The legendary Billy Burton still blows Lane Cove away

WORDS: SHAUNA

Billy Burton became a professional trumpeter aged just 16.

Amazingly, he's still blowing up a storm on stage, having just celebrated his 90th birthday.

"Playing my trumpet is my oxygen.

"It keeps me going, keeps me alive,” says the veteran head of the Billy Burton Band.

Billy, the long-time Lane Cove resident who these days is happy to please audiences at local venues like the Lane Cove Golf Club and Avalon Bowling Club, carries the pedigree of a master musician.

He's outlived some of the biggest names in showbiz whom he played with, since migrating from London to Sydney in the 1950s at the urging of friend and singer, Lorrae Desmond.

"I flew out in my 20s and right into a job at Chequers, playing alongside Lorrae and the brother of Nat King Cole.

It was just the beginning of super stardom for Billy and his resident band, who also played at the Silver Spade Room at Sydney's Chevron Hotel.

And play with the giants of the music industry he did, when jazz, swing and live shows and the glitter of famous clubs reigned supreme.

Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Bobby Darren, Tony Bennett, Bob Hope and Dusty Springfield soon got to know and appreciate Billy and his band.

Their positive experiences playing and touring Australia resonated with other artists who came to Sydney, like Stevie Wonder, who gave Billy his harmonica as a token of his appreciation and their friendship, and Sergio Mendez, Jose Feliciano, the Beach Boys, Robert Gourley, Paul Anchor, Roger Miller and Wayne Newton, Roy Orbison, and Tiny Tim.

Billy's world renowned musical status earned him television performances on the ABC and with the Tommy Leonetti Show (Billy played on his signature My City of Sydney hit song) and on tours with the likes of legendary Australian jazz bandleader Frank Coughlan, who helped to make famous Sydney's iconic art deco dance club, the Trocadero, which could accommodate up to 2,000 people.

Billy's musical genius also features on nine albums he can remember.

He said the only time he hasn't played were the years after his beloved wife Joan died, about 20 years ago.

"And when I had to have operations on my hands," he added with a chuckle.

Billy still plays with the same beautiful Getzen trumpet he acquired more than 60 years ago at the Silver Spade, despite it going missing for a time.

The trumpet has been replated, and reinvigorated. Just like it's youthful looking 90-year-old master.

"I would be lost without it," he adds.

Billy Burton said he and his band have enjoyed "memorable experiences" playing at the Lane Cove Golf Club over the past 12 years.

"It is a nice venue to play at. I started getting my friends in the music industry to join us at Lane Cove.

"We brought city entertainment lifestyle to Lane Cove (then the Country Club) and without the dreadful parking and other transport problems attached to the city.”

" There were some challenges like catering problems, "but we managed to attract performers like American Miriam Waks, Brisbane's talented Ingrid James and Greg Arthur, Dan Barnett, George Wahingmachine, Nic Jeffries and Italian Virna Sazone."

A local wish for live music to continue…

With Eventbrite bookings, Billy Burton and his band, alongside the best of Australian and international jazz singers, drew large crowds to the Golf Club on the last Friday of each month throughout 2022.

Some locals are keen to highlight that there has never been a sign at the Golf Course entrance advertising the music or dance events at the Club, which they see as a missed opportunity with thousands of cars passing daily on River Rd.

The Lane Cove Golf clubhouse is currently a carpeted venue for larger events and is unique in Lane Cove as it can simultaneously accommodate indoor musical performance, dancing and dining for 130 seated people.

A DA currently sits with Council for an eight-court Sport and Recreation Facility at the Clubhouse site, with work expected to begin in mid-2023.

The design of the proposed new $75m multisport facility changes the current layout and interior in the function area by multi-purposing the space for ‘flexible’ uses. Some who currently use the space are worried about the future acoustics of the building and how music events will be affected.

Untill those changes are made, Billy Burton will continue to attract the best to Lane Cove. Tiffany Austin, an Afro-American jazz/blues singer from Los Angeles performed to a sell-out crowd with singer Nic Jeffries and Billy‘s Band at the Club last October. While Billy was playing at the Foundry 616 in Ultimo, Tiffany agreed to be a guest singer on account of Billy’s excellent reputation.

On Friday 24 February, New York-based singer Miriam Waks will appear with the Billy Burton Band at the Lane Cove Golf Club from 7pm. Book at Eventbrite by searching “The Billy Burton Band and Guest Singer Miriam Waks.”

