25 tracks from the period 1959 – 1969: Gray Bartlett as you’ve never heard him before!
Graeme aka Gray Bartlett started his recording career in 1959 as the lead guitarist in the short lived band ‘The Stereotones’ who released the hauntingly menacing single ‘The Hound Steps Out’ which the band played live each night during the Auckland movie screenings of ‘The Hound of Baskervilles’. He recorded several more singles during the early sixties and toured with some of the biggest acts of the day including Connie Francis, Bobby Vee, Johnny Burnette, The Venture sand Donny Brooks.
When Peter Posa left Eldred Stebbing’s Zodiac label in 1963 for Viking Records, Eldred immediately signed Gray and over the next three years he recorded in several different styles to appease the local teen market. Gray also had a huge seller with his recording of ‘La Playa’ which nearly 50 years later is still one of New Zealand’s biggest selling International hits with sales of 410,000 in Japan alone, where it spent 16 weeks at number 2 on the Japanese Hit Parade.
Now for the first time Gray’s Sixties recordings have been assembled on CD. This album features the best of the Zodiac singles as well as recordings he made for other labels including HMV, La Gloria, Impact and Viscount. With titles such as ‘Jet Walk’, ‘Moon Man’, ‘Surf Rider’, ‘The Harem’, ‘Roller Coaster’ ,‘ The Wobbly’, ’Return of Zero Man’, ‘Agent 009’, ‘The Munsters’ and ‘Johnny Guitar’ you just know it’s going to be a groovy listening experience…and it is.