Ballad of Braybrook

Maxwell Renown Braybrook (22 June 1920 – 12 November 2004)

We first come across Maxwell as a thirteen year old lad from Newcastle with his regular contributions to the local paper’s Smile Exchange.

He makes a return to the paper not long after returning on leave from duty. Or was he? Able Seaman Mr Max Braybrook was in bed when Newcastle was shelled during WWII. He rushed into the street after a shell whistling overhead had exploded about fifty yards away, nearly opposite his home. Shop windows and those of nearby dwellings were blown inwards. “I picked up a large fragment of enemy shell weighing about two pounds and it was still hot,” he said.

Max was born on in Annandale in 1920. A mouth organist of note, he would be a regular member on Barton’s Follies tent show from 1941 until interrupted by national service.

In November 1942 Max, together with three more senior seamen, pleaded guilty to desertion. I believe he may have escaped imprisonment as the Magistrate stated, “However, in times like this I don’t want to send seamen—and you’re all Britishers— to gaol.” (The Telegraph, Brisbane 13 November 1942). Three of the men, and I presume Max wasn’t one of them, had suggested “that you couldn’t eat the food and the conditions were intolerable.” Max would marry Sadie Kathleen McDonald on 30 December 1943, in New South Wales. They would later separate and be divorced. It was from his divorce that Max would find himself in a wee bit of trouble with authorities down the track.

Back with the Follies after war service, the following article outlines his accomplished return.

Max Braybrook plays Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 as a mouth organ solo in the new programme at Barton’s Follies. This was the winning item in a mouth-organ competition conducted by Larry Adler in Newcastle in 1939. In last week’s programme at Barton’s Mr. Braybrook featured Adler’s arrangement of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes with which he was runner-up in the competition. Audiences are invited to compare the renditions. (Newcastle Herald 26 February 1945)

Then Max had a stint in Long Bay Jail and while imprisoned there he penned a tune that landed at a major television network. The Australian Women’s Weekly retells the tale.

House painter Max Braybrook had no trouble finding somewhere quiet to compose his songs. He was in a cell in Sydney’s Long Bay Jail for two years. Now out of prison, he is trying to sell the songs he made up on a mouth-organ in the solitude of his cell. One song, a romantic ballad, has already been sung on television. Max, who is in his mid-40s, went to jail in 1964 for failing to make maintenance payments to his ex-wife. “Although I got the same treatment as the other prisoners, I had one bit of luck,” Max said. “Because I suffered from asthma, I was given a cell on my own. This gave me the chance to try a few things. I got materials to do some paintings. I also got hold of a mouth-organ.” Max had spent many happy hours playing on the piano at the hotel near his home in Sydney. In his cell he tried to recall the tunes on the tiny harmonica. Then he tried to make up his own tunes. One melody took shape and he wrote words for it. He called it It Goes Without Saying, I Love You. He had the music sent to TCN9’s ‘Sound of Music’ program. They accepted the song, wrote an arrangement for it, and decided Darryl Stewart would sing it on the show.

TCN9 sent a tape of the song to Max in prison, telling him the song would be performed on the show in February, 1966. “Well, of course, mail is censored, so when the Deputy Controller of Prisons saw the tape, the game was up,” Max said. “The Deputy Controller took it home and played it. Then his wife showed him a story in the Women’s Weekly about how a song by ‘Prisoner X’ of Long Bay Jail was going to be sung on ‘Sound of Music’. ‘How did you get the music out of the jail?’ he wanted to know, but I wasn’t telling. Then my mother came to see him. I had done nearly two years of a two-and-a half-year sentence. She begged him to let me out in time to see Darryl Stewart sing my song on television. The show was telecast on February 11. I was let out on February 9.” Max had made up many other tunes in his cell, one while he was painting his impression of the Sydney opera house. “I was very interested in the opera house. I had written to Mr. Utzon about the color scheme for my painting and, like everyone else, I wondered if and when the building would be finished. I thought, I should write a song about it, and experimented with a tune and words.” Since his release Max has been working on the song, which he has called The Unfinished Sydney Opera House Song. He has put some comic verses to it, and wants it recorded with jack-hammers in the background.

Like the opera house, the song will be unfinished. “I think it could be another Sadie, the Cleaning Lady,” Max said optimistically. Darryl Stewart is encouraging Max with his second song, and a recording company have said they are interested in recording it. Max now has a helpmate for his lyrics – Maisie, the former barmaid at the hotel where he used to play the piano. They were married eight months after Max came out of prison. (Australian Women’s Weekly, 10 July 1968)

On the 25th of October 1966 Max ventured once more down the aisle to marry barmaid Maisie Gordon in Kings Cross.

Sadly, I don’t believe Darryl recorded any of Max’s tunes.

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