Miriam sings in 17 languages and a plethora of musical styles so the evening will feature Soul, French, Spanish, Brazilian and Jazz Classics, Tango and more.

Miriam is a highly original and vibrant performer who has performed at venues and residencies across the globe including New York, Buenos Aires, France, Cuba, Edinburgh, London, Italy, Brussels, India, Macau, Hong Kong and Australia.

Miriam performs with various outfits in NYC but made her stage debut at the tender age of 10 singing solo at the Sydney Opera House, as she is Sydney born. The legendary Billy Burton is a long-time resident of Lane Cove, and the two have performed together many times. Don’t miss out!

February is the last official month of summer. Of course, it hasn’t been much of a summer, has it?

Given we can walk outside without being choked by bushfire smoke, and half the country isn’t on fire, we shouldn’t really complain. But seriously, more than 330 days in a row where we don’t hit 30 degrees? Not a single officially-defined hot day?

For some, this will feel like a robbery. A summer wasted.

For me, though? I’m ecstatic. Relieved. We’re nearly through, it’s nearly Autumn.

Only February to go. 28 days which usually give us the warmest sea temperatures of the year – a good thing –and the highest humidity levels. A very bad thing.

In spite of the run of below-average temperatures we’ve been served up, I still think that there’s good chance that February will serve us up her cruelest best before March heralds the relief of the crisp mornings.

Yes, to paraphrase those Game of Thrones guys, Summer might possibly be coming. And I want you guys to be ready for that.

So, I’ve gone searching for the internet’s finest wisdom on how to survive the sweatiest, frizziest, most miserable month of 2023.

The first tip I found was that we should turn on the air conditioner. A good idea, but in these times of rising energy prices, this one seemed a little basic. Like something we should have a further down the list of ideas. Top ten, definitely, but why go to straight to this option? Because you’re an air-con manufacturer’s website, that’s why.

I kept searching.

Let me state for the record that I am a big fan (no pun intended) of the work of the airconditioning sector. Having grown up in Queensland, which is like living on the actual sun, and where through my entire education the only place in the school that was airconditioned was the library and cars were like waffle irons on wheels, I place enormous value on the ability to control my own climate. But I feel I owe you, dear TVO Reader, something different, a more robust list of ways to keep cool this “summer”.

The advertisers’ dollar is a powerful thing on the internet, so it was only through sheer determination that I managed to free myself from the grip of the algorithm (which none of us really knows the meaning of, but we all love saying, don’t we?).

I am happy to report that I found a website that offered to share “The Secrets of Staying Cool in Summer”.

This was obviously exciting. Partly because I am, at heart kinda lazy and while I do want to have adventures where I find and save the Ark of the Covenant, I am not keen on all the dirty work that sort of venture seems to require and just want things to be simple. But mostly because it was an American website.

Now, the USA, we know, is doing it a bit tough at the moment, but this is also the country of innovators that brought us Subprime Mortgages, tanning beds and Kanye West. So I was confident that the secrets within would be revolutionary for we Down Under sufferers of summer’s tyranny. So on I read. Eagerly.

The secrets are to stay cool by keeping your body cool. Ok. I’m with you. But how?

Drink water. Wear loose-fitting clothing made from natural fibres. Eat cool foods such as salad and fruit.

Great Scott! Seems that for all these years, I have already been in possession of the secrets. Even more thrilling, if these are the secrets, what other information is just lying around in the public domain, waiting to be discovered by a budding, desk-top Indiana Jones?

Suggestions are many. In direct contravention of the edicts of Big Aircon, seems we should be trying our best to acclimatize – turning the aircon down a little every day, getting our bodies used to spending more time in the hot weather, knowing that one day all those sweaty hot chickens will come home to roost (it’s hot, forgive me a mangled metaphor or two please).

We should go out in the mornings or late afternoons, avoiding the worst of the heat.

My favourite though? Apparently if we go swimming - or ice-skating – that will cool us down somewhat. No kidding. I turned off my internet in disgust. We already know these things. There are no secrets.

We’ll limp through this together though. And in 28 days, we’ll breathe a slightly-cooler sigh of relief for another summer over.

Stay cool friends.

P.S. There is one secret to staying cooler – one I learnt from 23 years in the Sunshine State. Sydney, we’re already way cooler than Brisbane.