The Day The Music Jived

The gentle thudding drums of “Run Through The Jungle” by Creedence Clearwater came on the stereo.  My mother softly hummed the song to my daughter as she gently bounced the little girl on her lap.

“Do you know I would sing this to your aunty when she was a little baby?” whispered my mother to her fifth granddaughter.

“And Neil Diamond,” she lifted her head and said to me.

After a while, she asked “Do you know I saw Johnny O’Keefe when I was 16?”

“Really?  What was it like?”

The Day The Music Jived in Brisbane

And then she told me of an amazing rock ‘n’ roll concert one night in little ol’ Brisbane Town in 1958.  Called “The Big Show”, it featured some of biggest names in rock including Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny O’Keefe, all on stage at the hallowed Cloudland ball room.

“I was 16, as I said,” she started.  “The thing with it being at Cloudland … it was a ball room and the people at Cloudland, they didn’t like you bopping around.  You could jive in one corner, in a roped off corner.

“The thing is, the floor was sprung.  You could feel it moving under you!  It was so frustrating, you wanted to get up and dance, but you really weren’t allowed,” she sighed.

This classic rock ‘n’ roll bill was staged at Cloudland as the old Brisbane Stadium was gone, and Festival Hall wasn’t up and going yet.

The big star on that February night was Buddy Holly, the crooner was Paul Anka (“Put Your Head On My Shoulder”), and the rocker was Jerry Lee Lewis.  But before they hit the stage, there was Johnny O’Keefe.

Johnny O'Keefe: in his pink suit?

“JOK was the Australian lead up act,” she recalled.  “He was just a support act.  But he just erupted onto the stage, in this pink lamé suit.

“He was lying on the ground, wriggling and screaming.  Total full-on berserk.  And everyone loved him!  The crowd didn’t want to let him go.

“You got what you expected with the others.  With him, it was totally unexpected.

“’The Wild One’ was his song.  And he was wild.

“I think it was Jodie Sands who came on after him.  It was a total let down after JOK,” she grinned.

With a soft voice and small smile, my mother then talked more of the memories she had of Cloudland.

“I remember I went to a Lifesavers Ball there.  It was alcohol free.

“Each club had a display set up into the alcoves off the side of the ball room.

“The ball was about which surf club showed the most ingenuity to get their alcohol into the ball room.

“My date’s club, North Caloundra, did it by hiding the alcohol in the middle of their surf reel,” she laughed.

My mother cried the day she heard that Cloudland had been demolished.  I distinctly remember the ABC news bulletin announcing its destruction, and my mother’s little cry of anguish.

I know she never forgave the Country Party for this destruction of a place that was a part of her life.  For so many Queenslanders of her generation, the loss of Cloudland was a personal loss.

A news bulletin, a song on the stereo can spark off a memory.  But these small vignettes, these remembered events, are more than just an individual’s recollections.

They are the stories and happenings that belong to all of us, the things that help explain who we are and what made us.  They need to be recalled and shared.

For me, I have found that a part of our history can be found in the songs sung by a grandmother to her grand daughter.

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