From satin gowns to jazz advocacy – remembering Paula Langlands

This blog was written by 2022 Letty Katts Fellow, Dr Leah Cotterell. 

This blog pays tribute to singer Paula Langlands.

Paula played a starring role in a folio of photographs from the late 1950s of musicians and entertainers at Peter Hackworth’s first business, The Primitif Coffee Lounge in Queen Street Brisbane. These evocative live performance shots were captured by the then amateur photographer Kevin Anderson. In 2022 scans of the photographs were donated by Peter to State Library and they are the subject of my research for the Letty Katts Award, a Queensland music history fellowship. The story of how Paula came to be singing at The Prim is fascinating, and it offers insights into how modern jazz manifested in Australia in the 1950s.

Born in the 1930s, Paula Langlands’ singing career followed a trajectory from 1950’s showgirl to jazz band singer, to Graham Kennedy TV show regular, to occasional appearances in TV series and film, and through it all, the development of her vocation as a modern jazz stylist and educator. In later years, Paula was a strong advocate for contemporary Australian jazz, being the first Australia Council Jazz Coordinator in Victoria (1983-1988) and presenting her weekly community radio program ‘Jazz Made In Australia’ at Eastside Radio in Sydney for more than two decades. Sadly, Paula died in May 2023.

In 2016 Louise Denson and I interviewed Paula about jazz at The Primitif. Louise was writing a conference paper about women in jazz, and I had a long association with The Prim through ‘Foolish Things’ an artistic research project in 2003 with bassist Helen Russell. Over lunch at her home in Sydney, Paula shared memories that were rich in insights, evoking the flavour of the early days of modern jazz in Australia.

As a child in Wollongong, Paula loved listening to swing music on the radio, and in her teens was strongly attracted to the new sounds of Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond. Taking dance classes from the age of 11, at age 17 Paula took her first professional contract as a showgirl in a touring illusionist’s act (great stories for another day). Back in Sydney, by the mid 1950s, she continued working in theatre. Paula laughed about a long run at the Tivoli singing ‘So Cool’, an act that went haywire in a strange theatre on tour when she fell over behind the curtain. In her tight white satin gown, she was unable able to get up off the dirty floor until the stage manager found her and pushed her onstage, a little tattered, but poised as ever. She also worked long residencies with band leader, guitarist and lifelong friend Rick Farbach. There was a song that came up in our conversation that day more than once. Paula loved the jazz standard ‘Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)’, written for and made famous by Billie Holiday in the 1940s. She described Rick teaching her musical skills:

…he was quite terse with me which was lovely and he also taught me some of the best jazz tunes like Lover Man for instance and I had a little half size manuscript book and he would jot down the notes and the chords for me with these songs.

Rick is important to modern jazz in Brisbane and his memoir, Cleftomania is in the State Library collection. I’ll write more about him for my fellowship presentation in February. But at this point in Paula’s story, work had dried up in Sydney and Rick moved up to the Gold Coast where a flurry of venues were presenting floorshows for the tourist crowds, especially through the winter season. Paula also decided to join a dance act heading north and spent two years on the Gold Coast. For a time, she shared a flat above a chemist’s shop at the corner of Cavill Avenue with two dancers and together they developed a very popular Calypso revue for The Corroboree nightclub. Fascinatingly, one of her flat mates had learned the dance style while working with the all-black Katherine Dunham Company who toured Australia in 1956. Paula also recalled working with Rick again at an open air venue at Natureland Zoo in Coolangatta, with an unusual accompaniment:

…in the end I just had to ignore him [the resident lion] and keep on singing. Whether he was objecting or whether he wanted to sing along with me we never did know but he did it frequently, a big roar every time I got up to sing. Funny stuff…

It was when she was working with comedian Red Moore at the Broadbeach Hotel that Paula was photographed at The Primitif. Both Red and Paula were keen to make the trip up the narrow highway to Brisbane to sing with their favourite jazz pianist:

…whenever I was at The Primitif they were there listening to the music, that’s why I liked to go up there and sing…I think the nights that Red and I would drive up would be the nights when we heard that Stan Walker was playing.

Paula thought that they made it up to The Prim half a dozen times. Over the years, many singers and musicians have told Helen and I how much they admired Stan Walker, describing him as a natural, a self-taught musician, a great band leader and a wonderful accompanist (Big Beat Music, n.d.).

As a researcher, I see a gap in the public record about pop music practices prior to the rock revolution of the 1960s and I worry that the generation who made their contributions before the new age of information will be utterly forgotten because they don’t appear at the top of a google search. That’s why it’s important to celebrate their achievements now. The photographs of the musicians at The Primitif are a silent doorway into the music – as it was performed by young people, for young people, as a popular style, not something that had to be maintained in a conservatoire.

The music that Paula loved was modern jazz, a music that working musicians played for pleasure because it allowed them to experiment and grow. I would love to have heard Paula sing ‘Lover Man’ at The Primitif. Looking at these photos I can almost hear her beautiful voice.

Dr Leah Cotterell, 2022 Letty Katts Fellow

Dr Leah Cotterell was award the 2022 Letty Katts Fellowship for her project, Sunday Nights at the Primitif.

References:

• Big Beat Music. (n.d.). Ian Bloxsom Obituary
• Library of Congress. (n.d.). Katherine Dunham Timeline
• Roma, T. (2023, May 24). Vale Paula Langlands. Eastside 89.7 FM

More blogs by Dr Leah Cotterell

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

• Rick Farbach: Riding a musical wave from Riga to Surfers Paradise

• Jazz, the beating heart of The Primitif

• Peter Hackworth and The Primitif: An origins story