Bob Barnard

Born into a musical family, Bob Barnard began playing trumpet partly because the family band led by his mother, Kath Barnard, needed a trumpeter, and partly because he had been deeply impressed by a record of Muggsy Spanier. He gained experience in dance bands while listening eagerly to records—above all those of his major influence, Louis Armstrong—and to popular Australian jazz bands of the 1940s, including Graeme Bell's. Through the 1940s and 1950s he kept a day job in a bank yet played extensively, touring with bands that included the one led by his brother, Len Barnard.

In 1957 he played in Sydney with a small group led by guitarist Ray Price. Back in Melbourne he continued as a semi-professional, making occasional records such as The Naked Dance with a band led by his brother. That same year Bell offered him work in Sydney; the original gig fell through, but Barnard later joined Bell's band. Tours of Australia followed, and a visit to New Zealand and New Guinea with pop singer Frank Ifield. When Armstrong came to Australia in 1963, Bell's band met him at the airport and Barnard played briefly with his idol.

In 1971 he formed a band for an EMI date that yielded 16 Jazz Greats; three years later he formed his first standing band. They worked in and around Sydney and in 1976 appeared at the Bix Beiderbecke Festival in Davenport, Iowa, to great success. After a decade the band's popularity eased, and the death of trombonist John Costelloe led Barnard to cut down to a quartet.

He toured widely through the 1980s and 1990s—in the USA and UK, south-east Asia and Europe—working with leading jazz musicians including Ruby Braff, Peanuts Hucko, Bob Wilber, Kenny Davern, Dick Cary and Milt Hinton, and recording with the last two. With Len he also made two fine Sackville albums issued under Ralph Sutton's name, Partners in Crime and Easy Street. His own recording groups ranged from quartets to nine- and ten-piece bands; he also recorded with strings. In the mid-1990s, with partial funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, he worked on an album celebrating Australian composers. Seeing a decline of interest in traditional jazz at home, he planned by the end of the 1990s to spend more time in Europe and the USA.

His fame rested on forceful traditional jazz, yet the heart of his gift lies in lyrical mainstream ballad playing that emulates, without copying, the players he most admired—Bobby Hackett, Braff, and Armstrong. He also wrote songs of his own, among them Black Stump Stomp, Smackarooney and the attractive ballad Rainbow Hill, included on a 1995 album made in New York.