Graeme Bell And His All Stars - 1963 - In A Persian Market FLAC

In A Persian Market/Memphis Blues/While We Danced At The Mardi Gras/Beale Street Blues



Graeme Emerson Bell, AO, MBE (7 September 1914 – 13 June 2012) was an Australian Dixieland and classical jazz pianist, composer and band leader. According to The Age, his "band's music was hailed for its distinctive Australian edge, which he describes as 'nice larrikinism' and 'a happy Aussie outdoor feel'".

Bell was one of the leading promoters of jazz in Australia, bringing American performers such as Rex Stewart to Australia. He was the first Australian jazz band leader who was still playing at 90 years of age and the first Westerner to lead a jazz band to China. The Australian Jazz Awards commenced in 2003. They are also known as The Bells in his honour.On 13 June 2012, at age 97, Bell died after a stroke.

Bell, who was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1914, and began playing in bands in 1935, gained fame as a Dixieland and classical jazz pianist, composer and band leader. He played music well into his 90s, producing more than 1,500 recordings and performing thousands of gigs in Australia and beyond. Bell became the first Westerner to lead a jazz band in China after the fall of the Bamboo Curtain, and as a successful live promoter will be remembered for staging American performers in Australia such as Rex Stewart.

Born into a musical family - his father John Alexander Bell was a musical comedian and his mother Mary Elvina a contralto recitalist - Bell was 12 when he started learning the piano. After several small time bands, he established the Graeme Bell Jazz Gang and entertained Australian troops during World War II after being declared unfit for service. When the war was over, he established Melbourne cabaret venue the Uptown Club and renamed his group the Australian Jazz Band.

 The group became the first such band to tour Europe and proved especially popular in Czechoslovakia and Germany.

After two short-lived marriages Bell met his third wife Dorothy in Brisbane in 1955 and the couple moved to Sydney, where Bell wrote commercial music and taught piano to supplement his income. A trad jazz boom in the '60s encouraged Bell to form the Graeme Bell All Stars and tour to the UK, an era the musician believed to be his greatest creative phase.

Bell was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1978 and an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1990. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997 alongside The Bee Gees and Paul Kelly. Arguably Bell's most significant legacy, and a symbol of how influential he was on jazz, is that the Australian Jazz Awards are named after him and will forever be referred to as 'the Bells'.