[AUSTRALIAN JAZZ] Haydn J. Britton, aged 6 years & 3 months. Melbourne, circa 1920.

A$110 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Carbon print photograph, 134 x 84 mm, printed on postcard stock; verso inscribed in ink Haydn J. Britton, 6 years 3 months ; no photographer s imprint; a superb print with beautiful soft tones; the verso has some staining. A magnificent study of a Melbourne jazz legend in early childhood. The following is Ralph Powell s tribute to Haydn Britton, The Man with the Golden Sax , published in VJAZZ, Quarterly Magazine of The Australian Jazz Museum, number 63, August 2014: HAYDN John Britton — Clarinet and sax player — was heavily involved in the nascent Melbourne jazz scene of the 1930s and 1940s playing with such jazz luminaries as Ade Monsbourgh, The Bells, Jack Varney and Cy Watts before apparently fading from the jazz world into which his peers grew. When the redoubtable Roger Beilby suggested discovering what happened to Haydn Britton I thought it would be a straightforward task little realising how far from the truth that would prove to be. To begin with the public record lists him as Haydn, Hayden, Hadyn or Haydon. Put these together with Britton and/or Britten and we had the recipe for a researcher’s nightmare! Quite a bit exists on his early years but there is then a complete dearth of information until he reappears in retirement on the Mornington Peninsula. Haydn John Britton was born on the 18th of December, 1914 the only son of John and Beatrice and grew up in Port Melbourne. By the time he befriended Cy Watts in about 1931 he was playing a home-made ukulele and the ka

• Binding: Hardcover

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