The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) has a
remit to preserve, develop and promote the national AV collection.
It’s recently gained statutory authority having been for over
two decades a non-statutory agency. The National Registry of Recorded
Sound was established in 2007; every year ten items are added
to the Registry – and these can include spoken word, jingles and
other media; things are certainly not confined to traditional
forms. Democratically the public can nominate items for the Registry
and a panel ultimately decides on inclusion (or not).
That explains
the background to this disc. It’s a representative sampling
of the Registry ranging pluralistically across media and time
and place. We start with a great Australian baritone, Peter
Dawson, singing in 1931 a famous song by Jack O’Hagan inspired
by “Banjo” Patterson, another iconic figure. It’s followed
immediately by Friday On My Mind by The Easybeats,
a poptastic 1961 hit by the Anglo-Scottish-Dutch but Australian-based
beat combo. Back we go to 1915 and a studio mock-up of The
Landing of the Australian Troops in Egypt – with possibly
the first appearance on record of Advance Australia
Fair. War is followed by politics and Gough Whitlam’s
“Kerr’s cur” speech, a highly quotable pun that still resonates
today.
That brief snippet
dates from 1975. Melba was recorded in 1904 and then we move
forward nearly half a century to the Tribal Music of Australia
the first LP devoted to traditional Aboriginal music.
From 1899 comes the amazing Tasmanian Aboriginal Songs sung
by Fanny Cochrane-Smith the so-called “Last Tasmanian.” Six
vitally rare cylinders are extant. Talking of which – well,
almost - the famous Goossens recording of John Antill’s Corroboree
is here - three minutes of it anyway. The exploration of indigenous
language and the use to which it has been put, or absorbed,
is also traced – Harold Blair singing Maranoa Lullaby
being one example; Blair was the first Aboriginal to achieve
fame as a concert singer. The well-known Shackleton cylinder
is included for obvious territorial or geographical reasons.
Country music Oz-style
comes via Buddy Williams – I’m sure aficionados of Williams would
dispute that and claim this as authentic outback absorption. Thankfully
the selection panel knows its jazz onions; Graeme Bell is here
with Swanston St. Shamble, an early 1944 side. The Great
Man is still alive, as I write, in his mid nineties. From Bell
back to what’s probably the earliest sound recording made in Australia;
J.J. Villiers’ The Hen Convention – chook imitations. There’s
a long example (over twelve minutes) from episode one of the long-running
radio series Dad and Dave from Snake Gully. It ran from
1937 until 1953. Finally there’s Men At Work’s ubiquitous Down
Under – you know, the one where “beer does flow and men chunder.”
Been there, sport; done that.
Kaleidoscopic, cornucopic
– and a taster of the many fine things held by Australia’s national
collection. And what’s more I’ve already consulted the catalogue
and can encourage you to do the same. So now then fellers – what
about sending me a copy of violinist Daisy Kennedy’s 1965 radio
interview with Stephanie Deste [ref no. 572463] if I send you
a copy of one of her unreleased 78s?
Jonathan Woolf
ABC CLASSICS 4766812
[62:43] 
