GRANTLEY DEE
Singer and
radio personality Grantley Dee
(real name Grantley De Zoete) was a well-known and popular presenter on
Melbourne radio station 3AK and he is especially notable for being the
first visually-impaired pop DJ on Australian radio. But Grantley's
achievements didn't stop there -- he was also a popular singer who
recorded a string of singles for EMI between 1966 and 1968 and
regularly also performed live during the late Sixties and into the
early Seventies. Several years ago, Grantley was interviewed by media
writer Ash Long, who wrote a comprehensive history of 3AK; he explained
that station manager-of-the-day Nigel Dick originally recruited him as
a 16-year-old in 1963, partly as a means of scoring publicity for the
station. It proved successful, with Grantley and his guide dog Penny
becoming popular station personalities.
Grantley started on 3AK in 1963 with "The Grantley Dee Show", a regular
four-hour ‘Top 100' program on Saturday afternoons, plus the
four-hour Big Sunday Show, featuring “big tunes and new releases”
on Sunday afternoons. By the following year he was one of the station's
top announcers and had graduated to the prime “drivetime”
slot from 4pm-7pm Mon-Fri, as well as regular weekend shifts. In 1965
he moved to the morning shift from 7-9am, plus the four-hour Grantley
Dee Show from 9am-1pm on Saturday and Sunday.
, Grantley was an accomplished singer and during 1966, he was the vocalist
in the short-lived Melbourne-based band called The Hurricanes, although
this band didn't make any recordings. His 3AK career slowed down somewhat
during this year, after he was signed to EMI's subsidiary label
HMV, for whom he recorded
five singles, an EP and an LP. His first (and best known) single was a
creditable cover of Billy Bland's 1960 hit "Let The Little Girl
Dance", which is also notable as an early example of an Aussie rock
single that is not sung in mock-American accent. It is now a sought-after
collector's item and in late 2002 Vicious Sloth Collectables in
Melbourne had this single listed for sale at AU$75.
Grantley's next two singles during '66 were a cover of Bobby
Rydell's "Wild One", followed by the Johnny Burnette perennial
"You're Sixteen", and HMV also released his EP and LP that
year. Grantley recorded two more singles in 1967, "We Must Be Doing
Something Right" (a duet with Little Pattie) and his
final single for HMV, "It Hurts Me" His very last release, "Love Is A Happy
Thing", was issued on Columbia
in 1968. This is sometimes credited as being a second duet with Little
Pattie, but Grantley kindly corrected this for us -- it was in
fact a solo effort.
Concurrent with his singing career, Grantley continued DJ-ing at 3AK,
hosting the drive-time shift from 3-5pm weekdays and 4-5pm Sundays during
1967-68. At the end of 1968 3AK announced that it would be expanding to
24-hour operation after years of restricted-hours broadcasting (for most
of the 60s the station went off air at 5pm) and it was announced that
Grantley would host the station's first all-night shift. How long
he held this post is not known but he evidently left the station sometime
during 1969.
In the late Sixties and into the Seventies, he fronted his own Grantley
Dee Band which included famed musos Gil Matthews and Les Stacpool (guitar) (later
replaced by Ron Leigh), Alan Turnbull (drums), John Vallins (bass) and
Mick "The Reverend" O'Connor (keyboards). During
1970-71 he was vocalist in the Melbourne band Taurus,
also with Gil Matthews. Grantley's solo career tapered off in the early seventies although
he performed with two other Melbourne acts, Rock Steady and The Henchmen
in 1973, neither of which made it to record.
Grantley Dee passed away on 7 February 2005.
Discography
Singles
1966
"Let The Little Girl Dance" / Answer Me" (HMV 4762)
1966
"Wild One" / "You Thrill Me" (HMV 4798)
1966
"You're Sixteen" / "Every Breath I Take" (HMV 4823)
1967
"We Must Be Doing Something Right" / "Lonely One" (HMV 4853)
- duet with Little Pattie
1967
"It Hurts Me" / "Stop Where You Are" (HMV 4875)
1968
"Love Is A Happy Thing" / "Nothing You Can Do But Cry" (Columbia DO-8476)
EP's
1966
Let The Girl Dance" (HMV 7EGO 70076)
Albums
1966
Grantley Dee (HMV OCLP 7667)
Grantley's recordings have been compiled on the LP Let The Girl Dance (EMI 1982) and the CD
Let The Little Girl Dance (Newmarket NEW 1034.2) 1994. Individual tracks also appear on the following compilations:
- "Let The Little Girl Dance" was included on the HMV LP compilation Hit Wave and on the Raven CD Sixties Downunder, Vol. 4".
- "Wild One" appears on HMV's"Another Hit Wave (LP)
- " You're 16" and "Love Is A Happy Thing" were included on HMV's Hit Wave, Vol. 3 (LP) and EMI's Little Pattie CD compilation
20 Stompie Wompie Hits.
References/Links
Special thanks to Grantley and Janice Dee
Vernon Joyson
Dreams, Fantasies & Nightmares: Australia (Borberline Books, 1999)
Ash Long
Good Guys And Godbotherers
http://www.long.com.au/3ak.htm
The One Shots
http://www.brianbrettcomputers.com/the_one_shots.html
EMI Music
http://www.emimusic.com.au/artist_releases.asp?productid=2559&artistid=1289