Ted Mulry - Julia (1970)

Ted Mulry was born Martin Albert Mulry in 1949 in Lancashire, UK. He emigrated to Australia in 1969 where he got a job operating a bulldozer. Mulry was already a bit of an amateur musician and his work colleagues, impressed by his compositions encouraged him send some demos to J. Albert Publishing. These songs were good enough to secure him a recording deal with EMI and his first single "Julia" b/w "So Much In Love" was released in February 1970 and was a minor hit. "Julia" is a perfect Beatlesque pop ballad, reminiscent of Paul McCartney circa 65/66, with lush orchestration (not overdone) and ace production by Tony Geary. "So Much In Love" is just as good albeit a little twee with Mulry harmonising with himself in a Everly Brothers style. No surprise then, that both sides of the single were included on Fading Yellow Vol.12, where they fit in most comfortably!

The next single, "Falling In Love Again" was written by Easybeats' Harry Vanda and George Young and would stay in the Australian charts for 25 weeks peaking at #11. A nice song, but I prefer the Mulry penned b-side "Louisa". Four more singles were released on the Parlophone label in Australia, but none were as successful a "Falling In Love Again". The most collectable of these singles is the stone cold classic, "Remember Me" which was also released in the UK under the name Steve Ryder on the Blue Mountain record label. There's a cool promo video on YouTube which you can watch here. There is also a couple of highly collectable LP's from 1971 and 1973 which I'm still looking for and will update this post when I hear them.

By 1974, Mulry had ditched the sensitive songwriter image for a more ballsy, rocking image, switching from acoustic guitar to bass forming the Ted Mulry Gang whose second single "Jump In My Car" would top the Aussie chart in 1975. There's plenty of YouTube footage from this period available and most of it is pretty good. Check out "Darktown Strutters Ball" for some Status Quo-esque!!

The Ted Mulry Gang would not repeat the success of "Jump In My Car" but would continue on a popular live act until 1980 when they called it a day. Mulry continued to work in the music business as a producer, sporadically releasing the odd single and even reunited the TMG in 1990. Ted Mulry passed away in 2001 of brain cancer. A series of tribute concerts were held shortly before his death with many notable Australian rock acts performing including a reformed TMG fronted by his brother Steve Mulry.