Kōrero: Jazz and dance bands

Walter Smith (Ngāti Kahungunu) is sometimes credited with forming Auckland's first jazz band. Smith studied music in Salt Lake City, Utah, and later became a music teacher in Auckland. His jazz bands played in milk bars, cabarets, dance halls and other venues around the city until the 1940s. This photo from about 1927 shows three unidentified brass players at left, Sidney David Kamau on clarinet, Dinah Greening on banjo, Marjorie Greening on piano and Smith on saxophone.