Jay Epae: Aotearoa's secret Scandinavian star
In 1961, a singer from the small Taranaki town of Manaia had a number one hit in Sweden with a song sung largely in te reo, but few people in New Zealand heard this record at the time, or knew anything about the singer’s success.
His name was Jay Epae, and until now, his has been one of the great untold stories of New Zealand pop. A new compilation album goes a long way to rectifying that.
Epae was born Nicholas Epae, the third of eight children, into a musical family. His father Tuni was a singer and performer who received many mentions in Taranaki newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s for his concert appearances and strong tenor voice. Tuni's te reo rendition of ‘O Sole Mio’ was a standout.
Epae originally had ambitions to be a boxer, but after breaking a wrist during a fight, he turned to singing instead.
Jay Epae on stage in Sweden, early 1960s
Epae Family Collection
In 1954, aged 20, he had left Taranaki and was soon singing in a Sydney nightclub. It was there he met his future wife Leona, a New York-born singer and dancer, touring Australia at the time as a member of the Harlem Blackbirds.
The superstitious Leona was apparently convinced that the romance had been prophesied by a fortune card machine. Whatever the case, the pair were married within weeks.
By late 1956, they were in New York, Leona dancing with Cab Calloway’s Revue, Jay working as a kitchen-hand in a Hawaiian restaurant. But Jay was also making contacts, and in 1960, he was signed to Mercury Records and recorded his biggest hit.
Released in late 1960, ‘Putti Putti’ was Jay’s adaptation of a well-known waiata originally written by Tuini Ngawai. There’s a recording from 1942 sung by the Māori Battalion.
But Epae gave the song a new rhythmic kick, somewhere between Hawaiian pop and rock'n’roll. A review in Billboard magazine compared his voice to Harry Belafonte's.
Jay Epae (right) during a Swedish tour with, among others, US teen idol Fabian (left), who is holding the hand of Danish teenage singer Gitte Haenning.
Audioculture
Though the single got little traction in the US and was not even released in New Zealand, it was picked up by Radio Nord - a newly launched Swedish pirate radio station.
According to music historian Grant Gillanders, ‘Putti Putti’ was picked out of a pile of rejects by the station’s sound engineer, who, on a whim, added it to the playlist.
The audience response was immediate, the pirates were swamped with requests, and the record went to number one on the Swedish charts – and it stayed on the charts for an extraordinary 44 weeks!
‘Putti Putti’ was not only a smash in Sweden but also made number 1 in Finland and number 2 in Denmark. Capitalising on this surprise Scandi success, Epae toured Scandinavia that year on a bill that also featured American teen idol Fabian and Danish singer and film star Gitte Haenning.
Returning to the US, Epae recorded several more singles, but the big US break eluded him, while his Scandinavian fame had begun to wane. More seriously, his marriage to Leona was coming to an end, and by early 1966, Jay was back in New Zealand.
Jay Epae: Hula Cha (Denmark, 1961), Putti Putti / Hawaiian Melody (Denmark, 1961), and a Swedish advertisement.
Grant Gillanders / Audioculture
Ron Dalton, A&R man for local independent label Viking, knew about Epae’s American career and didn’t hesitate to sign him to the label.
Dalton mentioned another artist he was working with, a young singer from Morrinsville going by the stage name of Maria Dallas, and wondered whether Epae might have any material suitable for her first album? he came up with ‘Tumblin’ Down’, one of the great New Zealand songs and still a New Zealand party favourite after six decades.
As Maria remembers it, he came to the studio literally the next day, having composed the song overnight.
Around this time, he also cut his only album, Hold On Tight, and another single, this one written to promote a dance of his own invention known as ‘The Creep’.
But according to Gillanders, all this activity was masking the fact that Jay was actually heartbroken over the breakup of his marriage, and perhaps that’s the reason that he couldn’t keep still, or sustain this new wave of success.
Jay Epae
Supplied
After a 1967 tour with Dallas, he left for Australia, looking to rekindle musical connections there, apparently promising he’d be back in a few weeks. It would turn out to be more than twenty years.
In 1994, Epae's Wellington-based sister Tui received a phone call from Brisbane. It was his landlady, concerned about her tenant’s health.
A brother, Roy, tracked him down and brought him back to Wellington.
There had been an enquiry about him from Swedish television, and talk of flying him over there for a documentary about the pirate station that had liberated Swedish radio, and made Jay Epae its first superstar. But his health wasn’t up to it.
The last time Epae sang in public, as his brother Hector would recall, was at a family gathering one night at old Wellington haunt The Pines.
He sang karaoke and danced the Creep. But only months later, he was found in a Wellington street, dead at age 61.
Jay Epae: The Collection, Grant Gillanders’ compilation of Jay Epae’s complete recordings, is now available on the Frenzy label.
