Jack Mitchell (jazz historian)

Jack Mitchell was born in Sydney in 1926. His first job was an assistant cinema projectionist, before he entered university in 1948 to become a dentist.^[1] After becoming a member of the Sydney Swing Music Club in 1944, Mitchell began reading Australian jazz journal Jazz Notes, and became interested in jazz history and discographies.^[1]

He contributed jazz discography articles to journals such as Jazz Notes, before he published Australian Discography in 1950, a 16 page handbook published by Australian Jazz Quarterly.^[1] A second edition was self-published in 1960, and a third edition was being prepared in the 1970s. This had begun being serialised over seven issues in the magazine Music Maker, before that title closed in 1970.^[2] The project was finally published as the book Australian Jazz on Record 1925–80, published by the National Film and Sound Archive in 1988,^[1] with further volumes published in 1998 and 2002.^[3] Corrections for his books were published in the journal Matrix, where Mitchell published a column also listing new releases in Australian jazz.^[2] He also contributed to Australian Jazz and Record Review, Jazz, Jazz Journal, Storyville, the Sydney Jazz Club's Quarterly Rag, the Victorian Jazz Club's Jazzline, and the Australian Jazz Museum's AJazz.^[4]

In 2011, his entire discography project was collected as a CD-ROM titled Australian Jazz on Record 1923–2010,^[5] and it continued to receive updates up to his death.^[4] Mitchell also contributed the discography for Graeme Bell's autobiography in 1988.^[6] The two had met during the 1960s, and Bell provided the forward to Mitchell's Australian Jazz on Record 1925–80.^[7]

Outside of his discography work, Mitchell wrote other books documenting jazz history, such as Coggy a biography on Australian trombonist and bandleader Frank Coughlan,^[8] Blistered Heels : Jazz and hot dance music in Australia in the twenties,^[9] and Happy Feet on Australian popular music in the 1930s.^[5] He also assisted the Australian Jazz Museum with their research and contributed songs from his collection to some of their Australian jazz compilation albums,^[10][11] and presented a program Jazz Cabaret on Lithgow Community Radio EZY-FM 90.5 between 2004-2019.^[4][12]

In 2019, Mitchell received an Order of Australia award for service to jazz music.^[8][13]

Following his death in 2021,^[4] Jack Mitchell's collection was left to the Australian Jazz Museum.^[14]

• Australian discography (edited by William H. Miller.) (1950)
• Australian Jazz on Record 1925–80 (1988)
• Graeme Bell, Australian jazzman : his autobiography, with discography (discography only) (1988)
• Back together again! : the story of the Port Jackson Jazz Band (1995)
• More Australian jazz on record (1998)
• Jazzdags (1999)
• Emajor : even more Australian jazz on record (2002)
• Coggy (2011)
• Australian Jazz on Record 1923–2010 (2011)
• Blistered heels : Jazz and hot dance music in Australia in the twenties (2015)
• Happy feet : Dancing and swinging in Australia in the thirties (2018)