WOMEN OF AUSSIE MUSIC 1960s -1990s
Dedicated to the lesser known women in the music industry from the 60s to the 90s.
Thursday, October 12, 2023
DELORES FOXTONFINN
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
ANNE INFANTE
Anne has recorded three albums of her new age songs - 'Think Of It This Way', 'The Four Dragons' and 'Flight' - as well as an album of positive singing affirmations for adults 'Sing Your Way To Health', 'Wealth & Happiness', and two albums of self-esteem and other positive affirmations for children - 'Special As I Can Be' (with accompanying songbook) and 'Love Is A Circle' (CD only). She has also released 'Season' and 'Women Do', two albums of her original folk songs. Anne has had five popular crime novels published by Collins Crime Club. Ulverscroft released three of these in large print and two were serialised in Australian Woman’s Day in 1991 and 1993.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
GENEVIEVE McGUCKIN
Genevieve McGuckin was born in Brisbane. She has been a long-time collaborator (both musically and romantically speaking, at various points) of rock musician, Rowland S. Howard. During 1980, in London, the pair co-wrote two tracks, "Capers" and "Ho-Ho", for his band, the Birthday Party's debut LP 'Prayers on Fire' (April 1981). In 1982 McGuckin provided piano and organ on Howard and Lydia Lunch's cover version of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's "Some Velvet Morning" (1967), which later appeared on Lunch's album, 'Honeymoon in Red' (1987). She also wrote the track, "Three Kings", for the album.
In 1984 both McGuckin, on keyboards, piano and organ, and Howard on guitar were founding members of the post-punk group, These Immortal Souls. Other founders were Rowland's brother, Harry on bass guitar and Epic Soundtracks (AKA Kevin Godfrey) on drums. They issued two albums, 'Get Lost (Don't Lie)' in October 1987 and 'I'm Never Gonna Die Again' in October 1992, before relocating to Melbourne in 1994. While in the group she also wrote music and lyrics on both their albums and a single.Sunday, August 7, 2022
VONNY JAY
Friday, July 22, 2022
BERNADETTE HOLLOWAY
Thursday, June 23, 2022
LOUISE LINCOLN
Louise Lincoln is a singer from Tasmania. In the late 60s she joined local band 1812 who won the Hoadleys Battle of the Sounds in Hobart in 1969. Louise went to Melbourne and joined Brian Cadd’s Bootleg Family in 1973, recording several singles of which some of them charted, and a film soundtrack Alvin Rides Again. Her career is unknown after this point until Cadd re-assembled the Bootleg Family Band in 2015 and recorded the studio album, 'Bulletproof' (November 2016). A brief tour supported its release.
Thursday, May 5, 2022
ANNE CONWAY
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Sunday, April 10, 2022
CORAL KELLY
Drouyn subsequently was involved in the creation of serial Pacific Drive before performing story editor duties on Blue Heelers and Home and Away.Her book 'Big Screen, Small Screen', detailing the craft skills involved in screen-writing, was published in 1994. Drouyn now works as a theatre critic.
Saturday, February 5, 2022
JUDY BANKS
Saturday, January 15, 2022
CANDY DEVINE
Devine's appearances on Australian television included music show Be Our Guest, the series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968) and fronting the ABC's, In Key. Devine travelled to Ireland in 1969 on what was intended to be a short visit. She was hired for a cabaret slot at the Talk of the Town club in Belfast. She married her promoter and booking agent, Donald McLeod, in Dublin in 1970. They lived in the Republic for five years and moved to Belfast in Northern Ireland in 1975. She recorded an album 'Candy Devine Sings with The Jim Doherty Sound' in 1970.
Devine began a long career with Downtown Radio in March 1976. They had four children, including Brisbane-based celebrity chef, Alastair McLeod. Candy Devine was awarded an MBE on The Queen's 2014 honours list. Her award was for "Services to Broadcasting and to the Community in Northern Ireland".She moved back to Australia in 2013 following the death of her husband, Donald McLeod, the previous year. As of September 2016 she lives in Brisbane, sharing a five-acre property with her son, Alastair and his family.
Monday, December 20, 2021
MICHELLE JACKSON
Michelle Jackson was born at Noosa Heads, Queensland in 1956. She was interested in folk music at the age of 12 when she taught herself guitar before moving on later to fiddle and mandolin. She met Mike Jackson at the 1979 Kapunda Celtic Music Festival and married soon after. They toured Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. almost non-stop for seven years and in between tours they created three songbooks, co-wrote an instruction book for string figure novices and recorded ten albums - two collections of Australian folk music for adults and eight for children. The bulk of their thousands of performances together were Arts in Education performances designed to introduce children to a wide range of unusual instruments and encourage them to play music.
