Rita and Mary Schneider began performing together in their hometown of Brisbane in the late 1940s and by the early 1950s, were writing and recording their own country and rockabilly-flavoured material.
Four of their rockier efforts found their way onto an EP entitled Rockin' with The Schneider Sisters in 1956, with one of them, the skiffle-esque Washboard Rock 'n' Roll, going down in history as the first song of this exciting new era to be written and recorded by an Australian artist in Australia.
A delightful collection of raw rock 'n' roll and straight-up country songs, interspersed with comedy and cut between 1950 and 1962, finally saw the light of day on January 16th 2012, when a 13-track retrospective, The Schneider Sisters: The Early Years, was released worldwide.
This impressive compilation offers a fascinating insight into the very early days of rock 'n' roll in the land Down Under and was put together by Mary, the younger of the two siblings, as a heartfelt tribute to her much-loved older sister, who died in 2009.
The Schneider Sisters: The Early Years
"I just felt for historical reasons, I should put it together," explains Ms. Schneider, one of the Australian music scene's biggest icons and the mother of country singer, Melinda Schneider. "Now that I’ve lost my sister, I really want to do it for her, so I’m glad I did it.
"It’s interesting the way we recorded in those days. We used to go down to EMI in Sydney. We lived up in Brisbane, but we’d come down here and record. I think I was about 14 or 15 and we did them straight on to wax with an acetate copy. We’d do the song twice and then they’d say, 'Well, which one do you like, one or two?'
"We had to be rehearsed by the time we got in there because it’s not like recording now. You couldn't go back and fix things that you might have made a mistake on - it was live.
"That’s what this record is all about; it’s a very live sound and it’s warm because it was done on just one microphone and the energy's all there."
"We recorded the rock ‘n’ roll EP all in Melbourne and they put a microphone in the toilet, so they could get a nice reverb-y sound.
"They were tricks they did in those days and the band was completely live. They didn’t do the band first and then us; we were all together – that was it!"
The Schneider Sisters: Ahead of their Time
The Schneider Sisters performed together for nearly 25 years, before amicably deciding to go their separate ways in the early 1970s. Rita worked in an executive capacity for the Channel 7 Network and recorded a series of comedy albums, while Mary went on to travel the world, making numerous TV and concert appearances, billed as "Australia's Queen of Yodelling."
Although three of the songs on The Schneider Sisters: The Early Years are covers of well-known hits, the other ten were written by the ladies themselves, something of a first in rock 'n' roll, at a time when most artists, male and female, were wholly dependent on the songwriting talents of others.
"Oh yes, that’s right," agrees Mary, who was born the youngest of five children in Rockhampton, Queensland in October 1932, referring to Aussie rock 'n' rollers like Johnny O' Keefe and Col Joye. They actually only did covers of American songs, but we wrote everything, although a couple of songs on there (Honolulu Rock 'n' Roll, That's What I Like about the West and Ooby Dooby) are covers too.
"Anyway, we broke up the double act in 1971 and then Rita was Copyright Supervisor of Channel 7 here for 17 years and she retired and recorded six comedy CDs – very funny. She was a wonderful songwriter and I continued with my yodelling records. I’ve had gold and platinum records and a lot of them have been very successful.
"I’ve been overseas many times, to Europe, Germany, Switzerland, England and the US. I have a recording company over there and have done lots of TV over in America and Europe, mainly in Germany. I worked at the Berlin Opera House with different people like Jose Carreras and Sir Peter Ustinov and I’ve done that about five times.
"I’m still recording and recording again this year. Still singing and I’ve had a very successful career – a long career! So anyway, that’s what it’s all about this new record. It’s for people who might like to listen to the early country music in Australia, how it was, and I thought I’d just remaster it and put it on a CD. It’s the first time those tracks have ever been on a CD.
"I put it all together, did all the liner notes. It’s a nice cover - one of the older pictures of us - and I put a lot of early pictures of Rita and I on that record. That’s what it’s all about... Just remastering all those old tracks and putting them together for historical reasons."
The Schneider Sisters: Washboard Rock 'n' Roll
There are many wonderful moments on The Schneider Sisters: The Early Years - Lonesome for You, Moonshine Maisie and My Castle of Dreams Came Tumblin' Down, to name but three, but it was Washboard Rock 'n' Roll that was, as mentioned earlier, the first rock 'n' roll song to be written and recorded in Australia by Australians.
"Yeah, it’s the first rock ‘n’ roll record written and recorded in Australia, when they said rock ‘n’ roll would only last six months! laughs Mary in her soft Aussie tones, "but the night before we did that recording, we didn’t have another song. We had three ready for the EP and we said, 'What are we gonna do?' So we wrote Washboard Rock n’ Roll in about an hour and then recorded it the next day."
Suite101: Had you heard much rock ‘n’ roll from the US prior to recording your EP?
"Well, that was the year it came out... Rock Around the Clock and Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel. We thought we’d just do a little EP and that’s what happened, but it’s still around, isn’t it, rock ‘n’ roll? Didn’t last six months at all! It’s just a variety of tracks on there with me playing my washboard, which I called the Schneiderpohone, and you’ll hear that on the tracks, particularly Washboard Rock ‘n’ Roll.
"It’s a homemade instrument and I play it in my performances with a lot of sound effects on it, like motor horns and klaxon horns and I play a song on it. It’s just a little bit of a gimmick instrument that I use in my show.
"So a lot of those tracks have the washboard in there. Rita played the guitar and I also played accordion. We were an instrumental vocal act for years, playing guitar, piano and the Schneiderphone and a few other bits and pieces and Rita did mostly all the comedy – she was really funny.
"Washboard Rock ‘n’ Roll was in a movie called Dirty Deeds with Bryan Brown and was featured on Long Way to the Top, which was about the early days, rock ‘n’ roll. We didn’t know it was the first one ever written and recorded – we didn’t know that and we wrote it in an hour!"
Adrian Peel - Adrian is an English freelance writer and journalist currently living in Mexico. Over the past eight years, he has had articles, features ...
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