A prominent North Queensland resident waged a lengthy campaign to try and stop Australia being swamped by American culture. He was the now almost forgotten Townsville chartered accountant , poet, singer,composer and actor, the late John Ashe, pictured above on the front of an album . There was a time when Ashe was regarded as one of Australia’s best ballad writers. In 1964 , Ashe wrote Townsville’s centenary song Queen City of the North . Selected as an interesting Australian for the l988 Australian Bicentennial series Yarn Spinners, he was taped in Townsville community radio station 4TTFM recalling various events , including World War 1 peace celebrations in Townsville .
Over the years his distinctively Australian songs received much airplay on 4TTT. Dubbed “one of the last Dinkum Aussies”, he ran a half century long campaign to help Australia develop a country music/ballad “soul”. Ashe deplored the ever- growing signs in his lifetime that Australia was being taken over by everything American. Australians, he lamented, would rather sing of Texas than their own country .
With a great sense of humour , a love of literature and classical music , he composed and sang scores of rollicking Australian songs. Some of his early songs were sung to troops in the jungles of New Guinea and played by military bands in Australian Army camps. A prominent American country singer , Wilf Carter , sang an Ashe composition in a special tribute to Australian country music in the l960s.
Breaker Morant , bushrangers Ned Kelly and Ben Hall , drovers , flying doctors , coppers, two-up, the Melbourne Cup , bush race meetings and juvenile delinquents became subjects for Ashe’s songs. Ashe was included in the Festival LP Lights of Cobb and Co along with Tex Morton , Leonard Teale and Chips Rafferty. The ABC used his song Game As Ned Kelly in a television documentary Changing Matilda – the New Australia which was screened on American television. Slim Dusty , a close friend, sang several of Ashe’s tunes .
Ashe received support for his campaign to increase the nation’s interest in its own roots from a former New Guinea magistrate, Reginald Arthur Vivian . Vivian had retired to Magnetic Island, off Townsville . From Melbourne, Vivian had spent many years in the outback and on his retirement , under the name Aldus Thurian , penned verse which “oozed the Aussie spirit”. He had a “ devastating sense of humour ” and also wrote six songs . Vivian told Ashe he , too, was heartily sick of the American jazz beat which flooded the airwaves , and lamented that Australia had no folk songs apart from Waltzing Matilda.
The two agreed it had been unfortunate that early Australia had not produced a folk balladist like the American Stephen Foster . Foster , who died in poverty in l864, gave America a sense of nationhood through songs like The Campdown Races , My Old Kentucky Home , Beautiful Dreamer and I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair .
Oddly enough , these two critics of the American takeover of Australia converted some Stephen Foster songs to ones with an Australian touch. Unfortunately, Vivian had no sense of rhythm , so Ashe got him to write lyrics to existing tunes . Their first joint effort was Julia , a “twin” of the Foster song, Clementine . Ashe gave the song a “ corny ” finish and it was sung by Grace Newman who in her teens had studied opera in Sydney and performed in many bands. Wilfred Thomas liked the sheet music and the record was eventually played on the ABC.
In the months before he died , aged 70, on July 23,l948, Vivian sent Ashe lyrics for more than a dozen songs , most “really terrible”. One , however, So Long, based on a similarly titled American hit parade tune , captured the Stephen Foster style , but in an Australian way. Ashe said Vivian had put " dynamite " into the song and a Townsville band led by Bill Tinker was told to swing hell out of it for a recording . Ashe so liked the song that when it was played at private parties it incited him to “ do my hula , crossed with a snake dance . ”
Australia, Ashe said, was being submerged by American culture through films, records, radio and television . It got to a stage where most Australian artists were singing about the USA , even with an American accent. In his song Celebratin’ Australia Day Ashe had Australians rocking to the latest Yankee hit and kids in blue jeans not knowing the words of Waltzing Matilda or the meaning of the term swaggie .
His songs often bore zany titles and had humorous lyrics. A warning to all damsels was included in the ballad When the Sheila From Biloela Met the Stinker from Innamincka . And they don’t write songs today like The Bandy Trollop from Bandiwallop who got involved with a politician .
Flying Fox Frolic was well received in North Queensland where the fruit bats cavort at night , mauling mangoes and pawpaws , leaving unwanted deposits in water tanks . The song was so popular that he was asked to sing it at many Townsville functions . His “true” story of the famous dog on the tucker box at Gundagai received much airplay throughout Australia as did Goanna Rock .
In the l970s, Ashe noted an upsurge of interest in all things Australian and his distinctive songs were in demand , some records being reissued and new ones cut . RCA, E.M.I and Festival brought out LP albums of his , the songs inspired by “ real Australians ” in North Queensland and Out West.
Ashe composed most of the songs for an American produced LP entitled Songs of the Great Barrier Reef , performed by Rod Rogers and the Tropical Island Serenaders . The songs were about Green, Hayman, Magnetic , Orpheus and the Whitsunday islands.
In l978 he wrote and recorded Dam The Burdekin with the Bill Beldan Trio in the Peacock Room of Townsville’s Lowth’s Hotel . The record urged that the Burdekin River be harnessed for the benefit of Townsville and the rest of North Queensland.
His whimsical approach to life came through in his poetry , although not evident in Songs of Sentiment , dealing with love , which had a preface by Henry Lawson authority and literary critic, the late Dr Colin Roderick of James Cook University . In part, Roderick wrote :... (Ashe) seeks candidly to depict the attraction of woman for man , the dawn of love, its highnoon of ecstacy , its grey hours of disillusion, its bleak midnight of rejection – and the quiet hours of philosophical compensation … Ashe was a frequent visitor to Roderick’s house in Townsville and would have long discussions with him . Mrs Roderick remembered Ashe as being a likeable, garrulous person who walked everywhere because he never owned a car . As he strode about the city , being well known , he chatted to scores of people along the way .
His writing of light verse was influenced by yet another American – the Lithuanian born screenwriter, Samuel Hoffenstein , described as the poor man’s Ogden Nash . Ashe referred to him in correspondence and wrote a piece as a tribute to " the great Samuel Hoffenstein." This work, Ashe explained, had been designed to show the futility of life, not a new discovery , the Lord Buddha having found this out 2500 years previously . Examples of Ashe’s light hearted ditties follow :
When unadorned,Godiva rode,
Men turned away, respect they showed.
Could she repeat the show today
Great crowds would still be turned away!
Said Bad King John,”I am resigned
To have this Magna Carta signed,
But though you think I’m in a mess,
Contracts are void, signed with duress.”
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When Good Queen Bess approached some mud
Sir Walter Raleigh proved his blood.
He spread his doublet, bowed his head,
“Step on it Ma’am. You’re late”, he said
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Once on a time , old King Canute
Set out to rule the waves . You beaut!
The tide still rose, declined to fall
And soaked him, underpants and all .
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NEXT : The Ashe family, wartime experiences , fame and growing frustration over unkept recording promises in Australia .
