Obit: Alex Hood (Australia) (1935-2025)

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Australia) (1935-2025)
From: Tony Rees
Date: 05 Dec 25 - 12:33 PM

Thanks for that link Sandra. Some of the background insights not previously known to me plus such a great set of photos.

All the best to the family,

Tony

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Australia) (1935-2025)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 05 Dec 25 - 06:02 AM

VALE - Alex Hood - 1935 - 2025. on Bush Music Club blog - Posted by Annette on facebook with photos from the Alex & Annette Hood collection

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Dec 25 - 04:43 PM

Dave, I'd like those stories, please & thankyou, there were so many things I had to ask him. I have an email in draft & never sent it ...

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: GUEST,Dave Johnson
Date: 02 Dec 25 - 09:28 AM

While primary teaching I had Alex do a couple of shows for my schools. He was great value with his stories and songs.
His early records First and Second Hundred Years were very influential in my musical development along with the Bush Music Club. A later album Seasons of Change, featured songs of his long time mate Don Henderson. When I visited him just a short while ago after his fall, his face lit up with a smile when he saw me in the doorway. A memory I cherish. I had my concertina with me (as you do) and we sang Hendo's song Cuttin' a Monkey (which has a swagman justified in carrying a long blade knife as protection against savage sheep!) And always the showman he told a couple of yarns about film sets and such and prefaced with "I've never told anyone else this one..."
I'm sure St Peter and the mob will be beguiled by his stories.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Tony Rees
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 10:50 PM

A great photo of Alex and Annette with the puppets they made for their "Australian Folk Theatre" travelling show here ... I wonder if any Ozcatters might remember them coming to your school or local hall and giving their show?

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Tony Rees
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 04:37 PM

Just to conclude that thought... to me there is a mild, but pleasant irony here, in that the "Bushwhackers" unit, which originally started as a hasty pastiche of older style (possibly even imaginary) "bush" folk musicians re-enacted by young(er) city folks for the purpose of light entertainment, became the springboard from which Meredith, Hood and others got seriously bitten by the folk music "bug" and went on to become legitimate collectors and folk music performers in their own right, in the case of these two at least, setting the direction/s they were to pursue for the rest of their lives, as well as becoming champions of "the music" and assisting in the rediscovery and promotion of genuine older performers such as Duke Tritton, Sally Sloane and others. From little things...

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Tony Rees
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 12:42 PM

If you will pardon the continued aside (slight diversion from the main thread, but possibly interesting anyway), John Meredith's initial "Bushwhackers" group, which Hood joined a couple of years in, was initially (so far as I can gather) just a bit of fun: Meredith plus 2 mates dressed up as three "old bushwhackers" and sang a few Australian songs at parties, in fact learned from the repertoire of Burl Ives (!), who had earlier been supplied with them by an Australian contact... the initial name for the group was the "Heathcote Bushwhackers", Heathcote being the rapidly gentrifying (although originally bush) distant suburb of Sydney where they were all resident at the time, although the "Heathcote" was dropped fairly rapidly - so presumably used in irony - shades of the Beverley Hillbillies there, in the name at least!

- Tony

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 10:45 AM

I never had the opportunity to meet with Alex Hood but the Internet details linked to on this thread give a wonderful picture of the man and his achievements. I have included his name in the "In Memoriam" thread and send my condolences to all those who know and love him. RIP

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Hrothgar
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 03:51 AM

Lovely man to talk to, and to hear perform. Go in peace, Alex.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: GerryM
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 01:10 AM

rich-joy, I have that album, too, and the follow-up, "The Second Hundred Years", although I got them used, and much later. Well, I have an excuse – I didn't set foot in Australia until 1987.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 08:24 PM

something from Annette I forgot to add - No funeral, but he wanted everyone to raise a glass and remember the times you spent together with song, stories and laughter.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 07:28 PM

not folk who went to the Illawarra Folk Festival & as he & Annette were patrons! Tho he didn't go out much in his later years - one of his last appearances -2021

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: rich-joy
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 07:10 PM

Crikey, he's really gone ..... unfortunately, many folks assumed Alex had already left us years ago (!)

He put out the first "folk" record in my LP collection, c.1964 in my 1st year of HS and naturally, I learnt to sing every song.

It was "Alex Hood ...... Sings of Australia's First 100 Years" and being of Paul Hamlyn's "Music for Pleasure" label, it cost me the princely sum of AU$1.99 (ah, those were the days .....)

I added a few more of his recordings over the years, but I think I only ever saw him perform once I moved Over East to Qld - and only on the one occasion.   

He was an important member of Australia's Folk Revival though - and we are losing them far too quickly.

VALE, Alex - thanks for all your music and fun.

Cheers!
R-J

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) (1935-2025)
From: JennieG
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 03:50 PM

Alex was definitely an entertaining bloke! I have memories of seeing Alex and Annette perform at festivals over the years.

My older son was in the audience for one (at least) of his school shows in the mid-1980s, and some of his songs made their way into the ABC's school songbooks.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025
From: Tony Rees
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 01:11 PM

I never met Alex or saw him perform, but feel I did get to know his work in some way while doing the research for the bulk of the current Wikipedia article on him mentioned above (we did have a telephone conversation about the same at one time and he was very amiable). Writing/improving that article being stimulated by an earlier meeting (encounter) with John Meredith while he was visiting Tasmania in 1987 - a long time back now! At 19 years old, a young Alex was a member of Meredith's influential (original) "Bushwhackers" group in the very early 1950s, before the "younger members (Hood and Chris Kempster) and Meredith apparently "fell out" over musical direction, and never performed together again...

One interesting aside for those who may not know (including myself a while back" - to "bushwhack" being older Australian slang for to "whack" or cut a trail through otherwise trackless country (bush or light scrub), normally implying that the latter is where the protagonist resides (and therefore lives a somewhat basic or primitive existence, away from the "big city"). A companion phrase survives in more general use, when we say that something is "off the beaten track"; also where folks have been said to "beat a path to someone's door", i.e., a route or destination has become popular. Good stuff, language...

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 07:39 AM

c.2002 the National Library videoed his school show in a theater full of kids as it had never been recorded, but I couldn't find it in their catalogue, or in his collection. It was amazing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025
From: GerryM
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 06:13 AM

I saw him perform at the National once, can't remember which year. He was very entertaining.

Subject: Obit: Alex Hood (Aus) 1935-2025
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Nov 25 - 05:30 AM

Musician, songwriter, singer, author, playwright, actor, entertainer, folklorist & friend.

Alex was one of the founders of the Bush Music Club, Australia's first & oldest folk club est 1954.

Earlier this year he was badly injured in a fall, when he was recovering from the surgery he was singing/muttering one of his greatest hits Brumby Jack, so the medical staff sang it to him when he woke! Some of them might have attended his school shows, & when he was in rehab they played his songs in the gym!

Alex Hood - wikipedia

Articles about Alex on BMC's blog

I first met him at the National Folk Festival in 2000, & last saw him in 2022 when I peered over his shoulder taking pics of his sscrapbooks which are now in the Alex & Annette Hood Collection in the National Library

I had so many more questions to ask him about the early days.

sandra