Remember when ‘The Blackboard Jungle’ screened at The Star Picture Theatre in the late fifties and local lads started strumming their acoustic guitars in the new, raw, rebellious and loud sound – rock? Local parents were shocked out of their post war reverie, when this picture was screened, featuring Bill Haley and The Comets and their eponymous song ‘Rock Around the Clock’. With no television, no commercial radio and limited ABC radio, it was from the ‘pictures’, newsreels and vinyl records that gave the local teens their rock’n’roll appetites. Knock your socks off Bill Haley, Mount Isa had its own rock’n’roll legend – Johnny Lui! He had the leg shake, the Brylcreamed hair and the raw energy and sass with a strong voice that made teenage girls swoon. Together with his backing band, The Midnighters, they helped to build this city on rock’n’roll.

Sixteen-year-olds, Boris Stepanov on lead guitar, for The Midnighters, was joined by Mike Tracey (drums) with Peter Sanders (rhythm guitar) and Ken Swan (also lead guitar); Dave Shenton later joined the band.

Still living in Mount Isa, Boris said, “We all had an ear for music and rock’n’roll gave us an excuse to breakout on our own, away from the broken hearted country and western songs, that our parents listened to,” he said. 

“In those early years, we got together in Mike Tracey’s parent’s house to practice and eventually we put on our own dance at the A.W.U. Hall every Saturday night.”

Mr and Mrs Tracey’s support of their son Mike and his mates extended to manning the door to collect entry fees, about two (bob) shillings. The weekend dances were so popular they attracted 200-300 teens. And, there was no trouble with alcohol induced behaviour, alcohol was not served at the dances, as the legal drinking age was 21. 

Although rumour has it that some of the older lads would scamper across to the Argent to ostensibly ‘see their mates.’ Dancing was first and foremost in teens’ minds as the weekend quickly approached.

And the choice was either St. Joseph’s Hall (Railway Avenue) where The Four Squares, with chanteuse Mary McQuade, would be playing or stay closer to town, and jive through the night with Johnny Lui and The Midnighters at the A.W.U. Hall. Both venues offered the young people their own dance floor to jive, bop, bump and grind the night away.

And there was no stopping the groove when Mount Isa’s first commercial radio station, Color Radio 4LM, started broadcasting with the Good Guys: Ian Passion (Passionate Passion), Dave Anning, Chris Wells, Frank Achison and Dennis Brown. The Good Guys would spin the current Top 40 of rock’n’roll, surfing sounds and pop music and the bands would play the covers.

Just to mention band names conjures up memories of the changing music trends and female fashions both of which began to focus on teenagers for the first time in the early 1960s.

The rock era of starched roped petticoats, full round skirts and wide belts cinched tightly around the waist soon gave way to the simpler, geometrical A-lined shorter shifts. The Beatles led the way with their Pierre Cardin designed collarless suits while Mary Quant launched the mini. Each music genre had an equivalent fashion statement: rock chicks, surfie babes and pop princesses. But the local bands took another year or two before they embraced uniformity like the Beatles.

With clean appearances, slim-line trousers, ironed white shirts, thin wide black ties and tidy Brylcreamed hair, The Midnighters and The Four Squares, were soon joined on the dance scene by The Legend, Madison Kat, M I 5, The Premiers, Swamp Adders, The Titanics, Lucifer and Plastic Fantasy.

When the Barkly Hotel opened in 1965, it was The Premiers (Phil Stacey, Ken Buckley, Boris Stepanov, Bill Harvey, and Percy Oeling with singing sensation Johnny Lui) who were invited to play on the first night at the Corroboree Lounge. Just as it is today, it is not always how you play but who you know that helps.

And for The Premiers it certainly helped that Bois and Phil both worked at Thiess Bros, the company that owned and built the Barkly Hotel. The Teen Beats (Eddie Jarden, Martin Connolly, Johnny Turner and Gerry Bellino) went to Brisbane just at the right time and was invited to be one of the opening bands for the Beatles at the Brisbane Showground.

The resultant experience was widely acclaimed as a ‘thumbs up’ for indigenous musicians such as Martin Connolly. Towards the end of the decade, The Graduates moved to Sydney and turned professional. Band members Don Mackinnon, Ken Buckley, Dave Shenton and Eric Anderson who were later joined by Cairns musicians Hubba and Josie. The Graduates, with the new line-up, went on to feature at the opening of Hobart’s Wrest Point Casino and scored a tour of Vietnam entertaining the Australian and American troops.

The social and musical revolution of the 1960s was quickly encompassed by the British rock sound of the ‘street’, epitomised by The Rolling Stones when they hit the airwaves. And no local band played the Rolling Stones rhythm and blues better than the Sanim brothers, Errol and Ben, of rock group Madison Kat.

With their gravitations and raw renditions of Honky Tonk Women and Little Red Rooster, Madison Kat wowed the crowds but it was the heavy rock of Jethro Tull that became the band’s signature sound. And while names of local dance bands changed at the drop of a drumstick, the camaraderie of members allowed them to interchange without a dance step stomped, shaked, rattled or rolled. By the end of the sixties, Johnny Lui sans Brylcreamed hair continued to shake his leg and belt out a song but with a new backing band, The Four Instants (Boris Stepanov, Mike Bonke and Gary Hasted).

Researched by Kim-Maree Burton. Photographs from  Boris Stepanov. Information from the archives of the Mount Isa Mail and the North West Star.  Personal recollections of Boris Stepanov, Marty Lehtonen and Pearl Connelly.