DAVE MACRAE AND JOY YATES AT AVALON BOWLO

I’ve been hearing about jazz at Avalon Bowlo Club for several years, so it was with some anticipation that I attended there on Wed Jan 7 to hear a concert featuring singer Joy Yates and her husband/pianist Dave MacRae. I felt I was killing two birds with one stone – not only experiencing the legendary artistry of those two great musicians, which has come my way on too few occasions over the years, but also checking out for myself what was always represented to me as a truly unique jazz phenomenon.

As for the latter I wasn’t fully prepared for what I saw and heard. Arriving a little late, as I mixed up the concert’s commencement time, I was confronted by a packed room, holding an estimated crowd of say about 100 people, with scarcely a spare seat in the auditorium. I’m indebted to the man on the door, former club president Maurie Altman, who stepped down from the presidency in 2023, after eight years at the helm. He was kind enough to make me very welcome and find for me what appeared to be the last available seat in the room. Joy Yates was then in the middle of her second number Beale Street Blues, so I was grateful that I didn’t miss too much of the program, only missing the opening number All The Things You Are.

On the stage was what one might call a gun rhythm section: Dave MacRae on electric piano – I don’t have to wax lyrical about him, as it’s well-known that he’s been one of the most brilliant and accomplished keyboard players in the country since arriving from New Zealand in 1960; the double bass virtuoso Craig Scott; and a very swinging drummer in Ron Lemke. And of course, the bandleader out front on trumpet and flugelhorn, another legend in Australian music, Billy Burton, still playing beautifully at 93.

This is not the place to document the extraordinary past accomplishments of both Joy Yates and Dave MacRae, who enjoyed incredible success internationally after spending the 1960s in Sydney, and leaving for Los Angeles in 1969. They were only in the USA for a relatively brief period before moving to London in 1971. There, for the next 15 years, before returning to Australia in the mid-1980s, they enjoyed tremendous success in so many facets of the music industry in the UK and Europe.

I often wonder how widespread is the knowledge in this country of their incredible career exploits. My intuition is that they are vastly under-appreciated, as the writing of Australian jazz history is still in its infancy in a culture where the achievements of many of our greatest jazz artists are known only to a small minority of specialist jazz enthusiasts or academics.

Having said that, the warm appreciation, indeed the love, shown to MacRae and Yates and their colleagues at Avalon Bowlo on Jan 7 was overwhelming. It must have been balm to their souls. In a nutshell I have rarely experienced a jazz audience which was so alive and full of energy, and so willing to show their appreciation. Only in what was then the Soviet Union in 1989 when the Australian trio The Engine Room enjoyed a triumphant three-weeks tour playing to fantastic audiences, did I experience anything like the Avalon Bowlo audience.

Those who wish to hear their jazz in silence, and feel that even audience members clapping the solos is a vulgar interruption to the music, would have been dismayed had they been present. Every solo, no matter who played it, was rapturously applauded. Even when something unusual happened in the music – it might have been a tremolo effect on the piano by MacRae, or an expressive bluesy passage on Burton’s trumpet – audience members immediately jumped in to applaud. Here was a body of fans ripe and ready to be delighted.

I well remember Joy Yates singing at the Camelot Lounge in 2017 in the company of three other excellent female vocalists Susan Gai Dowling, Sandie White and the late Marie Wilson. All four were excellent in their own ways, but Yates brought the house down with a raunchy version of Bessie Smith’s I Need a Little Sugar In My Bowl. At Avalon she sang another equally raunchy Bessie Smith classic Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer; it gave her a similar opportunity to sell some lyrics which at least to my ears sounded somewhat suggestive.

Otherwise at this gig Yates confined herself to well-known standards: Rodgers & Hart’s 1927 composition My Heart Stood Still; the Billie Holiday classic What a Little Moonlight Can Do; and, to finish the first set, a request for Blueberry Hill, recorded by umpteen artists, but probably best-known for the Fats Domino version.  The latter was sung along by the audience with great spirit .

The band opened the second set with Benny Golson’s great instrumental Killer Joe, followed by the lovely, well-known ballad, written by Jimmy van Heusen, Polka Dots & Moonbeams, played beautifully with solos from everyone. Then the singer/saxophonist Nic Jeffries sat in, singing and playing on another great van Heusen standard I Thought About You (lyrics by Johnny Mercer). Apparently Jeffries, along with certain others, including the pianist Ray Forster, was instrumental in starting this jazz event eight years ago, He was joined by his wife Skye Jeffries for the Gershwin classic Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, which they sang together, followed by a solo which showed that Nic was an excellent tenor saxophonist.

Joy Yates returned to the stage after the Jeffries sit-in and proceeded with a collection of standards that could only be described as a tour de force, underlining her credentials as a jazz singer. First, she did Dave Brubeck’s great mid-50s composition In Your Own Sweet Way, and told a nice story about a Ricky May gig many years ago which was attended by Brubeck himself, then on one of his many Australian tours. Apparently he asked Joy to dance, whereupon Joy accepted, only to discover that Brubeck couldn’t dance! I love all such back stories, which good jazz artists will always include about their selections, in order to add colour to their performance.

Then it was on to Close Your Eyes, written in 1933 by Bernice Petkere,  one of the most recorded standards in jazz history; the Duke Ellington/Mitchell Parish composition Sophisticated Lady, a difficult tune which Yates handled with aplomb; a spirited version of the standard Old Devil Moon, which swung so much that audience members were impelled to clap along on the off-beat; and ending the set with a moving version of the great ballad For All We Know, which brought the performance to a triumphant close.

In advance of this gig I was talking to a friend who happens to be also a female vocalist. Knowing that I was to attend the Avalon Bowlo, she said in an email “Enjoy tonight. Joy is great. I love the lived-in quality of her voice and bought all her CD’s last year when she headlined a show at The Bowlo. Hers and Dave’s histories are amazing!”

I think the description of the Yates voice as having a “lived-in quality” is very apt, and wish I’d thought of that term myself. Perhaps this speaks to the lifetime of musical experience that her voice palpably exudes.  I might have said that her voice has a ”smokey” quality but, as always, it’s very difficult to find the best term to describe voice quality. In fact it’s difficult to describe music in general. A reviewer such as myself is engaged in a chronic struggle with the English language. But in reality there’s really no substitute for actually hearing the music rather than settling for merely a verbal description.

I do know however, that I find Joy Yates’s long notes very moving, and I always get a frisson of excitement when her long notes merge into her lovely vibrato. For this reason I found her version of For All We Know quite majestic, not only because of its great lyrics, but also because she sang it with such feeling.

The day after the gig Joy Yates posted on Facebook: “Absolutely blown away by the number of people who turned up. What a way to sing in the new year! At our favourite venue. Avalon Bowlo!”

I can fully understand her enthusiasm, and felt privileged to be able to share the affection shown to Joy and her colleagues on the stage that night  Those great musicians are a phenomenon to be savoured. When one hears such musicians being celebrated by such an enthusiastic audience, you know that jazz is well and truly alive.

This concert took place at Avalon Bowlo, 4 Bowling Green Ln, Avalon Beach on Wednesday, January 7, 2026, featuring Billy Burton (trumpet/flugelhorn, Joy Yates (vocals), Dave MacRae (electric piano), Craig Scott (double bass), Ron Lemke (drums), Nic Jeffries (vocals & tenor saxophone) & Skye Jeffries (vocals).