Person - Brian Loughlin
BRIAN BERNARD LOUGHLIN (ca 1924 - 1974)
Like most of the original Bushwhackers, Brian was living at Heathcote when he performed in the first Reedy River in 1953 (his wife babysat while he played) and again in 1969. Brian played the lagerphone (a broom nailed with beer bottle tops) and bones, and for John Meredith helped publish Songs from the Kelly Country for the Bush Music Club, its first edition 1955.
Brian was born in Melbourne to Communist parents. He joined the CPA at age 18, and the Eureka Youth League. By 1948 he was working in Sydney as a compositor at the Daily Telegraph and became a prominent member of the Printers’ Union. On 22 October 1949 at Bankstown he married Pamela Louise Fenton who was working as a secretary in a biscuit factory. The Fenton family were strong trade unionists and Pam was a member of the CPA. (She could also play the spoons.) The couple were arrested in an early Aboriginal rights demonstration.
The Loughlins lived in Melbourne, Randwick, Heathcote and Rozelle (where their house, a distribution point for the Tribune, was infiltrated by ASIO informers). Brian Loughlin died of a heart attack at Balmain while dancing at a function supporting Communist forces in Vietnam.
Eunice May Fenton was well reviewed as Birdie Hubbard in The Little Foxes 1944.
Brian Loughlin "The Kreisler of the lagerphone" with the Bushwhackers, Reedy River 1953
