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In less than a year, Johnny Devlin's music changed this coy little nation of ours forever.
The burst of rock'n'roll mayhem Devlin dished out between May 1958 to April 1959 outraged the oldies, but inspired young people to let their hair down and scream.
Devlin remembers being bemused by his screaming female fans at first - "I didn't know why they were doing it," he laughs.
It was about to get more outrageous. He had shirts ripped from his back by delirious fans, there were riots outside gigs from Greymouth to Gisborne, and it's claimed he sold more than 200,000 records from his early singles (including debut Lawdy Miss Clawdy), EPs and debut album - not bad considering New Zealand's population was yet to reach 2.5 million.
Devlin - dubbed "New Zealand's Elvis Presley" or the Satin Satan for the devilish influence he had on the youth of the time - was the country's first rock'n'roll star, paving the way for acts such as Max Merritt and the Meteors and Ray Columbus and the Invaders in the 60s.
This wasn't just a music revolution, it was a social one. Everyone had seen Elvis at the movies, heard him on the wireless, and blasted his records, but they could see Devlin live in the big smoke of Auckland or Christchurch and even in small towns like Stratford and Taihape.
Dave Russell, guitarist in Ray Columbus and the Invaders, was 15 years old when Devlin fever hit. "All we knew of Elvis was what we heard on the radio," he says. "Johnny Devlin was there and real."
Tonight at the New Zealand Music Awards at the Aotea Centre, Devlin will be presented with the first NZ Herald Legacy Award and inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame.
Devlin knows that his rebellious music - which still sounds electrifying and wild today - and his onstage antics, which included quivering legs, a bare chest and provocative use of a mic-stand, caused a stir in 1950s New Zealand. But the 69-year-old insists it wasn't intentional.
"All that did happen, but to me it wasn't intended to happen. I just wanted to sing and do my shows and what happened after that was just part and parcel of show business."
As well as releasing 10 singles and four EPs, Devlin and his band the Devils toured the country three times in just under a year. It was chaos. There was his appearance at a Lower Hutt record bar when the shop got wrecked; in Greymouth the fire hose was turned on the crowd because they were rioting; in Invercargill he escaped the waiting crowds by jumping out a backstage toilet window.
"I ended up in the middle of a Chinese restaurant and didn't know where I was," he chuckles.
On January 12, 1959, at Christchurch's St James Theatre, Devlin even rocked the Government when the Minister of Social Welfare, Mabel Howard, attended his show.
"I'm really enjoying the show. There's nothing much wrong with rock'n'roll," said the minister. But what really caused a stir was Howard escorting the rock'n'roll star through the crowd with her arm around him for protection.
"When I rocked and rolled with Mabel Howard that was it," says Devlin today. "People wondered what was going on with our Government. So I knew we were making some impression. We were doing the same thing as Elvis Presley was doing in America - there were the same riots, mobbings, and shirt rippings. All that was happening in New Zealand."
One fan, Sylvia Fairweather, who lived in Morrinsville during Devlin's reign and has signed copies of many of his records, including the original Lawdy, Miss Clawdy single, saw him perform many times.
One night after a gig in her hometown she had her mum's car and gave Devlin and Devils guitarist Peter Bazley a ride to the after-show party. She recalls the story calmly, but you can tell they were exciting times.
"Rock'n'roll was at its height, and everyone went for him because he was a New Zealander. He was at the top - it was like the difference between amateur rugby and professional rugby today," she says.
Local music man, Roger Marbeck, from Ode Records, who is releasing the 37-track Johnny Devlin album How Would Ya' Be today, agrees.
"He paved the way for the rest in the way an older sibling has to break the barriers and the younger brothers and sisters reap the benefits. He put New Zealand rock'n'roll on the map, not only here, but in Australia."
Not bad for a boy born in the tiny central North Island town of Raetihi on May 11, 1938. The Devlins were a musical family and performed at talent quests in the area before moving to Wanganui where 11-year-old Johnny impressed with his version of She Taught Me How To Yodel during a production at the local opera house.
In 1955, with his brothers and cousin, he formed a country and western band, the River City Ramblers.
Then he discovered Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel - "I just loved the emotion in his voice. And then of course with Hound Dog and Don't Be Cruel it was all there." - and by 1957 he was performing solo.
