An international jazz star is born: the glittering career of Wilma Reading

When Cairns teenager Wilma Reading stepped up to the microphone at Brisbane’s Primitif coffee lounge one Saturday night in 1959, her powerful voice stunned seasoned jazz musicians. 

A star softball pitcher, Wilma had given up music to focus on sport. But she returned to her hotel that night with her Queensland teammates and an invitation to join a swing band at the Ritz Ballroom.  

It was the launchpad for a dazzling international career in which Wilma toured with jazz legend Duke Ellington and rubbed shoulders with Tony Bennett, Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne. 

Wilma’s story was documented in an interview with Dr Andrew Butt in 2024 for State Library’s First Nations Elders Oral History Project. ‘Music is that universal language that you can share across the world,’ she said.  

The first Australian to appear on the Johnny Carson show, Wilma found herself giving millions of US television viewers a geography lesson on her mother’s ancestral home, the Torres Strait Islands. 

She sang on hit TV variety shows Bandstand and The Morecambe and Wise Show, acted in London’s West End, and performed everywhere from Saigon to Tokyo, New York and Las Vegas. 

In 1979, she toured Russia with the backing of a 75-piece orchestra, playing 33 concerts in 28 days. Flanked by the East and West Berlin symphony orchestras, she performed at a 1990 concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Wilma was inducted into the National Indigenous Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2019 and continues to inspire others in the Cairns music community. 

Discover more

Wilma Reading’s oral history features in Extraordinary stories, State Library of Queensland’s collections showcase in the Philip Bacon Heritage Gallery on level 4.

Ten inspiring stories from Queensland women

The Primitif Coffee Shop: young hip and gorgeous in 1950s Brisbane