Horace Andrew Dargie (7 July 1917 – 30 August 1999) was an Australian musician (harmonica, clarinet), television compère, talent manager, music label founder and music arranger. As a member of Horrie Dargie Quintet he was awarded the first gold record in Australia for their 10-inch live album, Horrie Dargie Concert (1952), which sold 75,000 copies. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he compèred TV variety programmes Personally Yours (1959), BP Super Show (1959–1962) and The Delo and Daly Show (1963–1964). Dargie co-produced teen pop music programme, The Go!! Show (1964–1967), and as well as organising its on-screen performers he established the related Go!! Records label to provide an outlet for artists' singles. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1996. Dargie was married twice.
Life and career
Early life
Horrie Dargie was born on 7 July 1917 in Footscray, Victoria, the second son of timber worker and clerk Andrew Dargie (–1960) and schoolteacher Adelaide Mary Dargie ( Sargent, –1969) – residents of Walhalla, Victoria. Dargie's paternal grandparents were Scottish and his maternal grandparents were residents of Footscray. His older brother Sir William Dargie (1912–2003) was an Australian portrait artist. The brothers were educated at the Walhalla State School (No. 957), Erica Primary School, City of Footscray including Kingsville Primary School and then in City of Williamstown.
Dargie had been given a harmonica by his father and, from the age of ten, he practised the instrument for five hours a day. A self-taught musician, at the age of 14 or 15, he was inspired by Larry Adler and learned to play Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" from Adler's version. He left secondary school after completing intermediate standard and worked in a woollen mill. One of his brother's earliest portraits is of Dargie as The Young Recruit (1933).
Music career
Dargie began his musical career as a diatonica harmonica player. At 16-years-old he joined the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band in July 1933, which practised in a shoe repair shop. Later he joined Victorian Mouth Organ Band conducted by William Ketterer. In the early 1930s Dargie took up the chromatic harmonica and won a variety competition for professional and amateurs, P&A Parade on a local radio station 3KZ in 1937. Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) hired him as a harmonica player to tour Australia for three months from November 1937. He started his tour in Tasmania and broadcast from a radio studio, which he preferred to concert halls as his effects are "concentrated in the one volume of sound, and not thinned by the spread of sound in a hall."
In February 1938 he joined ABC-sponsored Jim Davidson's Dance Band alongside hill-billy comedian Bobby Dyer on "an extended tour of capital cities and provincial centres." In March of that year they performed at Tivoli Theatre, Broken Hill. Some tour performances were broadcast on local radio stations. Dargie's first recording was with Davidson's orchestra in 1938, which was issued via Columbia Records.
After the tour Dargie moved to Sydney where he studied clarinet and orchestration, before starting his own harmonica school there. With Henry "Doc" Bertram on bass harmonica; Alec Lois, Ron Metcalfe and George Williamson on chromatics and Roy Shea on chords he formed a harmonica group, the Rockin' Reeds. The group released six recordings by 1941. From early March to late April 1942 Horrie Dargie and His Rockin' Reeds played a weekly programme on ABC radio.
Army service and return to music career
Dargie enlisted in the Australian Army's Entertainment Unit on 13 November 1942, where he became a Warrant Officer Class 2; he served in New Guinea (December 1943–September 1944), Darwin (May–July 1945) and in the occupational forces in Japan (March 1946–February 1947); he was discharged in March 1947 and returned to Sydney. While in New Guinea in July 1944, he was called up from the audience by Adler to perform "Stardust" at a concert for allied soldiers in Lae (see infobox photo). Besides Adler other performers were Jack Benny and Carole Landis.