Mike and Michelle's children's albums were a huge success with their second, 'Playmates' going platinum and the rest of their first four kids' discs going gold in Australia. They had two North American releases, 'Bunyips, Bunnies and Brumbies' and 'Playmates', which were released in Canada on Sharon, Lois and Bram's Elephant Records label, distributed by A&M Records. They were featured artists on the ABC TV program Playmates and regular contributors to many other 1980s Australian children's shows. In 1986, the pair went their separate ways. Mike Jackson has continued touring, writing and recording both in Australia and internationally. I have no information on Michelle after this time. Please help.
Friday, December 3, 2021
JOY DUNSTAN
According to a Film Buffs Podcast interview on 21 November 2006, Dunstan currently lives in the United Kingdom. During that interview songwriter and musician Gary Young discussed his memories of working with Dunstan on the film. Young also claimed that following the film, his band the Rockin' Emus released their sole album with one of the songs he had written, ''Beautiful Joy'', having been about the actress.
Sunday, November 7, 2021
NIKKI NICHOLLS
Nikki’s career in the music industry has flourished over the many years since performing weekly on Channel 7’s Brian and the Juniors. After leaving secondary school, she joined John St. Peeters and the Shirelles on the cabaret circuit throughout Australia. In 1980, she became the original backing vocalist for the brand new John Farnham Band over a period of four years and recorded backing vocals on the 'Whispering Jack' album. Nikki was a renowned Melbourne session singer back in the days when the album recording and commercial industries were thriving.
She has toured Australia and New Zealand with Australian Crawl, Suzi Quatro, Lulu, Richard Clapton, toured the world with Kylie Minogue and whilst with Farnham supported Stevie Wonder throughout Australia. After studying Japanese on and off for eight years, Nikki wrote and recorded an album called 'Yumi Ippai' (Full of Dreams). Each song was written in Japanese about different parts of Australia. She has recorded 'Misunderstood' an album of ‘rock classics’ by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Deep Purple and the Rolling Stones. Songs such as ''Foxy Lady'', ''Whole Lotta Love'', ''Smoke on the Water'', ''Tin Soldier'' and others.
In the early 2000’s, Nikki starred alongside Wendy Stapleton and Debra Byrne in a 10 year run of the much loved show “Girls, Girls, Girls.” In 2015, she released her new original album called 'Bridesmaid' produced by Nikki and Doug Brady. The album features tracks that are rock, blues, ballads and the title track has a “cute, quirkiness about it.”
The past few years have seen Nikki performing in awesome bands such as Jam the Funk, The Ritual of Rock and The Dreamroom alongside acclaimed musicians; Eric McCusker (Mondo Rock), Danny Simcic (Real Life), Rick Petropoulos (The Ferrets), Paula Reid (Vanessa Amorosi), John Grant (Brian Cadd, Mike Brady, Eurogliders) Lisa Bade, Paul Gildea (Icehouse), Dave Leslie (Baby Animals), Scott Griffiths (Chantoozies) and John ‘Watto’ Watson (Everyone!!.) Nikki has also been performing her show ''You’ve Got a Friend'' the songs and story of Carole King with a touch of James Taylor receiving rave reviews from audiences at The Palms, Crown and Performing Art Centres throughout the country.
Thursday, October 14, 2021
PENNY PARSONS
Saturday, September 25, 2021
SHERRY WHEELER
Berta began singing on Channel 9 with Billy Thorpe on the show Teen Beat. She performed on this TV show once a fortnight from the age of 16. The producer of the show thought that her name was "too ethnic"and suggested Sherry as a stage name. Along with her TV commitments she was a regular performer at Brisbane venue Teen City appearing alongside Tony Worsley. Wheeler recorded one single on the Sunshine label titled ''Single Girl'' in 1967.
She completed her education at Salisbury High school and applied for a teacher scholarship to become a teacher. She moved to Channel 0 (now 10) and began compering the new children's show called The Channel 0 Saturday Show with Danny O'Dibble (Darryl Boyd) and The Wicked Witch (Babs Wheelton) both Babs and Darryl were well known stage actors in Brisbane at that time. The show was a three hour live show which had a number of different segments and a different story line each week. The writer of the show was Martin Overson.
Sherry also compered an other children's show on Channel 0 called Kindy. She became the producer of this show and sold it nationally. She then became the producer of The Saturday Show and sold this nationally as well. At this time there were only two women television producers in Australia.
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
JUDY KENNY
Monday, August 2, 2021
LORRAINE GARNESS
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
JAN CARTER
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
CHERYL BRACKEN
Indigenous woman Cecelia Brackenridge born in 1942 was from Palm Island in North QLD. She appeared a few times under the name of Cheryl Bracken on Brian Henderson’s TV music show Bandstand from 1963 - 65. Her brother was boxer George Bracken who held the Australian lightweight title and who also had a recording career with the W&G label. I have no further info on her career after Bandstand. Please help
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
LEE SANDERS