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Compilation - Articles about Alex Hood
Alex & Annettee Hood Collection, NationalLibrary of Australia
Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025) - Mudcat Cafe
Posted by Annette on facebook with photos from the Alex & Annette Hood collection
Alex Hood my soul mate. Here are some photographic memories of yours and our time, shared working together. He was a vibrant, creative, and a wonderful performer. He said, he was an actor and just used his instruments for effect. But he loved the banjo & his 12 stringed guitar made by Geoff Wills in 1969 and adapted by Don Henderson.
His timing in his stories & songs was always perfect, a gift, it can't be taught. He'd always told stories from the time his father propped him up on a table at the Masonic Club dinner at 4 years old.
New Theatre & The Bush Music Club played a huge role with Alex, he learned every male part in the 1st production of Reedy River in Sydney so that he could get on stage, and he waited in the wings until someone was sick. It was "Bob the Swagman, " then "Snowy". He learned the bones as his first instrument which he played with The Bushwhackers from Sydney. Once he started, the germ grew, he couldn't stop. He learned the banjo while being a clown at an opening of an arcade in Sydney at Christmas time using Pete Seeger's "How to play the 5 stringed Banjo", a perfect combination. Other bands and groups came and went, and he did go to Margaret Barr (choreographer) to help with stage craft and movement. His mate Larry King (Clancy Dunne) and Alex sang on TV for Bill Peach doing political satire songs. It was the '60's & '70's, the folk boom. They performed in clubs, coffee shops, festivals, and concerts across Australia. The era of smoking was everywhere!! Alex lost his voice, so in the late '60's he decided to sing for children. Clancy & Alex toured NSW together doing school shows & clubs, they were true mates and still were until the end.
Alex started collecting songs and music from old singers and bushies around that time, and he collected for The Macquarie Dictionary (Syd Uni) on his travels. Then he started doing solo work across Australia. He wrote children's books, songs and 4 Folk Operas for the ABC radio, pre TV'S in schools. During this time, he worked on TV, John Laws Show, Aussie the Emu and Playschool.
The folk operas were on the radio and those plays travelled across the airwaves. The farmers would come in for lunch and listen to the farm report, stay & listen to Blue Hills, and often stay & listen to the school broadcasts. "The Wallaby Track ", "The Flying Pieman ", "Speewah ", and "Eureka Beneath the Southern Cross ", were broadcast nationally, across states & territories, radio that wonderful medium.
From "The Wallaby Track " came "Brumby Jack" and "Pumpkin Paddy " plus so many more songs and stories. The children performed the radio plays and adapted them, they made costumes, backdrops, and props. The dreaded stick with bottle tops was in the "The Wallaby Track " with "how to make one" for the play, for percussion in their bush-bands. It went around the schools, and it and the songs, were a hit. Brumby Jack gave him and later me 50 years of employment. What a legacy. Alex loved touring, but it's hard work and it can be lonely at times. He worked all over Australia doing music shows in schools and workshops.
In the NT in the early 1970's Alex did a music camp at Talc Head. His offsider was then a young man, he later became head of The Northern Land Council. The boys came from 14 different communities across the north, Alex taught them guitar, rock, reggae, blues & folk. Alex travelled to remote 1st Nation destinations with different Arts Councils, as we also did, in the '80's, '90's & 2000's up until 2015.
He was unstoppable and when we first met, I was in The Sydney Dance Drama Group, for 14 years, he'd always wanted to do Folk Theatre, always an actor and presenter, so Alex as the communicator with songs & yarns, and Annette the dancer, choreographer, and maker of backdrops & life-sized puppets, we began our Folk Theatre, in 1986. The puppets I made always looked realistic and Alex with his flair was able to do ventriloquism and sing with them or tell stories. They could talk, sing, fart, and eat, and the children loved them, they thought they were real. So, every day, we laughed along with the children, what joy it brought us and them.
Sadly, Alex has gone, NEVER to be replaced. He was one of a kind, explosive, honest, and forthright in his beliefs. I will miss you my love, thanks for our time together. We had our ups and downs, but more ups. We had caravans that plunged into muddy cane fields, or tyres that caught on fire, or engines that blew up & brakes that failed going down steep hills, but we survived. We travelled miles & miles over some dusty roads, over 7,500+ shows together. YOU did over 20,000 performances. Time for a rest, I think. But all those that knew you always enjoyed your fascinating stories, experiences & songs.
We together worked for the National Library and collected stories and whole of life interviews, over 270+ from people from all walks of life, the tapestry of Oz the Social History. We loved all those folks that helped us, fed us, and propped us up over the years, they're never to be forgotten while the memories are left.
Lots of the yarns are in The National Library along with yours and our, archives. Goodbye my love, keep the banjo playing. Love Annette.
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