Garry Gillard > genealogy > David Michael Gillard
These are copies of some documents which show some of the jobs done by my father Dave Gillard.
Apart from farming, perhaps his first and certainly his last occupation was as a musician. While on the farm, he sent away for a violin from a mail order store. Fortunately, it came with instructions! and soon Dave was playing for dances and even for the cinema.* When Dave was in Perth a bit later in life, he had some lessons from a professional violinist. The height of his career as a serious string player was playing at the last desk of the violas during the (Second World) War in the Perth Symphony Orchestra (as the WASO was then called). At one rehearsal, the conductor stopped the orchestra and shouted at the young violist to ask why the hell he had stopped playing! Dave said he was sorry, but the music all around was so wonderful that he was simply listening to it.
Here are two of the half-dozen lists of members of the PSO in which Dave Gillard's name appears.
Also during the War, he conducted an orchestra at a wartime fund-raising performance.
Here is a page from the program for the Jim Riley Show, a jazz concert at the Capitol Theatre Perth Sunday 9 October 1955, giving the names of the band members of the Jazstars, and their usual place of employment. The other advertisement is my Dad's for his piano-tuning business: that one appeared in the printed program for the Jazz Jamboree at the Capitol Theatre Perth Sunday 26 October 1958.
* Dave's 'dad joke' about playing (solo?) violin for the silent cinema goes as follows. He only knew a handful of tunes. One scene showed a wedding. For that, he played a 'cradle song', as that was as close as he could get to an appropriate sentiment. ... The point of the joke - which I did not get - was that it might have implied that the bride was pregnant - that it was a 'shotgun' wedding!
Garry Gillard | New: 2 March, 2013 | Now: 27 November, 2023