A guide to the jazz archives of the State Library of New South Wales

The Mitchell Library wing on the corner of Macquarie Street and Hospital Road in central Sydney holds one of the country's quietest treasures: a sprawl of jazz manuscripts, sheet music, photographs, letters, and reel-to-reel tapes charting Australian jazz from the swing era to the free jazz revivals.

This guide walks through what the collection holds, how to plan a visit, and why researchers from Wagga Wagga to Wollongong make the trip. The reading rooms are free to access, but they reward advance planning and a few insider quirks worth knowing before booking your desk.

Holdings and the names behind them

The jazz material here is a patchwork built up over decades from musicians, families, club owners, and fans. The Mitchell Library catalog lists each collection as a separate manuscript group, with discrete entries for the Graeme Bell papers, the Don Burrows papers, the Ade Monsburgh collection, and the Egon and Heather Andersen holdings.

Bell, the Adelaide-born Dixieland pianist who led the Australian jazz revival of the late 1940s, left his tour itineraries, correspondence, and arrangements. The Don Burrows papers document the Sydney saxophonist whose career anchored Australian jazz education, with program files from performances at venues like the Sydney Town Hall and the old Chevron Hotel in Kings Cross.

Sound recordings and oral histories

The library also stewards recorded sound on cassette, reel-to-reel, and digital formats. These include live concert tapes, off-air ABC Jazz broadcasts, and a long-running oral history series recorded from the 1970s with players who worked Adelaide, Melbourne, and Brisbane circuits over several decades.

Many of the older tapes have aged through Sydney's humid summers. Conservation staff periodically deal with reels showing signs of degradation, and anyone handling magnetic media at home will find the principles shared in this piece on recovering moldy tapes useful as background reading.

Planning your visit

Reading rooms open Tuesday to Saturday, with timed entry booked through the library's website. New visitors are issued a Library card after producing photo ID and proof of an Australian address, and most jazz material sits in the Mitchell Library reading room on level two.

A few tips that save time on a first visit:

• Pre-order boxes at least three working days ahead, especially after the post-summer surge
• Bring a pencil and a phone or camera without flash; pens are not allowed near manuscripts
• Listening copies of oral history tapes are played in a supervised room rather than at the desk
• The ground-floor canteen gets busy by lunch, so an arvo coffee at the Marble Bar inside the nearby Hilton is calmer

Notable collections worth a first look

If you only have a day in the reading room, a sensible shortlist begins with a few better-catalogued manuscript groups that surface regularly in jazz research. The Graeme Bell collection fills several boxes and is searchable by year and tour from the Australasian tours through to the European years.

Collections that often surprise first-time visitors include:

• The Ade Monsburgh collection, with its photographic record of Sydney clubs and overseas tours from the postwar decades
• The Egon and Heather Andersen papers, including material from early tours of American jazz visitors
• The Don Innes collection, with detailed club histories and ephemera from Brisbane and Melbourne
• Donated radio scripts and cue cards from the long-running ABC Jazz program that shaped local listening habits

Research tips for the catalog

The State Library uses the standard Australian manuscript tradition of "MSS" reference codes. Each collection has a unique number, with items inside described at folder level only in the box lists held at the reading desk. A quick call to the reference desk before travelling can save a wasted trip, because online records can sometimes be sparse.

It also helps to cross-reference holdings with the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and with the Australian Music Centre. Many of the players interviewed onsite appear on commercial releases that can be borrowed from the library itself, situating a manuscript letter within a wider discography for follow-up listening.

Sydney scene links

Sydney's traditional jazz community feeds back into historical research, with regular weekend sessions at pubs around The Rocks, Parramatta, and Surry Hills. The annual Sydney Traditional Jazz Festival fills the CBD with bands over the long weekend, and a primer for first-timers sits in A guide to the Sydney Traditional Jazz Festival.

Regional festivals and clubs across the country, including Wangaratta and the long-running Stompin' at the Savoy series in Melbourne, are also good places to hear musicians whose names recur throughout the State Library's collections. The links between the historical record and the live tradition are stronger than many newcomers realise, and a single weekend of gigs will often send you back to the reading room with new questions.

Going further

For readers who want to keep exploring Australian jazz beyond the reading room, there is no shortage of entry points. Curated listening guides, festival previews, and obituaries for figures from the local scene are all collected on Jazz Ramble, where the writing honours both the historical tradition and the bands playing this weekend in Newtown and beyond.

If something you uncover in the archives sparks a story worth telling, pitch it to the blog. Australia's jazz history is being actively written by curious readers as well as by academics, and new perspectives on the State's holdings surface every year.