Suzanne Prentice. Photo: Supplied
Singer Suzanne Prentice's impressive 50-year career spans TV shows and performances with legends like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash, but it is her work with underprivileged children that she is most proud of.
The 66-year-old has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for her services to music and the community in the 2024 New Year Honours list.
The news came as a "great shock", she said.
"I was just in the middle of trying to finish off some work I was doing and I was starting to get just a trifle short in the grains of it, so it was lovely news.
"It's just something you do and I've always tried to give back as much as I can and... I'm extremely proud to be able to say I'm a Southlander and it's something that I do start every show with when I'm overseas."
The recognition comes nearly 30 years after her first royal honour in 1995, when she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) as part of the Queen's birthday celebrations.
Two years later, she was also inducted into the Australia Hands of Fame in 1997 and subsequently had two Australasian best-selling lifestyle books in 2002 and 2004.
For three years in the 1970s she was named female vocalist of the year at the Country Music Awards Australia, also known as the Golden Guitar Awards. In 2015, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But she may never have achieved all this if she had gone down the path she actually wanted to.
"I really didn't want to be a singer, I wanted to be a vet," Prentice said, "or I wanted to be a policewoman, but I'm five foot one and in those days there was the height restrictions.
"But my career path was really determined for me, so that is what I did. And I'm very thankful that I did."
Despite initially not having an interest in being on stage and - until this day - suffering from nerves, Prentice got her big break at the age of 12 when she appeared in a TV talent show, called New Faces. She didn't win, but she received attention for her version of country artist Donna Fargo's 'Funny Face'.
"I wanted a guitar for my birthday and my father was absolutely against it, because I'd been learning piano for about five or six years.
Suzanne Prentice in the 1970s. Photo: AudioCulture
"But, in due course, I got a guitar for my birthday and all I found I could do was strum the damn thing. So I had to actually sing along with it, and that was the time we found I had a voice.
"I never got into school choirs. I used to stand and look through the glass doors of the school hall, watching choirs practice. But I never got to be in a school choir. And it's quite a strange story really, how I've been able to have a career for so long in a career that I didn't really want to start."
A few months after her TV appearance, she debuted with her first single and album, Country Girl (1973), which went gold in two weeks, according to entertainment agency PME Entertainment.
"Both Eric Morecambe and Ronnie Barker took me under their wing. I was just a young Kiwi kid and they really took me under their wing and I learned an awful lot from them," Prentice said.
"I worked for the BBC for a little while in London, I did a lot of the clubs in England, and that's certainly a great way to learn the business because, boy, they can be hard-nosed some of those and I enjoyed that."
Since then, she has established herself as a household name, not just in country music, which she does not like to be pigeon-holed in, but in various genres and platforms.
The artists she once used to cover, like Kris Kristofferson on her first album, she would go on to meet.
"There has been an enormous amount of hard work and a lot of sacrifice from my family, and without my family and the support of my family and my husband, I wouldn't have been able to continue with this career."
Along the way, Prentice has also advocated for social causes, being a World Vision ambassador for 20 years and writing and doing a series of shows called Kids for Kids for more than 18 years. The show toured nationally each year, giving thousands of New Zealand schoolchildren the opportunity to perform with her on stage, building their confidence and raising awareness of under-privileged children worldwide.
"I wanted to instil in them just the happiness of being on stage and singing and just having a good time with music, and also teaching them a little bit of discipline," she said.
"We used to have one rehearsal and I was working up with - I think it was about 1100 kids on a stage in Nelson, and so I'm working with 600 or 800 kids at a time and it was amazing how good they were.
"But that series of shows, I was told raised approximately $13.7 million towards underprivileged children. So, you know, that to me, that's a great achievement, if I do nothing else in life.
"It's amazing actually even now any given week there would be at least two young people, I'll meet somewhere, whether I'm on a plane or on somewhere, that say, 'are you so and so? I sang with you at - I don't know - Wellington or I sang with you in Christchurch'.
"It's so good, so good to hear that they remembered it and they all enjoyed that experience. Those are the important things for me.
A performance Prentice remembered as a special moment was when she performed for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
"That was a special moment, there's been so many to be honest. I've been very lucky."
Recovering from a cardiac arrest in 2022, she said she was doing fine now.
"Probably the last five or six years, the majority of my work has been outside of New Zealand, which is a shame, but I'm putting things in place now to remedy that, so I want to work a little closer to home in the next couple of years or so."
As well as supporting up and coming artists, she's got a series of concerts planned for next year and is working on her third book. She is also considering doing some vocal training workshops.
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