Sunday January 14th, 2024, is the second anniversary of Nick Polites’ passing at the age of 94. Nick was a much-loved iconic Melbourne jazzman, an early, influential, and respected advocate for migrant services, a successful businessman, and he had a life-long philosophic interest in social issues.
I had the great privilege to be a friend of Nick’s over the last fifteen years of his life.
Our families were well known to each other, though I was only introduced to him by my mother in 2007.
Nick’s and my mother’s families were from the same township in Asia Minor, which became Türkiye a century ago this year.
Nick’s mother Philia and my maternal grandmother Argyro arrived in Melbourne in the 1920s as ‘Displaced Persons’ following the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange which forcibly relocated over two million people.
In addition to his stellar career as a jazz musician, Nick was the first Director of the Australian Greek Welfare Society, now known as ‘Pronia’. He was a prominent advocate for migrant rights through the 1970s and a member of the inaugural Board of Fronditha Care. Earlier in his career he managed his family’s confectionary manufacturing business after graduating from the University of Melbourne in the late 1940s.
Nick’s jazz music recording career commenced in 1951 when he joined Frank Johnson’s Fabulous Dixielanders.
The year before – 1950 – The Dixilanders were my parent’s wedding band! The band were friends of my father and learned some Greek folk tunes for the occasion from my paternal grandmother’s record collection.
My father and uncle had arrived in Melbourne with their mother as youngsters from Cyprus in 1936, following my paternal grandfather’s earlier arrival at the beginning of The Great Depression.
Following my 2007 introduction to Nick, my partner Julie and I became regulars at Louisiana Shakers Sunday afternoon performances: first at a pub in Gurtrude Street Fitzroy, and then at The Clyde hotel in Carlton.
We regularly met with Nick socially and learned a lot about jazz history and jazz culture from him.
The above photo show us at Carlton’s Brunetti Café having a coffee and chat after one of his Louisianna Shakers Sunday afternoon sessions at The Clyde in 2018.
About ten years after I first met him, Nick donated thirty volumes of his jazz career memorabilia collected back to the 1940s to the Australian Jazz Museum (AJM).
As an AJM volunteer, one day a week over a couple of years I carefully worked my way through all this material.
I first digitalised all thirty volumes exactly as Nick had donated them – now available to view on-line through the AJM.
Under the supervision of the AJM’s Collections Manager – Mel Blachford – I then transferred the contents to thirty new archival-quality folders held at the AJM in Wantirna, for all to access there.
So, readers, please let any jazz writers, students of jazz (particularly prospective PhD candidates), or academic researchers interested in writing about Nick’s legacy, know about this wonderful and easily accessible primary resource.
Starting in 2017 through to 2022, I wrote six short articles about Nick published in Neos Kosmos (English Edition).
Some were translated into Greek. Some were also published elsewhere. The first article originally appeared in Lella Cariddi’s ‘Recalling The Journey’ series of migrant family stories published by Multicultural Arts Victoria. It was also published in the AJM’s quarterly Ajazz magazine. For anyone who wants to find them, all six articles are archived on the Neos Kosmos website here.
Anyone interested can explore the wealth of Australian jazz resources at the Australian Jazz Museum located at 15 Mountain Highway, Wantirna – in Melbourne’s outer east. Visit the AJM website here: www.ajm.org.au
On radio, you are most likely to hear recordings of Nick Polites broadcast on ‘Jazz on a Saturday’ which you can hear from 4:00pm to 5:30pm Saturday afternoons, on Melbourne Community Radio 3CR – 855 on the AM dial – great traditional and classic jazz, news and interviews presented by the Victorian Jazz Club. 3CR’s Jazz on a Saturday radio program has been on air for 48 years.
I had the good fortune to be at Nick’s last public performance on the morning of Christmas Eve 2020 outside the Degani Café at his local Ivanhoe Shopping Mall; I was with Jill Morgan AM, who took the photo above.
Though Nick’s funeral service two years ago was secular, it drew heavily on New Orleans jazz traditions. A brass marching band led the coffin and a procession of mourners into the chapel; and eulogies were punctuated with live jazz tunes of significance to Nick.
One of the eulogies read by the funeral celebrant was in fact an interview with Nick that I had written-up in his voice and published in Neos Kosmos back in 2017.
At the end of the service, the New Orleans style brass band – made up of Nick’s friends and musical collaborators – then led the pallbearers and ‘second line’ procession of mourners away from the chapel to the hearse.
As a final tribute, before the hearse departed, and with us all standing there in the funeral parlour car park, the band performed ‘Varka Yiallo’ – a traditional Greek folk tune that was in my grandmother’s record collection over seventy years ago.