Arts
The great Jack
by Steve Braunias
Paying tribute to the great artistic legacy of New Zealand piano player Jack Thompson: his album covers.
He was pure old school, by all accounts a diamond geezer, fond of a drink and a bet, hugely entertaining – and, perhaps, a troubled man. Jack Thompson, legendary piano player, died in 1979. He was 71. But he left behind quite possibly the greatest collection of album covers ever made by a single recording artist in New Zealand.
You can find them in op shops up and down the country. No one knows for sure how many there are. He recorded at least one album a year for a good 20 years. The good news, partly, is that EMI has reissued two of Thompson’s discs – Evergreen, and Piano Party Time, both remastered from the original 1960s recordings – on CD. But the covers are bland; and in any case, a mere CD could never do justice to the original Thompson LP sleeves. This is a man who needed the big picture, a big canvas, to work his unholy art.
You may or may not want to actually play the records. They are non-stop party favourites for a party you hope will stop, soon, please. But Thompson is well overdue a tribute. He has remained in the hearts of those who saw him play – and those who played with him, and are still alive to tell the tale. Their stories tell of a man whose theatre of the absurd was played out so vividly on his album covers.
Thompson was born in Gore. He learnt to play classical piano at the age of five. That same year, he made his first public appearance – he played in the window of a music store in town. His family moved to Invercargill; he won three pianoforte championships, and earned a music scholarship with his rendition of Ballade No 3 in A Flat Opus 4, by Chopin.
A child prodigy, groomed to play the classics – but Thompson broke out, and left school knowing his future was in rinky-dink-dink, honky-tonk piano. All those K’s tell you something about the Jack Thompson Sound: “Hello Dolly” and “Now Is the Hour” and “Moon River” – and his crowdstopper, “The Bells of St Mary’s”. His memory for a tune verged on the miraculous. He never needed sheet music; one listen, and he committed the whole song to the vault inside his head. That, and his showmanship, established him on the live circuit.
“The rest is history,” booms an archive publicity sheet held at Radio New Zealand. “The Savoy in Dunedin, the Majestic Cabaret in Wellington; broadcasts on every New Zealand radio station; pianist on the ill-fated T S Awatea; appearances in Honolulu, San Francisco, Sydney, then back to the Gold Room, Auckland; and recordings for HMV/EMI.”
As well, there was a residency at Auckland’s Wintergarden in the 1930s, and another residency at the Russley Hotel in Christchurch, immortalised on his 1960s album Live at the Russley.
“F---, Jack!” says Wellington’s Alan Galbraith, when he answers his phone and is told of the nature of the call. He remembers Thompson, then? “No one ever forgets Jack Thompson.” Galbraith produced several of Thompson’s albums (including Live at the Russley – “the audience had steak diane, and trifle for dessert”) after joining HMV/EMI in the mid-1960s. “As a young producer, I got thrown the lot – the Salvation Army brass band, the Ngati Poneke Maori Club, Jack Thompson. And Jack was the only one who was ever any fun.
“He was a bloody good geezer. One of the classic old guys. Eternally positive. I can see him now; he was a stooped-over little guy. He’d sit side-saddle on his piano stool, all hunched over, with a U-shaped back – musician’s back, that’s right. He constantly had a fag in his mouth. And he’d hum the whole time he was playing – my hardest job was taking his bloody humming off the tapes. He’d fly up from Christchurch, and we’d sometimes cut three albums in a day. He never worked anything out. He’d say to the musicians, ‘Do you know Blue Danube in C?’, and away you’d go. He enjoyed every minute of it. As soon as he started playing, his whole face would light up.”
A great musician? “He was very good. But the whole feeling of it was more important than if he played a bum note, which he sometimes did. The vivaciousness of the guy came straight through when he played. The smile was in the music.”
Galbraith had ambitions: “I was dying to get my hands on some rock’n’roll, produce a really good rock’n’roll record.” He did just that – Galbraith produced the fabulous “Out in the Street”, by Space Waltz; he also worked with Mark Williams, Rockinghorse, Annie Whittle and Sharon O’Neill. “Rock bands were harder to deal with than Jack,” he says. “They were a lot more arrogant. Jack liked music and fun, but not necessarily in that order.” What did he learn from him? “How much Coke to put in with the bourbon. The word pisshead comes to mind.”
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