Alex Hood
Alexander Stewart Ferguson "Alex" Hood was an Australian folk singer, writer, actor, children's entertainer/educator and folklorist.
Biography
Early life
Hood was born in Sydney and attended Homebush Boys High School, where he gained his Intermediate Certificate. As a teenager he was a keen cricketer but left school at age 15 to take up an apprenticeship as an electrician. He joined the Eureka Youth League, a communist youth association, meeting Bill Berry and Chris Kempster. Kempster, along with the older singer and folklorist John Meredith, a founding member of the Bushwhackers (band)|Bushwhackers], were members of the Unity Singers, a Sydney left-wing choir formed in 1951.Initial musical influences and career
In 1953 Reedy River, a new Australian musical play based around the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, was created, opening first at the Melbourne New Theatre and then subsequently in Sydney's New Theatre, also in 1953. For the Sydney production, Meredith's Bushwhackers group were selected to provide the musical accompaniment; Hood spent some time "hanging around backstage" and, when Kempster had to take three months leave to perform his national service, the nineteen year old Hood, then known as Alec, deputised for him playing the part of "Snowy".. According to a later account by his partner Annette, Hood's simple but effective method to gain the relevant performance experience was to learn all the lines spoken by all the characters, then step up to deputise for whomever was then absent at any particular time.As a result of this involvement, Hood acquired a love of traditional Australian "bush" music and both he and Kempster became accepted members of the band, which however eventually led to friction between them and Meredith, who decided that the best course of action was to disband the group in 1957, telling the various members that if they wanted to carry on performing, it would be under the auspices of the Sydney "Bush Music Club" with which they had all been associated, but no longer under the "Bushwhackers" band name. Hood, together with Kempster on guitar and banjo and Harry Kay on harmonica then formed "The Rambleers", utilizing their preference to sing in harmony as opposed to the unison singing style of the Bushwhackers. The group toured and released a 10-inch LP The Old Bark Hut followed with a 7-inch 33 rpm record Waltzing Matilda, both 1958, and also appeared in a 1960 stage production Fisher's Ghost, a play by Douglas Stewart based on the Fisher's Ghost legend, together with singers Barbara Lisyak and Denis Kevans.
In 1962 Hood teamed up with British singer Chuck Quinton as "The Rambling Boys", spending several months touring with the "Gill Brothers" circus troupe before taking off on their own touring throughout outback New South Wales. Hood and his first wife, Gabrielle, subsequently established the Folk Arts Centre at 90 Queen Street, Woollahra, modelled after Israel Young's Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village, New York City, however the Centre lasted only a year before closing.
From 1961 to 1962 Hood joined the Australian folk/jazz singer Marian Henderson and international jazz guitarist/ commercial artist Chris Daw, recently arrived in Sydney, in a trio "Daw, Hood And Henderson" which released an EP Oh Pay Me ; he also performed on a various artists 1964 EP Basic Wage Dream. He also worked with guitarist Brian Godden as "The Prodigal Sons", who recorded a single entitled The Didgeridoo/The Girl On The Five Dollar Note, released by Parlophone Australia in 1969.
Hood released his first solo LP Alex Hood Sings of Australia's First Hundred Years in 1964 in conjunction with a pocket songbook. This was followed by a number of other albums including The Second Hundred Years, Songs From the Wallaby Track, Seasons of Change, Songs While the Billy Boils, Me and My Friends, Sydney or The Bush and Me and More Friends. He also contributed to a book + LP release The Restless Years in 1968, along with the actor/reciter Peter O'Shaughnessy and singer Marian Henderson, and was instrumental in getting the Scottish-Australian singer Harry Robertson recorded for the label MFP Australia in 1971, during which he took the lead vocal on two of Harry's songs on the resulting Robertson album Whale Chasing Men: Songs of Whaling in Ice and Sun. During the 1960s he performed as a duo with Larry King. As Alex and Clancy they performed across Australia in clubs, coffee shops, festivals, and concerts, however when he found that the smoking in venues was resulting in him losing his voice, the duo moved more into performing for children at school shows.
In conjunction with his albums of songs, Hood wrote a number of books, plays and folk operas for children, including "Pumpkin Paddy meets the Bunyip" and "Brumby Jack Saves the Wild Bush Horses", "The Flying Pieman", "Herman's German band meets Thunderbolt" with Robert Smith, and "Speewah". Songs from "The Flying Pieman" were also released on LP in c. 1974.
Commencing in the 1970s, and then from the 1980s through to 2015 with the Australian Folk Theatre, Alex made a special point of travelling to the Northern Territory, frequently funded by different Arts Councils, in order to perform for audiences of Australian first nations children and adults.
