Bell became leader of the house band for the Eureka Youth League (formerly the Communist Youth League) and established a cabaret, the Uptown Club, in 1946. After playing at the inaugural Australian Jazz Convention in December, Bell's band was renamed Australian Jazz Band and became the first such band to tour Europe. Australian Jazz Band members were initially, Bell on piano, Roger Bell on cornet and vocal, Monsbourgh on valve trombone, clarinet and vocal, Roberts on clarinet, Silbereisen on bass and tuba, with Charlie Blott, Ian Pearce and Jack Varney on banjo and guitar. They toured Czechoslovakia for four and a half months in 1947, including playing at the World Youth Festival in Prague. "The Lizard", an improvisation recorded in the studio for Regal Zonophone Records in June, was Bell's first composition. Another early recording was his composition, "Czechoslovak Journey", which was started in his studio in Bourke Street, Melbourne and recorded together with 14 other tracks for "Czechoslovak Journey" by Supraphon in Prague on 23 September and 13 November 1947 and released in 1981 on LP.