Description
JACK O’HAGAN was the father of Australia’s pop music industry. The most famous popular songwriter of his time, he wrote our nation’s most beloved and enduring songs – ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’, ‘Where the Dog Sits on the Tuckerbox’ and ‘Our Don Bradman’ among them.
‘Jack was the first man to prove that Australians could create and enjoy their own popular music.’ Arts historian FRANK VAN STRATEN.
‘Were he an American, [he] would have been honoured in some Hall of Fame and celebrated at The Lincoln Center’. Comedian BARRY HUMPHRIES.
On Jack’s passing in 1987, TV and radio celebrity BERT NEWTON said, ‘The legacy he leaves behind is a great one, an amazing character, you can pigeonhole him quite easily – Australia’s best and best-known composer.’
Jack was a songwriter, pop singer, music publisher, actor, playwright, radio celebrity and advertising ‘mad man’ – a chief influencer at the leading edge during a time of great technological change.
His work was recorded by the greats of his era – Peter Dawson, Richard Tauber, Stéphane Grappelli, Liza Minnelli, Vienna Boys Choir, Slim Dusty, and many more – and recognised as a major cultural, historical and aesthetic contribution with an MBE in 1973, the National Film and Sound Archive ‘s online Jack O’Hagan gallery, and a hefty representation in the NFSA Sounds of Australia Collection.
Jack O’Hagan was the embodiment of early- to mid- 20th century pop culture through around 200 published popular and dance songs, alongside 300-400 hundred film and theatrical songs, advertising jingles and a national anthem contender – a soundtrack for a nation between two World Wars, through the Jazz Age and Great Depression, from horses to Holdens.
Jack wrote of Australian places long before Skyhooks’ Greg Macainsh, distinctly Australian songs before Paul Kelly, footy songs before Mike Brady, advertising jingles before MoJo, and rode the waves created by the introduction of new technologies. He was arguably our first pop star.
JO GILBERT’S ode to her flawed but brilliant grandfather Jack chronicles not only the roots of our national pop culture but the very dawn of contemporary Australia itself.