Field and oral history recordings
Hood began to record traditional music, folklore and oral histories when he was touring in rural New South Wales in 1968. In 1972 he recorded Aboriginal children of Arnhem Land singing and chanting while on an Arts Council tour of the Northern Territory. These recordings became part of the Alex and Annette Hood Collection now held at the National Library of Australia, which consists of about 200 recordings made between 1968 and 2006. The early recordings contain folk music and folklore, but most of the later recordings are oral histories including interviews with miners, drovers, bullock drivers, farmers, folk singers and dancers, as well as a cattle dealer, a photographer, a town planner, a jockey, a conservationist, a coach builder and a doctor, mostly recorded in New South Wales with some forays into Queensland. Included in the interviewees are politicians, photographers, writers, singers and the dancer Garry Lester.Australian Folk Theatre (Alex and Annette Hood)
In 1982 Alex met Annette James, who had trained as a dancer, and together they created their "Alex and Annette Hood's Australian Folk Theatre". Subsequently married to Hood, she accompanied him on his country tours and in particular was responsible for the puppets, costumes and backdrops for the Folk Theatre show, which toured Australia for 24 years performing songs, dances, stories and yarns to audiences of children, having completed over 7,500 shows by 2012. The show often featured humanitarian and environmental themes and toured constantly, filling out its busy schools schedule with additional shows for adults and performances at Australian folk festivals.Later career
Hood kept up a busy schedule as entertainer, recording musician, playwright and actor for many years and was featured in 2014 at Sydney's still-operational Bush Music Club, as well as the 2017 Illawarra Folk Festival. Alex and Annette eventually retired to the Kiama district of New South Wales, where Alex continued to perform in public on an occasional basis. Meanwhile, Alex and Annette also continued to make oral history recordings for the National Library of Australia; by late 2019 there were 63 such sessions added to the relevant collection dated 2010 and later.Alex and Annette Hood received the 2020 National Folk Festival Lifetime Achievement Award for "significant commitment and contribution to enriching folk music and culture in Australia".
Hood died in Australia on November 27, 2025, at the age of 89–90.
Discography
With The Bushwhackers
Wattle Records "A Series" 78s- A1 The Bushwhackers: The Drover's Dream / The Bullockies' Ball
- A2 The Bushwhackers: Travelling Down the Castlereagh / Australia's on the Wallaby
- A3 The Bushwhackers: Old Bullock Dray / Nine Miles from Gundagai
- A4 The Bushwhackers: Give a Fair Go / Rabbiter
- A5 The Bushwhackers: Botany Bay / Click Go the Shears
- A11 The Bushwhackers: Black Velvet Band / The Hut That's Upside-Down
- B1 The Bushwhackers: Australian Bush Songs
- ?? The Bushwhackers: ''Nine Miles from Gundagai''
With The Rambleers
- The Rambleers: The Old Bark Hut Wattle C 8, 1958
- The Rambleers: Waltzing Matilda/The Shearer's Dream" 1958
- The Rambleers: The Shearers Dream Wattle A17, 1959
Short films
The following short films were released under the name "Wattle Films". Silvia Salisbury stated in 2012: "These short films used Australian songs sung by Alex Hood as a background to a film version of the song.... These films were sold to the ABC to be used as fillers when programmes finished early due to the ABC not having advertisements." It is not known whether the vocals used were new recordings, or were recordings already available on previous Wattle releases.- Wattle Ballad Series No. 1 Old Black Billy The Rambleers 1961
- Wattle Ballad Series No. 3 Reedy River The Rambleers 1961
- Wattle Ballad Series No. 4 The Old Bullock Dray The Bushwhackers 1961
- Wattle Ballad Series No. 5 Click Go the Shears The Rambleers 1961
As "Daw, Hood And Henderson" (with Chris Daw and Marian Henderson)
- Daw, Hood And Henderson: Oh Pay Me Blue and White Collar Records BW 1, 1962
Solo and with others
- Various artists: Basic Wage Dream Blue and White Collar Records BW 2, 1964 Alex Hood Sings of Australia's First Hundred Years MFP-A8041, 1964
- Peter O'Shaughnessy, Marian Henderson and Alex Hood: The Restless Years. Jacaranda Press, Sydney, 1968 The Second Hundred Years MFP-A8133, 1970Songs From the Wallaby Track AXIS 6029, c.1971The Flying Pieman AXIS 6146, c.1974Seasons of Change AXIS 6218, 1975Songs While the Billy Boils MFP-A8225, 1977 Me and My Friends MFP-A8220, 1979Sydney or The Bush EMI, 1981 Me and More Friends Albert Productions 469322 2, 1991Alex Hood sings Australian folk songs in the Alex Hood folklore collection - Recorded on 11 April 2002 in Canberra A.C.T.
- Included on Various artists: The Songs of Chris Kempster CKP041 2006
- Included on Various artists: Songs of Don Henderson Shoestring Records SR 81 2009