Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Sept 8, 2014 16:58:57 GMT 12
from The Dominion Post....
Maori Cowboy a Kiwi rock'n'roll pioneer
By Fairfax NZ staff reporters | 5:00AM - Saturday, 06 September 2014
COUNTRY CROONERS: Johnny Cooper, left, and his band the Range Riders, formed in 1952.
— Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.
A KIWI rock'n'roll pioneer has died, estranged from the world to which he gave so much and far from the giddy heights of his 1950s heyday.
Johnny Cooper, known as the Maori Cowboy, was the first person to record a rock'n'roll track in New Zealand — by some accounts he was the first to do so outside the United States — when he covered Rock Around The Clock in 1955.
His good friend and fellow musician Midge Marsden said the rocker died at his Lower Hutt home this week, aged 86, suffering from Alzheimer's disease and without a notifiable next of kin.
“It's one of those stories that's a bit sad in the end.”
It is not known exactly when Cooper died. Police were alerted to the fact he might be ill only when his doctor raised concerns on Thursday, Marsden said.
Originally a country singer, Cooper balked at the thought of recording his groundbreaking rock'n'roll track when HMV Records told him he had to.
“I remember him telling us he absolutely hated doing it,” Marsden said. “He said, ‘What's this rubbish? I'm not singing that’.”
But in the end he gave in, and the recording forever etched his name into New Zealand music history.
He was a man well ahead of his time. He started X-Factor-style talent shows in the late 1950s, including Give It A Go!, where Marsden first met Cooper and got his start in the industry.
He also coached and encouraged a young Johnny Devlin, later to become known as New Zealand's Elvis.
“To be fair I didn't really know much about him,” Marsden said of that first encounter. “He had a huge career before I met him, but he didn't really talk about it - he was a pretty humble character.”
Cooper also recorded New Zealand's first original rock'n'roll song, Pie Cart Rock'n'Roll, in 1955.
Younger people might recognise his song Look What You've Done My Baby, which featured in the film Once Were Warriors.
His musical talents took him around the world, leading three concert tours during the 1950s to entertain Kiwi troops in Japan and Korea.
During the last one, in 1956, he and his group were asked by a photographer to “pose beside the beautiful native trees of Tokyo”.
While Cooper sold thousands of records in his prime, he moved more into entertainment promotion in the 1960s, and became less prominent.
He did not so much fall from the limelight as ease himself into the shadows, Marsden said.
“His private life was exactly that — private. He was a transient in later life.”
Kerry Clout, who was Cooper's neighbour in Naenae for more than 30 years, said that, until a few years ago, he was a pillar of the community, always tidying the area and mowing lawns for free.
In recent years, he had begun to suffer from Alzheimer's but was still able to take care of himself.
But Clout said he rarely left the house over those years, and she did not see any family visiting him.
He would always greet her with a smile, and thoroughly enjoyed the time she took him hundreds of tributes and messages from fans and friends from as far afield as England for his birthday earlier this year.
Although it was a sad end, it was important to focus on all the good he did during his life, Clout said.
www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/10466516/Maori-Cowboy-a-Kiwi-rock-n-roll-pioneer
from The Dominion Post....
An unsung musical hero
Johnny Cooper, musician, born 1928, Wairoa; died Septemer 2014, Lower Hutt.
By PHIL GIFFORD | 10:52AM - Saturday, 06 September 2014
INTO THE LIMELIGHT: Cooper in the early 1950s. He
grew up on a farm in Wairoa, and played guitar to the
shearing gangs. — Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.
JOHNNY COOPER, who died in Lower Hutt this week, may have not only been one of the most unsung, but also one of the most modest heroes New Zealand popular music has ever had.
As a country singer in the early 1950s, billing himself as “The Maori Cowboy” he had big hits, and one, “Look What You've Done”, which he wrote himself, became the quintessential Kiwi party song until “Ten Guitars” arrived. It's the song Jake and Beth Heke duet on in the movie “Once Were Warriors”.
In 1955, with a group of Wellington jazz men, he became the first singer outside the United States to record a rock and roll song, cutting “Rock Around The Clock” in HMV's Lower Hutt studios.
His follow-up, “Pie Cart Rock and Roll”, wasn't such a big hit, despite the magic chorus “Rockin' to the rhythm of the pea, pie and pud”.
He turned his hand to promoting talent quests, where his discoveries included the country's first rock and roll idol, Johnny Devlin, Midge Marsden (who played in Bari and The Breakaways as a backing band for contestants) and the Fourmulya, whose song “Nature” would be judged the greatest New Zealand rock song of all time.
Johnny himself was a friendly, deeply modest man, with a beautiful Billy T James laugh, and a good line in self depreciation. His pie cart song, he'd claim, was written in the hopes of free feeds while he was living in Whanganui.
As a promoter, working in a field not famous for people with generous spirits, he was decent and honest. Those of us who had any dealings with him hold fond memories, and mourn his loss.
www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/10468041/An-unsung-musical-hero
From Radio New Zealand's sound archives (you can download and listen to the programme in MP3 format)....
• Johnny Cooper: The Māori Cowboy — Saturday, 6th September 2014 (featuring several of Johnny Cooper's recorded tracks, plus a link to a programme broadcast in 2001)
