The Tom Kats Orchestra

Music in Gayndah

A History by and of those who were there

 

The following story is a transcript of an article published in an unknown newspaper in a section called Gayndah Anecdotes by the Burnett Bard. It was saved and provided by Mike Connolly. If you can supply any information about the story, the band and the people involved, please email me at
geoff.walden@me.com or phone 0418 792 159.
I will include the information in the story and credit you with providing that information.

 

Gayndah Anecdotes

by the "Burnett Bard"

Those of us who are in our seventies and who were in our romantic glory on the dance floors about 1930 will remember the four Gayndah boys who formed a jazz band and labelled it the Tom Kats Orchestra. The lead musician played an accordian and was a master of good dance time. He used no written music, playing completely by ear, as did the violinist and the lad who played the mouth organ, tin whistle, gazooka and whatever.

The jazz drum was fashioned from a kerosene tin with various attachments such as a cowbell, pieces of steel and rattlewood. There would have been about ten country schools and as many dance halls in the district at which benefit dances for some fund or other were almost a weekly event. The Tom Kats Orchestra took up an almost weeklyengagement list.

When the "talkie" pictures came to town, the lads bought the set of drums used by the theatre to accompany the silent films. The price was ??7.10 ($15) - today's value would be in four figures. But the end was in sight as the tri-annual possum skin season opened and the boys, eager for a more lucatrive occupation, took to the wild to hunt for the unfortunate animals. The younger member of the group, the multiple instrument player stayed with music and was a drummer for some years with a much more sophiticated band and is the sole survivor of the group.

He was still around to remind me of some of the exploits of the froup of half a century ago. He told of one experience when the group had hired an old truck to take the band and their followers 28 km to a country 'hop'. When the punch that seemed to be part of these nights out came - because someone drank his mate's beer or too much of his own - everyone got out of the hall and the boys, having been paid their fee ??2.10.0 ($5), packed up.

The character of the group stood up as the truck moved away and announced that he would take on the mob. The old engine spluttered and the crowd dropped their grievances and made to confront the common enemy. The old engine purred into life at the critical moment and saved the group from having a kit if broken musical instruments.