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Let the Little Girl Dance (C Spencer/H Glover) – Grantley Dee 1966

Grantley Dee (1947, Grantley de Zoete) was born visually-impaired and attended several schools for the blind in Melbourne – the Royal Victorian School for the Blind and St.

Paul’s School for the Blind (Kew), and he completed his secondary schooling as a boarder at Sydney’s St. Edmunds School for the Blind. It is now a sought-after collector's item and in late 2002 Vicious Sloth Collectables in Melbourne had this single listed for sale at AU$75.

Grantley started on 3AK in 1963 with "The Grantley Dee Show", a regular four-hour ‘Top 100' program on Saturday afternoons, plus the four-hour Big Sunday Show, featuring “big tunes and new releases” on Sunday afternoons.

He soon expanded his career to singing, becoming a live performance success on the Town Hall dance circuit at Preston, Coburg, Mentone, and many other locations. This is sometimes credited as being a second duet with Little Pattie, but Grantley kindly corrected this for us -- it was in fact a solo effort.

Concurrent with his singing career, Grantley continued DJ-ing at 3AK, hosting the drive-time shift from 3-5pm weekdays and 4-5pm Sundays during 1967-68.

He was 57. Below L-R – 3 AK Good Guys Pete Smith, Grantley Dee, Graeme Boyd; Stan Rofe, Frankie Davidson.

DJ Stan Rofe and singer Frankie Davidson mentored the young Grantley and he undertook radio announcer training with the legendary John McMahon who had coached such radio stars as Rofe, Phil Gibbs, Paul Jennings, Lionel Yorke, and Mike Walsh.

But Grantley's achievements didn't stop there -- he was also a popular singer who recorded a string of singles for EMI between 1966 and 1968 and regularly also performed live during the late Sixties and into the early Seventies.

, Grantley was an accomplished singer and during 1966, he was the vocalist in the short-lived Melbourne-based band called The Hurricanes, although this band didn't make any recordings.

Below – 3AK Good Guys- Grantley is seated in the centre of the photo.

He quickly became a popular member of 3AK’s Good Guys on-air team, which included such Melbourne identities as Pete Smith, Paul Jennings, Graeme Boyd, Alan Aitken, Gary Mac, Bill Howie, and Lionel Yorke, and Grantley hosted his own show, a regular four-hour Top 100 program on Saturday afternoons, plus the four-hour Big Sunday Show, featuring hits and new releases which also proved successful; with Grantley and his guide dog Penny becoming popular station personalities.

8) in Melbourne after a short illness. He was a boy soprano and sang in school choirs, but his life’s ambition was to be a radio announcer, and he got his first break as a phantom race caller on 3UZ’s Turf Talk hosted by Bert Bryant.

Blind from birth, Dee (real name Grantley De Zoete) joined Melbourne top-40 radio station 3AK at the age of 16 and became one of the city’s highest-profile DJs.

“Being a singer himself, he was one of the first to play Australian music on radio and took risks with a lot of unknown local talent,” recalls Jeff Joseph, who managed Dee in the mid-’60s.

As an artist with the defunct HMV Records, Dee had chart success with the 1996 singles “Let the Little Girl Dance” and “Wild One.” He continued to perform in clubs until 2002.

GRANTLEY DEE

Singer and radio personality Grantley Dee (real name Grantley De Zoete) was a well-known and popular presenter on Melbourne radio station 3AK and he is especially notable for being the first visually-impaired pop DJ on Australian radio.

Grantley recorded two more singles in 1967, "We Must Be Doing Something Right" (a duet with Little Pattie) and his final single for HMV, "It Hurts Me" His very last release, "Love Is A Happy Thing", was issued on Columbia in 1968.

Grantley Dee passed away on 7 February 2005.

Discography

Singles

1966
"Let The Little Girl Dance" / Answer Me" (HMV 4762)

1966
"Wild One" / "You Thrill Me" (HMV 4798)

1966
"You're Sixteen" / "Every Breath I Take" (HMV 4823)

1967
"We Must Be Doing Something Right" / "Lonely One" (HMV 4853)
- duet with Little Pattie

1967
"It Hurts Me" / "Stop Where You Are" (HMV 4875)

1968
"Love Is A Happy Thing" / "Nothing You Can Do But Cry" (Columbia DO-8476)

EP's

1966
Let The Girl Dance" (HMV 7EGO 70076)

Albums

1966
Grantley Dee (HMV OCLP 7667)

Grantley's recordings have been compiled on the LP Let The Girl Dance (EMI 1982) and the CD Let The Little Girl Dance (Newmarket NEW 1034.2) 1994.

Henry Glover was an experienced producer/arranger/ songwriter, and he promptly recognised the quality of Bland’s “demo:, and released it as a single, with its calypso-tinged cha -cha beat and impressive sax solo, it peaked at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #11 on the R&B charts, becoming one of the great dance hits of the early 1960’s.

Dee’s cover version omitted the sax solo but was also impressive, he possessed a tuneful tenor voice and attractive vibrato, and he eschewed mock- American accents and imbued the song with genuine emotion “She’s been a little wallflower on the shelf, standing by herself/Now she got the nerve to take a chance, so let the little girl dance/Let the little girl through, she wants to pass by you/Buddy, can’t you see she wants to dance with me…” Below- The Shadows after John Farrar (far left) joined Bruce Welch and Hank Marvin in 1973.

How long he held this post is not known but he evidently left the station sometime during 1969.

In the late Sixties and into the Seventies, he fronted his own Grantley Dee Band which included famed musos Gil Matthews and Les Stacpool (guitar) (later replaced by Ron Leigh), Alan Turnbull (drums), John Vallins (bass) and Mick "The Reverend" O'Connor (keyboards).

Below L-R The Liverpool Sound Album, JOK leads the Brits in a version of When the Saints Come Marching In, Grantley Dee.

In April 1964, he was chosen as a support act on promoter Harry M Miller’s Pan Pacific Promotions Liverpool Sound package tour to Australia, which introduced Dusty Springfield , Brian Poole and The Tremeloes, Gene Pitney and Gerry & The Pacemakers to local live audiences, and by 1966, he was the lead vocalist for the Melbourne-based band The Hurricanes, and he sought a recording contract.

In 1965 he moved to the morning shift from 7.00am-9.00am, plus the four-hour Grantley Dee Show from 9.00am- 1.00pm on Saturday and Sunday.

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The first record he played was the Cascades Rhythm of the Rain, and he was the youngest blind DJ in the world at the time.

At the end of 1968 3AK announced that it would be expanding to 24-hour operations after years of restricted-hours broadcasting (for most of the 1960’s the station went off air at 5pm) and it was announced that Grantley would host the station’s first all-night shift, which he did until he left the station in 1969.

Into the Seventies, Grantley fronted his own Grantley Dee Band which included such illustrious  musos as Gil Matthews and Les Stacpool (guitar), Alan Turnbull (drums), John Vallins (bass) and Mick O’Connor (keyboards).