Flashback: The “king” of Australian rock is dead

“You had the feeling that he was writing his own parts.”

There is a subtle similarity between the late American actor Humphrey Bogart and Australia’s “Mr Showbiz”, Johnny O’Keefe, who died suddenly in 1978 aged 43, of a massive heart attack in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney.

When Bogart started on the road to becoming a box-office legend, Otis Ferguson, one of the most gifted and erudite film critics of the 1940s, wrote that “You had the feeling that he was writing his own parts.”

Jazz saxophonist Bob Bertles, who played in one of O’Keefe’s famous bands in the late 50s, was quoted recently as saying: “When he was on stage he definitely looked as though he belonged there.”

Johnny O’Keefe will be a hard act to follow.
 

Main: Johnny O’Keefe put a special meaning on the delivery of the high notes!
 

Like Bogart, O’Keefe was an original. In the past twenty years, there has been no other all-round entertainer to match him for his sheer will to entertain.

O’Keefe’s career, which spanned over 26 years, oscillated between success and failure so many times that even he lost count.

Wedged in somewhere between those hectic, roller-coaster years, were several attempts to crack the big-time in America and Britain.

He came close…

In recent years, O’Keefe spent most of his time promoting his “Johnny O’Keefe Show” to clubs all over NSW.

It was three hours of high-powered frenzy, and as John Clare wrote in an issue of the National Times last month, “He was…bounding on like a well-worn prize-fighter, hurling himself into it and urging the crowd to clap and sing along.”
 

The winner!

And they did – time and time again.

In 1976, O’Keefe launched his famous “Door Deal” package to clubs – and played to packed houses.

In an interview I did with O’Keefe last year, he said: “It’s top shelf entertainment. We have a team of entertainers who know what the business is all about.

We go into clubs and say that if you can’t afford to pay us then we’ll take the risk and 
help you to promote the show.

“If the show draws a good crowd we make money or, at the very worst break-even. If it fails we’ve taken the risk and the club is not out of pocket.”

O’Keefe said nostalgia played an important role in the success of his “Door Deal” shows.
“It’s only natural that it would,” he said, “mainly because some of the early songs I recorded became popular hits.”
 

Johnny goes hard to blend his high notes with the trumpet player.
 

Andrew Urban, editor of Encore, the variety industry’s newsmagazine, said: “O’Keefe had deep-seated ideas about the entertainment business and was concerned about the industry.

“He was a hard worker, a dynamic promoter and would never let you down, he always delivered the goods.”

Urban said that in the short time he knew him, O’Keefe was never afraid to back his own talent.

“His ‘Door Deals’ were largely responsible for increasing mid-week crowds in clubs,” Urban said.

“But O’Keefe isolated the club from any risk and stacked his confidence up against the income.”

O’Keefe knew he’d be 90 per cent right, because he worked at it.

<< The Johnny O’Keefe story was syndicated.

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The Johnny O’Keefe Story