Ivan Dayman

Ivan M. Dayman was an Australian music promoter, record producer and band manager of the 1960s and 1970s, based first in Adelaide, and then in Brisbane. Although his heyday was brief - ca. 1964 to 1968 - he is significant in the history of Australian popular music as the first person to establish an integrated entertainment group that included artist management, a booking agency, a chain of venues in major cities, and a recording label. He is also notable for the many successful artists he managed, including his flagship act, Australia's '60s TV Week "King of Pop", Normie Rowe.

In 1963, musician-producer-arranger-songwriter Pat Aulton began working for Dayman and his promotions group.

In late 1964, Dayman established Sunshine Records in collaboration with Aulton and Nat Kipner, who would later go on to form Spin Records.

Among the acts signed or managed by Dayman were Normie Rowe, Mike Furber, Peter Doyle, and New Zealand acts The La De Das (while they were in Australia), and Mother Goose in the late 1970s.

Dayman owned multiple venues within his territory, such as the Cloudland Ballroom in Brisbane (leased from Apel around 1965), The Bowl Soundlounge in Sydney, and the Op Pop disco. He also converted a number of ten-pin bowling alleys into ballrooms by filling in the gutters between the bowling lanes with the same timbers. In Ipswich Queensland and in Wollongong (Corrimal) NSW, the converted bowling venues were named 'Wonderland Ballrooms'. The Corrimal Bowl was managed by Merriel Hume, an established Brisbane vocalist who was originally one of number of the stable of regular artists regularly performing at Cloudland.. By having a stake in both the bands and the venues, Ivan was able to monopolize his area of influence.

Ivan was much respected by the musicians he hired because he treated them well and respected their abilities. An example of this is the fact that he paid for musical arrangements both instrumental and vocal. Further, he paid for rehearsals of the new arrangements and for vocal arrangements in keys that suited his stable of artists. He picked his vocalists from the cream of the Brisbane and Adelaide nightclubs and TV scene. All the bands and vocalists were therefore able to perform using the library of pop hits and standard arrangements.

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