Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964

New Zealand Post Book of the Year Award Winner "Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964" Takes Centre Stage in a New Series on Radio New Zealand Concert.

Radio New Zealand Concert listeners are in for a real treat over the next four Sunday nights (from 28 August) when Chris Bourke, winner of 2011 New Zealand Post Book of the Year begins a series of programmes based on the book that won him the award, Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964. 

In the book, Bourke delved into the lost sounds and images of Rotorua's and New Zealand's pop music scene in the days before and during rock 'n' roll.

The Programmes:

Blue Smoke: the birth of New Zealand Pop
Sunday evenings at 7.00pm on Radio NZ Concert from August 28.

Who was New Zealand's Sammy Davis Jr? Whakatane's Elvis? Tonight we broadcast another season of Blue Smoke, which explores the early years of recorded New Zealand popular music. Local hits did not begin with ‘She's a Mod' or even ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy'. After the release of ‘Blue Smoke' in 1949 launched the local recording industry, the fledgling studios were busy capturing the sounds of New Zealand artists.

Blue Smoke is an audio history of popular music recorded in New Zealand in the 1950s and early 1960s. At first, discs spun at 78 rpm and the nation's only dedicated pop show on radio was The Lifebuoy Hit Parade, hosted weekly by an avuncular Selwyn Toogood. By the 1960s, rock'n'roll was well established and New Zealand had its first daily pop programme, The Sunset Show.

The second series of Blue Smoke examines the boom in New Zealand recording in the years before musicians combed their hair forward, and beat bands would dominate the air waves. It features rare recordings and occasional excerpts of interviews with the participants.

Sunday 28 August
7.00 pm
Episode One: After Hours

Programme one looks at early recordings of New Zealand musical comedians, cabaret acts and solo artists. Among the performers featured will be Kahu Pineaha, Lou and Simon, Noel McKay, Bas Turbert and Ash Burton.

Sunday 4 September
7.00 pm
Episode Two: Sunsets and Sunrises

Episode two covers early mainstream pop acts, small jazz combos, and the role played by radio in disseminating New Zealand popular music. It looks at the changes in pop radio, from the conservative approach of ZB in the 1950s to the dawn of pop radio as we understand it now. Archive clips of The Lever Hit Parade will be included.

Sunday 11 September
7.00 pm
Episode Three: Pie Cart Rock'n'Roll

Programme three looks at the arrival of rock'n'roll in New Zealand, the reactions of musicians and the established. Among the acts featured will be Johnny Cooper, Johnny Devlin, Eddie Howell, Teddy Bennett, the Keil Isles, the Supersonics and Max Merritt and the Meteors.

Sunday 18 September
7.00 pm
Episode Four: Where the Kiwi Rhythm Calls

Episode four covers original songwriting, including pop, country and folk, by composers such as Sam Freedman, Ken Avery and Peter Cape.

Blue Smoke: the birth of New Zealand Pop will be written, presented and produced by Chris Bourke, author of Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music, 1918-1964, which last month won the "book of the year" award at the New Zealand Post Book Awards.