Waller.

Another pianist but only occasional vocalist whom Will admired was Jelly Roll Morton. In July, 1946, for the independent label Ampersand, Will recorded Morton’s Winin’ Boy Blues, probably his greatest record.

At the second Australian Jazz Convention, 1947, Bill Miller, who owned Ampersand Records and was a great admirer of Willie’s playing, told how he played Winin’ Boy Blues to Willie when the pianist was thoroughly plastered. And, said Bill, Willie was saying ‘This is tremendous playing’ and ‘I’ll never be able to play like this.’ Willie had forgotten the record, forgotten he’d even made it.

At the 1948 third Australian Jazz Convention, he recorded another piece which had twice been recorded by Morton. I was there and was profoundly impressed. It was Don’t You Leave Me Here and Will later heard a record made of it by the Melbourne collector Ray Tijou. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, Willie told me. It’s so relaxed. Thank God he remembered. What a pity the record was never made available.

Will’s regular daytime job was as an accountant with my uncle Walter, who was also an accountant, at a firm called Nonporite Pty Ltd in Glenferrie. On several nights of the week he was pianist with Tony Newstead’s Southside Gang, an excellent Eddie Condon-style band, which also included clarinettist George Tack and drummer Don Reid. Newstead played firm, swinging Bobby Hackett-style trumpet.

Will McIntyre was certainly an influence on my playing. I remember playing at a jam session in early 1949, just after the third Convention. Will was there, and I deliberately played some dissonances in his style on Tea for Two. Hey! Pinching my stuff, The Lion roared, I can sue, you know.

He didn’t though. But he continued to give me hours of pleasure as he played the most solid piano one can hear.

A personal highlight of our friendship occurred on the night of February 4, 1971. The now defunct Daily Mirror had flown me from Sydney to interview Count Basie in Melbourne and review his concert at the Festival Hall. I was backstage with Basie when Willie appeared.

Bill,’’ I said (for Basie had asked me to call him Bill) this is Will, and you taught him, and Will taught me.’’

This was possibly the highlight of my social life in jazz.

Dick Hughes (1931-2018)

Jazz pianist, journalist, broadcaster

Sydney, October 2017

Preface

By day Willie McIntyre was a mild-mannered accountant, always impeccably dressed in a suit with his hand-made shirt and cufflinks, going off to work for Nonporite, a company that made waterproofing products for the building industry, where he worked all his life. By night he was ‘The Lion’, a hard-drinking boogie and stride pianist who sang in a Fats Waller style or shouted the blues, always with a slightly mischievous, enigmatic look on his face as he peered through his glasses.

He had absorbed the music of his jazz idols such as Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Yancey, and the boogie and blues pianists, and developed his own strongly rhythmic style of playing and singing. He was also a very funny man who performed vaudevillian routines with his friend, clarinettist George Tack.

Short of stature, he exuded a confidence and joy that was tempered by a degree of reflection when he played the blues or when he sang some of Cole Porter’s mesmerising lyrics. He would play and sing for hours on end, whether the audience was big or small, but he left no diaries, no letters, no taped interviews – just a couple of brief articles and the memories of some who knew or heard him. However, although he rarely recorded with a decent piano there are about one hundred and fifty tracks available, most of poor to average recording quality, enough to show that he was an important contributor to traditional jazz in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s.

I first met Willie when I was ten years old, at adult parties in Melbourne in the early 1950s that were attended by people associated with Tony Newstead’s South Side Gang such as Val Reid, Lorna ‘Darl’ Tack, Norma Miller and Mary Crough. The music played by Willie, George Tack, Don Reid, Ray Simpson, Dave Eggleton, Tony Newstead, Ken Ingram and Bill Miller inspired me to become a jazz pianist. Among those at the parties was Willie’s sister Jess Vincent, whom I had not seen for many years until I bumped into her by chance in November 2014. The stories she told me that day about Willie provided the stimulus for this book.

There were other aspects to Willie’s life, but the book focuses on his music, looking at his early musical training in the Victorian country town of Benalla and in Melbourne in the 1930s, his experiences in a medical unit in Papua and New Britain during WWII, and his role in the development of traditional jazz in postwar Melbourne and Adelaide. A discussion of his use of the harmonium and his role as a comedian concludes with an evaluation of his contribution to Australian jazz.

I’m grateful to the following who provided comments on early drafts of the book: Mel Blachford, Roger Beilby, Wes Brown, Nigel Buesst, Graeme Bull, Ross Clarke, Mal Eustice, Bill Haesler, Don Hopgood, Marie Hotschilt, Keith Hounslow, Dick Hughes, Bruce Johnson, Jack Mitchell, Verdon Morcom, Derek Mortimer, Mike Nock, Geoff Page, Ray Simpson, Tim Stevens, Jess Vincent and John Whiteoak, though the responsibility for the content is mine.

