WHEN you’ve played in the backing band for Frank Sinatra or forged a career as one of Australia’s premier jazz singers, it’s hard to imagine you might be found in little old Portland.

But that’s exactly where you will find Bill Harrower and Linda Cable, who were what might be described in modern parlance as a ‘power couple’ of the Australian music industry as they forged remarkably successful careers in one of the toughest games of all.

These days they’re enjoying the quiet life of Portland, but they’re as passionate about music as they ever were and they took time to share their fascinating musical journeys with the Observer.

The saxophonist

Mr Harrower was born in Sydney just after World War II and grew up there.

Given what followed, it’s surprising that he didn’t really intend to become a musician – indeed he only took it up to keep dry.

“When I was in primary school I hadn’t thought about music at all,” he said.

“We had parades and a fife and drum band that marched around the playground.

“One morning it was raining and the fife and drum were in the shed under cover while the rest of us were getting wet.

“I thought ‘they’re the smart ones’ and I started having flute, clarinet and saxophone lessons.”

Not that music was any more than that as his school years progressed.

“I wanted to study industrial chemistry for some reason – I’d blown up my mother’s laundry once already,” Mr Harrower said.

“But surfing buggered me through my teenage years and I then skipped a year of secondary school and was only 16 when I went to university.

“I wasn’t mature enough to handle it and I left after one year.

“But all through that time I had music lessons.”

The jazz influence was strong – not only was this the creative heyday of the genre, his music teacher “was a bit of a bop freak”, with particular homage to one legendary US saxophonist.

“Charlie Parker was the main focus in those days,” Mr Harrower said.

The teacher was also in the first band for the up-and-coming technology called television, at Channel 7 in Sydney.

“When I was about 17 or 18, I’d just left university, and he said to me ‘have you ever thought about becoming a professional?’

“I said ‘professional what?’ He said ‘I think you’ve got what it takes to do it’ so I said okay and gave it a go.

“He pulled some strings and got me a gig in a (dance band) in Sydney and I finished up staying in that for three years.

“I remember after three weeks I said to the bandleader ‘I don’t think I’m really cutting it, you’d better sack me’ but he said ‘you’ll be okay’.”

There was plenty of variety too, along with a priceless musical education – with about 1000 Jimmy Lally charts (big band arrangements) at their disposal, “you never saw a chart twice so I really learned to read (music) there”.

Next stop was the legendary Sydney nightclub Chequers – home to a litany of overseas stars, and Mr Harrower’s first brushes with fame.

“A gig came up there and I was there for two years,” he said.

“I was working in a bank in the day time and I was making twice as much money as my boss at the bank at the time.

“That was when I decided to go to England and give it a go there, and I met Linda on the ship (Fairstar) over.”

The jazz singer

Linda Cable was born in London and emigrated to Melbourne with her parents when she was 13 – her interest in playing music started after that.

At the time of the Fairstar’s voyage in 1969 she was about 20 and not a jazz singer at all.

Instead she was an absolute rarity of the time – a female blues guitarist then a bass player.

“I think I’ve done everything differently,” she said.

“I found a great interest in the guitar and blues, which is a very emotive kind of music and is also easier to play than jazz.”

She joined the band Rotary Connection that had played in Sydney and was on its way to the UK when she met Mr Harrower, who played with the band on the ship.

“I was a professional bass player for about five or six years, during which time I got asked to sing,” Ms Cable said.

“I didn’t think I could but the next thing I know I was in bands in Sydney then overseas.

“I was the bass player overseas and had started singing more.

“My singing consisted of shouting.

“I put down the bass really after we came back to Australia after the European tour – I did play bass at the (Whisky Au Go Go club in Sydney) with Barrie McAskill but I really concentrated on singing after stopping playing bass.”

Her stint with McAskill was as part of Levi Smith’s Clefs, with a single released in 1970 (Ms Cable sang the B-side, a cover of the iconic Piece of My Heart which itself had only been written two years earlier) – Mr Harrower played with the same band at Chequers after that.

That’s getting ahead of the story though.

But first, back on track

The European sojourn was a memorable experience for many reasons for the new couple – they watched the moon landings on television there.

Mr Harrower also had to find a job.

“I was looking around for something there and I finished up getting a job at an East London swimming pool as a lifeguard, probably because I was Australian,” he said.

“After a couple of months the band Linda was in were working in the Channel Islands and their keyboard player had left.

“They didn’t know any other musicians around except me and I finished up going and joining them in Jersey, which was great.”

US Air Force bases in Germany were a good source of gigs for the band.

