Dinah Lee: My story, as told to Elisabeth Easther

Introducing Dinah Lee, The Mod World of Dinah Lee, The Sound of Dinah Lee and Live on the Dinah Lee Show with Tommy Adderley album covers. Dinah Lee in 2017 (centre). Photo / Supplied

Dinah Lee was New Zealand's most successful female pop artist of the 1960s, and has recently been inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame. Along with five other Hall of Fame inductees, Lee will be celebrated at this year's Aotearoa Music Awards.

I was born in Waimate, halfway between Timaru and Oamaru. When I was quite young my parents moved to Greymouth when Dad bought the pub on the railway line. You can imagine a pub in the '50s - 6 o'clock closing, the bar filled with men who worked shifts on the wharves or the railway, coming in at all times of day and night for a drink. It wasn't easy on my parents, and my mother definitely didn't like it because she up and left us, leaving my poor father with three children to raise by himself.

Album cover of Introducing Dinah Lee. Photo / Supplied

When I was about 13 I went to a foster home on a dairy farm on Cashmere Rd. The Hamiltons had two sons and Mr Hamilton was talking to my dad over a beer one day. Dad was a bit worried about what to do with his little girl who was growing up - I was 12 going on 13 - and Mr Hamilton suggested I visit for a weekend, because his wife had always wanted a little girl. And I loved it and stayed on that farm till I left home. I had pet goats, dogs and cats. I went to Brownies and Girl Guides. I learned piano and ballet. But Mrs Hamilton never let me go out and milk the cows, she said that was men's work

My foster family weren't musical but it was there I learned to sing. I'd go down to the cowshed - the cool rooms had fabulous acoustics - and I'd go in there and holler away. Because my father played a mean saxophone, when he started a nightclub in Christchurch, I started singing there with the little jazz group and, when Dad wasn't ushering people, he'd play his saxophone. That's how I started. Singing in my father's nightclub when I was 15 and still going to school. Although I was taken in by my foster mother, because in that era, a young woman had to have a chaperone.

In 1963 I moved to Auckland, the mecca of showbiz. I found work at a gym called Silhouette Health Studios where I had to wear a little pink uniform with black tights and high heels. There were no sneakers in those days. Down the road was the Top 20 on Durham Lane and I'd sneak out in my lunch hour in my work uniform and sing with whatever band was playing. I'd wait and wait till they let me sing a song, in exchange for a cup of coffee. That's how I started singing around the pop scene in Auckland.

Album cover of The Mod World of Dinah Lee. Photo / Supplied

One day, out of curiosity, I went into a boutique called The Casual Shop. I'd just been to the hairdresser - my hair was teased up in the bouffant style – and I went upstairs to look at shift dresses. A model called Jacky Holme worked there. She had a bob and I told her I liked her look. She asked if wanted a bob too. I said yes, so she took me out the back, sat me on a stool and, using the scissors they cut patterns out for clothes, she cut my hair. She combed out my beautifully done bouffant and cut my hair, then put pale make-up on me. Black eyes, bland lips, bob, it was the Mod look. Then she put me in a couple of little outfits. That night I went to The Top 20 and sang a song and bopped all over the stage like a crazy woman and that's how it started.

Soon after, I was asked to fill in for a singer called Lyn Barnett on a tour with Max Merritt and Peter Posa. They were big names at the time. One of Lyn's parents had passed away and they urgently needed another female singer. They flew me to Taumarunui where I went onstage with my new hairdo, crazy clothes, white nurses' stockings and pale make-up. I sang It's My Party and the audience laughed. They'd never seen anything like it, but after the tour manager saw their reaction, a few months later I had management and a record contract.

Back in the mid '60s, The Beatles era, women were becoming very independent. We did whatever we wanted, the pill came in a bottle, not in little strips of tablets, and when I started having hit records, I put myself at the same level as the boys. I wasn't just some little girl singer. I toured with big names like Gene Pitney and The Searchers and when Yockomo was number one on both sides of the Tasman, I was flown to Australia to sing for Johnnie O'Keefe, Australia's King of Rock n Roll. He brought me over for a TV show called Sing Sing Sing. I had my little Mod dresses and the haircut and I went on television and started the Mod craze in Australia.

These were fascinating times. Everyone had a job, everything was new and we got away with everything. Whatever we dressed ourselves in would hit the newspapers. I once cut up an English flag, the Union Jack, and wore it as a top. It was discussed in Parliament. "How dare she deface the Queen's flag? Deport her! they said" but people loved it. In 1965 I toured all these outdoor shows with a pop artist called Little Millie who sang My Boy Lollipop. When we played Meyer Music Bowl, there was a crowd of 100,000 screaming teenagers all chanting: "Up Dinah Queen of the Mods!")

I never touched drugs, but I did like my bourbon and coke, although if I had one now I'd probably topple over. And I smoked those long More cigarettes. I toured Australia with the English comedian Dick Emery. His wife came too and she loved them, and I picked that up from her. Thank goodness I don't smoke any more, although I do enjoy a glass of wine.

The Sound Of Dinah Lee by Dinah Lee. Photo / Supplied

Last year my partner of 40 years passed away from cancer. Doug was the love of my life. He was a musical director and he played a fabulous guitar. We were like two peas in a pod. We never married and we didn't have kids, although we adored our Tibetan terriers. When we got together in 1979 I owned my own home, I had my own bank account, my own car. I was an independent woman and he didn't try to put any of it into his name. I was fabulously lucky to have met such a kind, caring man. Maybe it was because I'm a Leo and he was an Aries, but we bounced off each other. But the past is the past, I don't live there and I'm going good today.

In showbiz you have your ups and downs so you have to be resilient. Some decades aren't as good as others. You don't get holiday pay or sick leave, you live from one gig to another, taking bookings three to six months in advance. It can be tough but this is the path I chose. It doesn't worry me to not know about the future. And I love getting older. I just turned 77 and there are things I still want to do and also things I don't have to do. I can say no to people, or tell them where to go. It's fantastic.

In 2002 and 2012 I did two big arena tours - A Long Way To The Top - throughout Australia with Ray Columbus and Max Merritt. We did the large entertainment centres. That gave me a taste of what it's like to be a pop star today and I absolutely loved it. We were flown everywhere, everything was done for us and all we had to do was walk on stage. In my day we did everything, even load all the gear. I can work to a crowd of 100, 300 or 3000, it doesn't matter - from what I did back in those early dance halls to what I do today, it's been a long, long journey, and a great career.

• The Aotearoa Music Awards will be broadcast live on Sunday, November 15 from 7pm on The Edge TV and continuing from 8.30pm on Three.