My thanks to the NSW Writers Centre Non-Fiction Group and the following who are among those who helped in various ways with the book: Lynne Ainsworth, Don Anderson, Margaret Anderson, Bill Armstrong, Bob Barnard, Loretta Barnard, Helen Bersten, Tas Brown, Gai Bryant, James Clark, Bill Davis, Barry Dickins, Graham Eames, John Eggleton, Mary Eggleton, Peter Gaudion, June Marie Green, Morten Ravn Hansen, Ian Horbury, Claude Jarratt, John Kennedy, Ray Marginson, Paul Martin, Joe McConechy, Heather McLaren, Quentin Miller, Barry Mitchell, Joel Naoum, Ted Nettelbeck, Tony Newstead, Judy Newton, Anthea Parker, Nick Polites, Michelle Redmond, Michele Rinaldi, Joan Rodd, John Roberts, Ken Simpson-Bull, Jim Smith, Tony Standish, John Tucker, Bruce Vincent, Fiona Vincent, Ross Vincent and Tracy Williams.

I would like to thank the staff of the following organisations for their help: Australian Railway Historical Society (Victorian Division), Australian War Memorial, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne University Archives, National Archives of Australia, State Library of South Australia, State Library of NSW, State Library of Victoria and Sydney Conservatorium Library.

Thanks to the Australian Jazz Museum for permission to use archival photos and quote from recorded interviews. Thanks to the South Australian Jazz Archive, the National Library of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive for permission to quote from recorded interviews. Thanks to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for permission to use the photo of Tony Newstead’s South Side Gang. Thanks to Radio Adelaide (formerly Radio 5UV) for permission to quote from The Dave Dallwitz Diaries.

Mildura 1985

‘They used to call this stuff vamp till ready,’ Willie ‘The Lion’ McIntyre says as he plays some fragments of Duke Ellington songs. He is seated at an upright piano with the front panel removed, revealing the strings. Behind him bass player James Clark and drummer Viv Carter are setting up on the stage at the Technical School Hall in the large north-western Victorian city of Mildura. It is the final concert of the seventh Jazz Jamboree in October 1985. The jamboree had earlier kicked off with a street parade of vintage cars, uniformed marching girls, and musicians playing while perched on an assortment of trucks and trailers – a tradition dating back to the first Australian Jazz Convention in Melbourne in 1946.

Smartly dressed, as usual, in a freshly-pressed blue shirt and grey trousers, Willie has a friendly chat with the three hundred-strong audience before introducing Carter as ‘Wild Bill Hickok’, due to his substantial beard, and launching into a relaxed treatment of ‘Mamie’s Blues’ by Jelly Roll Morton. ‘This is all about the first blues I ever heard in my life, sang to me by a gal named Mamie Desdunes,’ Willie says, quoting Morton. ‘Boy, she could really sing that stuff.’ He sings two choruses about a New Orleans sex worker in about 1900:

Standin’ on the corner, her feets all soaking wet/Standin’ on the corner, feets all soaking wet/Beggin’ each and every man she met.

Can’t give me a dollar, just give me a lousy dime/Can’t give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime/I gotta feed that hungry gal of mine.

At the start of the final piano solo chorus there is a dramatic change in mood with a double triplet figure starting low in the bass that is repeated three times before the piece comes to a gentle end.

‘We’re going back to the late 1930s,’ Willie announces, ‘when grass was green and pots were something that babies sat on. Guys used to be called vipers and we’re going to play If You’re a Viper in the key of F.’ The trio launch into a song that was first recorded by violinist Leroy ‘Stuff’ Smith in 1936, one of the many reefer songs of the time. Willie again takes the vocal, with a unique, Fats Waller-influenced sound, before a punchy solo.

Introducing the final number, ‘Oh, Lady Be Good’, Willie notes that ‘we’re very lucky to be in Mildura, because that’s the place where Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide can meet’ as he introduces trumpeter Graham Eames, alto player Andrew Firth and clarinettist Paul Furniss to the stage. With four beats of his foot he lays down a solid intro chorus with strong hints of Count Basie. The three horns take sparkling solos before Willie enters with a driving solo.

Thirty years later, James Clark recalled the set as ‘a memorable experience’, while Graham Eames remembered ‘a good blow’.

In two years Willie will be dead and this is one of his last public appearances. But now he is celebrating fifty years as a jazz pianist and singer, and he is roaring.

1

The boy from Benalla

Stewart McIntyre was no doubt thrilled when he won a position as a fireman on the Victorian Railways in 1910. The selection process was rigorous for the twenty-two-year-old and there were many applicants for the highly valued job, which provided a pathway to becoming a train driver.

In the late nineteenth century a web of railway lines had spread across Victoria that were crucial to the state’s economic development and every one of its fifty-five electorates had access to a railway. The 1890s Depression had seen massive unemployment and wage cutting, but the railways emerged as one of the few industries that offered job security and high wages: ‘Until well after the Second World War, a letter of acceptance was cause for family celebration and hearty, though perhaps a little envious, congratulations from friends and neighbours. Success in getting a railways job implied much about one’s social standing.’¹ However, the high-status job involved heavy work ‘while all the time trying to keep a footing on the shifting floor of the cab as the train rocked its way along the rails. It was not just a matter of getting the coal into the fire box,