New Zealand country music legend John Grenell, aka John Hore, died this week at 78.
Music journalist Glen Moffatt, who's been a fan of Grenell since childhood, chats with Charlotte Ryan about his legacy.
John Hore Grenell Photo: By Archives New Zealand from New Zealand - John Hore Grenell, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php
- Country singer Brendan Dugan on John Grenell: 'He had one of those voices that no-one else had'
As a kid growing up in the 1960s, Moffat says John Grenell's music meant a lot to him but he didnt know John was a New Zealander.
"Our parents had the first three John Hore albums and my grandfather had the next three John Hore albums and that was all we listened to growing up… we sort of grew up on that music."
Born in the Central Otago town of Ranfurly in 1944, John's singing talent was first discovered at a 1963 talent quest by Mosgiel entrepreneur Joe Brown, who went on to become pivotal in his career.
His first single 'Mary Ann Regrets' came out in 1964 and sales of his 1965 album Encore made him the biggest-selling New Zealand musician of that decade.
"[In the 1960s] he was the top-selling record artist in NZ by a long shot and outsold The Beatles, which was phenomenal.
"When John first started touring in the '60s, basically New Zealand had a farming-based culture…. Country music was about living on the land and the things that people saw around them, I guess."
"He was a good-looking young man and my aunties, who were all Southland girls, all had posters of him on their walls when they were growing up."
In the 1960s, John was one of the musical acts who toured the country with the Miss New Zealand pageant - which his manager Joe Brown produced - and eventually met and married Deirdre Bruton, now Deirdre Lusby, the 1969 runner-up to Miss NZ.
After semi-retiring from music in the early 1970s, John and Deirdre raised their children and bred Appaloosa horses on a rural property in Canterbury and he reverted from 'Hore' (his stepfather's name) to 'Grenell' (his mother's name).
Then in the early 1990s, after being out of the spotlight for around 15 years, John had his biggest-ever hit - a cover of the Jim Reeves song 'Welcome to Our World' that was featured in a Toyota commercial.
"'Welcome to Our World' was number one for three weeks in a row."
When 'Welcome to Our World' was added to John's initially unsuccessful 1988 album Silver, the album "sold bucketloads" when it was re-released in 1990, Moffat says.
As a musician, John was very relatable to New Zealanders but also very shy of fame, he says.
"He created this huge surge in the popularity of country music in New Zealand."