The gigs lasted for a few months before, in December 1969, the couple decided they’d had enough.

“We made some sort of excuses and did a runner from Germany to Italy,” Mr Harrower said.

“We worked at a club in Naples, La Mela (The Apple) for a while then we decided to come home and get married.”

The swinging seventies and beyond

Apart from tying the knot, the couple were kept busy professionally.

“There was so much work around in those days you’d be working 6-7 days a week,” Ms Cable said.

While she was developing her singing career, Mr Harrower was back at Chequers.

The artists he played with were a ‘who’s who’ of musicians from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“Shirley Bassey, Lou Rawls, Stevie Wonder, Matt Monroe, every couple of weeks a new act came out from America,” he said.

The Four Tops and The Platters were other iconic acts that he played with.

But in 1972 the couple decided to relocate to Melbourne, where Ms Cable’s parents were living.

“I tried to integrate myself in the scene in Melbourne,” Mr Harrower said.

“I did the opening of Wrest Point Casino (in Hobart in 1973) with Jerry Lewis.”

The late US comedian wasn’t quite as funny off stage, Mr Harrower found.

“With the show room there the only entrance to it was through the casino, there was no back stage,” he said.

“When it was time for him to go on he had 4-5 bodyguards march through the (gaming room) bumping people out of the way.

“There was no humanity about it at all.”

Back in Melbourne, another big break was coming Mr Harrower’s way.

“One of the top saxophone players in Australia, Graeme Lyall (in more recent years resident in Mount Gambier), took over The Don Lane Show from 1976 and I was in that band.

“I went to the States for a couple of weeks in 1980 and the Lane show was being played on TV there.

“I met up with a couple of musicians there who couldn’t believe it was live to air because theirs were all pre-recorded – it kept you on your toes, you can’t go back and fix anything.”

The 18-piece orchestra was a staple of the hit show and when that ended Mr Harrower went on to The Bert Newton Show.

Stints on Hey, Hey it’s Saturday, the Daryl Somers Show and the Midday Show also followed, all the while being in demand as a session musician.

“There were quite a number of live TV shows around then and also by this time I started to do musical theatre and fairly good activity in recording studios,” he said.

“That took me through to the mid-1990s and things were starting to drop off then.

“In the late ‘80s with sequencers and things, computers had started to come in and my work dropped off quite considerably and I thought ‘what should I do?’”

The only thing was working with computers for a few years before stopping and rejoining the music industry in the early 2000s.

The couple went to Japan for six months.

“That was a really fun gig, six nights a week,” Ms Cable said, their memories of the job somewhat reminiscent of that of Bill Murray’s character in the movie made not long after, Lost in Translation.

After they returned to Australia, Mr Harrower took up a teaching position at Scotch College in Melbourne, retiring last year after 18 years in the role.

“I did some teaching when I was much younger and I hated it but this was different,” he said.

“I really enjoyed the teaching as I felt like I was giving something back.”

Before retiring the couple had made the decision to move to Portland in 2019, with Mr Harrower commuting for three days a week.

One gig he hasn’t given up is the Carols by Candlelight at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne each Christmas Eve.

“I started in 1976 and I’m still going – last year was number 44,” Mr Harrower said.

Ol’ Blue Eyes and Whispering Jack

Mr Harrower has played with many of the greats, but it’s hard to top Frank Sinatra.

“I worked with him three times,” Mr Harrower said.

“The first time was the first time he had been back to Australia since he was kicked out (the infamous 1974 tour when Sinatra likened female gossip columnists to “hookers of the press”, prompting a union backlash and the cancellation of some of his shows).

“They brought him back here to open Sanctuary Cove (in 1988).

“We rehearsed for a week with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, that was for a one-hour set.”

The next time was a little more than one year later and were for the-then most expensive shows in Australian history – Sinatra, Liza Minelli and Sammy Davis Jnr in the Ultimate Event – while the third and last was in 1991 also involving the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in what was Ol’ Blue Eyes’ final Australian appearance.

“The Sammy Davis and Liza Minelli gig was just fantastic,” Mr Harrower said.

 “It was just the best gig.

“The other thing about that was it’s not just that it was Sinatra, you’ve got in front of you his original music, not a photocopy.

“You’re sitting there wondering ‘who are the other fantastically talented saxophone players who’ve sat here and played from this book’.

“For me it was a privilege to do that – I was in the right place at the right time.”

A few years earlier, Mr Harrower played a couple of solos on John Farnham’s iconic album Whispering Jack.

“I’d never worked with Farnham live but many times I would have backed him on the Lane show (where Farnham first came to prominence).”

