MERRIEL HUME

 

Merriel was a talented and versatile jazz singer who began her career as a teenager at Brisbane’s Theatre Royal. In 1962, she joined the resident band at Cloudland, where she met future husband trumpeter Lloyd Adamson and performed for five years. In 1966, she competed on Channel 9’s Bandstand against Helen Reddy, who won a trip to New York and a record deal. Around the same time, Merriel took on the role of managing the Wonderland Ballroom in Corrimal, near Wollongong. In 1968, sponsored by the Australian Government, she toured Vietnam to entertain Australian and US troops, performing at the Luscombe Bowl for 1,200 Australian soldiers. She shared the tour with Yvonne Barrett, Lorrae Desmond, and The Chiffons. Unfortunately, Merriel never recorded her music that I am aware of.

Reflecting on her early days, Merriel said that her first jazz experiences came from invitations by established swing musicians like the Thomsens, Jack and Vern, Lloyd Adamson, Stan Walker, and Rick Farbach. She performed with them at gigs outside formal venues and at late-night restaurant gatherings hosted by music-loving proprietors. She also cherished Sunday jam sessions, where she and others honed their performance skills.

By the 1980s, Merriel had moved to the Northern Rivers region of NSW and joined the Lismore Women’s Music Collective, contributing her professional expertise and improvisational skills to the growing women’s music scene. She credited her mother, Annie Lisha Hume (Kayrooz), for inspiring her love of music, recalling how Annie’s beautiful voice filled their home. Encouraged from a young age, Merriel and her sister Loretta became professional singers, participating in school concerts and eisteddfods. For Merriel, music was an inseparable part of life. It wasn’t until she joined an arts course in Lismore in the early 1980s, following a life-altering trauma, that she began exploring composing and writing.