Being unable to read or memorise the script, the young O'Keefe improvised his part. O'Keefe made his stage debut at the age of four when he played the role of 'Dopey' in the Waverley College production of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". His mother was an excellent pianist and his father occasionally played in a jazz band. Johnny had a solid musical background and listened to the radio almost constantly at home although he did not often sing around the house.
He was raised as a Catholic and attended the local Catholic primary school, followed by secondary schooling at Waverley College in nearby Waverley. He was the second of three children of Raymond Moran O'Keefe and Thelma Edna Kennedy. O'Keefe was born in the eastern Sydney suburb of Bondi Junction on 19 January 1935. O'Keefe died in 1978 from a drug overdose. Through Barry, O'Keefe was the uncle of Australian television personality Andrew O'Keefe. His father, Alderman Ray O'Keefe, was Mayor of Waverley Council in the early 1960s. O'Keefe was the younger brother of Australian jurist Barry O'Keefe (a former head of the New South Wales ICAC). He had twenty-nine Top 40 hits in Australia between 19. Often referred to by his initials "J.O.K." or by his nickname "The Wild One", O'Keefe was the first Australian rock n' roll performer to tour the United States, and the first Australian artist to make the local Top 40 charts. O'Keefe was also a radio and television entertainer and presenter In his twenty-year career, O'Keefe released over fifty singles, 50 EPs and 100 albums. Some of his hits include " Wild One" (1958), " Shout!" and "She's My Baby". Just listen to it and watch your feet start to move.įor the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.John Michael O'Keefe (19 January 1935 – 6 October 1978) was an Australian rock and roll singer whose career began in the 1950s. It’s got a danceable beat, sliding synths and riffing guitars, and meanwhile, sweat is flung everywhere while Pop sing/speaks, dripping cool. Recorded for his New Wave-influenced, 1986 album “Blah-blah-blah”, it almost doesn’t sound like him and you could be forgiven for mistaking it for Christopher Otcasek’s cover (which appeared on the “Pretty Woman” soundtrack). Interesting, then, that his cover of this tune is relatively tame. He performed half naked, rarely sober, rolled around in broken glass, and pretty much invented the stage dive. Pop’s live performances with the Stooges and then solo throughout the seventies were definitely wild.
Indeed, this song could have just as easily been mistaken to be based upon him. Which brings me back to James Newell Osterberg jr. His original version sounds like typical rock n roll today but I’m sure it was considered as dangerous to the youth and parents of the day as punk was in the seventies. The song’s title, “Wild one”, is also one of the nicknames bestowed upon O’Keefe, whom it appears to me was like a cross between Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis (someone who has also covered this song). The fights morphed into riots which required intervention by the law and of course, a legend was born. Originally performed in the late 1950s by Johnny O’Keefe, Australia’s first rock n’ roll star, the song was purportedly inspired by a fight that broke out at one of his concerts between his rock fans and guests at a wedding happening downstairs. She just shrugged and changed the topic.įrom this innocuous conversation, I was reminded about the song, its energy, and that I still had words to write on it. She listened, pretended to think on it for a moment, and shook her head in the negative. “Do you know who this is?” I asked Victoria. It might’ve been lost forever (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating here) had my wife and I not gone out to Prime Burger Bar for dinner last Saturday night.Īt some point during the typical twenty or so minute wait for our burgers to come up, I realized my right foot was tapping under the table and then, I recognized the song.
But well, it didn’t happen and the draft has kept getting pushed further and further out of sight as other posts somehow take precedence.
I created the skeleton and saved it as a draft, meaning to write some words on the song the next day. This post was supposed to be published a month ago.
0 kommentar(er)