He always had aspirations to be a big star, sparked at high school in Wanganui. He remembers his guidance counsellor asking him what he wanted to do when he left school, to which Devlin replied, "I want to be a singer".
"He said, 'Well, there's nothing wrong with that but let's see if you can get your school certificate and have something to hang your hat on'."
He never did pass his exams.
"I knew at this time that America had Elvis Presley, England had Cliff Richard, and Australia had Johnny O'Keefe, and I thought to myself, 'Gee. Wouldn't it be great to be New Zealand's king of rock'n'roll?' That's where the urge came from."
He started making a name for himself at talent shows in towns such as Marton and Pahiatua and during one performance in Palmerston North he caught the attention of organiser and country musician Johnny Cooper. Known as "the Maori Cowboy", Cooper was the voice of New Zealand's first rock'n'roll recordings in the mid 50s which gained modest attention and sales.
Cooper negotiated a management deal with the young musician, took him under his wing and increased his profile by promoting him as "New Zealand's Elvis Presley" throughout 1957. But, says Devlin, it wasn't until he went to Auckland in January 1958 that he got his "first professional chance".
Dave Dunningham, who ran Auckland's Jive Centre and held some of the country's first rock'n'roll dances, offered Devlin a gig at the venue, and over the next few months his reputation boomed.
Prestige Records boss Phil Warren put Devlin's songs on record, starting with Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, and Robert Kerridge and Graham Dent, from the Odeon cinema chain, organised the nationwide tours.
"I think I was the right guy at the right time," says Devlin. "If I hadn't had the people behind me that thought I had the ability to be number one, I don't know where I would have been."
He admits he based his stage act on Elvis, but he made it his own by baring his chest, crawling down aisles, and jumping off pianos.
"You could say I was one of the world's first Elvis impersonators," he jokes.
He claims he never did anything sexual on stage, although the conservative establishment of the day would disagree, especially when Devlin ripped through songs like I Got A Rocket In My Pocket, Play Rough, and the excellent Straight Skirts, with lines like, "She wears a real tight skirt, oooee-oooee-oooee".
"I never intentionally did anything sexual. That wasn't in my mind at all. I just did what I thought Elvis or Little Richard would probably do."
Apart from the music, it is his ripped shirts that Devlin is remembered for most. There are many stories about the first time his shirt got ripped off him by fans - most notably that Dent, the crafty PR man on tour, had unpicked the stitching around the sleeves.
"I don't think he did," says Devlin. "There's no way in the world I would put a shirt on if I noticed that the stitching had gone. No. Definitely not."
He wrote the song Doreen for an Invercargill fan who traded and bought pieces of his shirts - they came in everything from leopard skin to pink - from other fans so she could sew the material into her own clothes.
He describes the shirts, made by Lee Brassey from the Jive Centre, as "special".
"She kept making them for me when I was on tour and sending them down because, well, I was running out of shirts. In Invercargill they ripped my shirt off, and they were trying to rip my trousers off as well, so I had to jump up on top of a car that was moving slow through the crowd to get out of there. "But," he says cheerily, "that was a hell of a tour because it broke all the previous box office records."
However, Devlin admits it got to a point where he felt threatened, especially when the police stopped giving him protection. In April 1959, the tour was called off.
"There wasn't a backlash to the music," he remembers, "but there were a lot of stories going into the paper with people who didn't agree with what was going on. They couldn't understand why teenage fans were screaming about this Johnny Devlin. Originally they thought like America did - that Elvis was evil and rock'n'roll was bad. But when Elvis did a couple of shows for the local church it was okay. So I think my music was generally accepted because I did a lot of charity shows too. As part of the tour I'd visit hospitals and intellectually handicapped kids and people started to realise that it can't be all bad."
In May 1959, Devlin and the Devils moved to Australia where they found moderate success. Devlin returned a couple of times to perform in his homeland - including the Beatles' tour in 1964 - but eventually a day job and family life beckoned.
While his reign was short, tonight he's back on an Auckland stage to accept the award acknowledging his legacy.
"I'm stoked New Zealand has supported me for more than 50 years and they're still supporting me and this award is an example. It's a real honour, mate."