He also played on other Farnham albums as well as appearing in the credits for those by the likes of Australian Crawl, Little River Band, Redgum, Johnny Chester, Marcia Hines, David Campbell, Mike Brady and even Joe Dolce.

Song to a siren

When the couple moved back to Melbourne in the mid-1970s Ms Cable also soon found work, with singing well and truly her focus.

“I auditioned for a stage musical (The Magic Show) and I got the part of the principal role,” she said.

“Then I started doing TV, The Penthouse Show on Channel 7.

“They asked me to do a regular slot, I was on every second Saturday.

“It was tough to find new material every time, I had to come up with four songs a month.”

That began her career on television, while she also went on tour with the Daly-Wilson Big Band, around Australia and New Zealand for four months.

More TV followed – Ms Cable estimated she has done about 200 shows.

“During that time I started songwriting, and I’ve recorded five albums, some of my material, some not,” she said.

“A TV special I did (Don Burrows Collection) featured a couple of my original songs.”

Her repertoire is varied, and she likes it that way.

“Everything I’ve ever done I never had to chase it, it just came to me,” she said.

“Which is a nice thing. I think if you’re a musician 24/7 you become so immersed in it that you explore it all.

“Doing so much TV you were always looking for material because in those days they wanted you to sing something new and that was one of the things that got me writing – you want to find songs you are comfortable doing.

“You just get exposed to more stuff and the more stuff I got exposed to I’d think ‘that’s interesting’.

“The progression from where I was, was natural.”

She also continued to sing with others, being in the Peter Cupples Band for a while, as well as a duet with Darryl Somers on the Darryl Somers Show.

And then there was a part in the 1993 movie Gross Misconduct, starring Hollywood idol Jimmy Smits and Naomi Watts early in her career, directed by George Miller and which was filmed in Melbourne.

“Bill had to teach Jimmy how to look like he was playing the sax,” Ms Cable said.

“Jimmy Smits had to come to our house to do that.”

But she’s well aware of how the music industry works.

“All music is about collaboration,” she said.

“Without collaboration there’s no music.

“It was never about fame for me, it was about presenting good music and I was privileged to work with the cream of Melbourne’s musicians.”

The couple haven’t collaborated with each other much over the years, Mr Harrower playing on one of Ms Cable’s albums.

What’s their scene?

While it might never have been easy making a living as a musician, there’s no doubt the digital revolution has made it even harder these days.

As for jazz, it’s still limping along.

“The scene? It’s dead,” Ms Cable said.

“There are still a few diehards that are playing but they are few and far between.

“Young people now say ‘I’ve got a gig’ whereas before it was ‘you haven’t got a gig?’

“But the old way is never going to come back – it stopped during lockdowns when it was just impossible to organise (musicians to get together for rehearsals or gigs).”

Mr Harrower agreed.

“The scene is hugely different to what we experienced,” he said.

“From one perspective we were lucky we were where we were.

“Now I feel somewhat sorry for people embarking on a career in the music industry.

“It’s a much tougher game.”

So any words of wisdom for young musicians aspiring to make a career out of it?

“If you’re keen, do it,” he said.

“Just go for it, grab it with both hands.

“If you’re a reed player like me see if you can get the doubles happening (playing more instruments), it’s more practice but there’s more opportunities.

“Just put yourself out there as much as you can really, which is something I never did because you didn’t really have to in those days.”

So what do they like?

You can’t have a discussion about music without talking about influences or even just what musicians like listening to.

For Mr Harrower his first real influence as a saxophonist was Paul Desmond, the composer of Take Five, and a member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

“My teacher wanted me to zone in on Charlie Parker, but the bop thing didn’t gel with me.

“Since the ‘70s it has been (the late) Michael Brecker, an unbelievably talented player.

“There’s been others too, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, even my erstwhile band leader Graeme Lyall.

“We’ve had some terrific players come out of this country, Graeme, Don Burrows, (bassoonist) Errol Buddle from Adelaide, they were well known and respected and loved in the industry.

“The saxophone is a very emotive instrument which sort of explains why you can listen to just about any pop record and there’ll be the obligatory sax.”

Ms Cable’s influences are a bit more complicated.

“I don’t have a favourite but one of the bands that’s been more influential and given me so much pleasure and inspiration is the Pat Metheny Group,” she said.

Given her origins as an instrumentalists, it’s perhaps not surprising how’s she’s influenced by music, even as a singer.

“I always used to listen to the instrumentals rather than the singers – you learned a lot,” she said.

“There’s very few singers I enjoy to be honest, I’m a very difficult audience.”