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Passing of Grantley Dee

MELBOURNE radio identity Grantley Dee has died, aged 59.
Grantley, whose real surname was De Zoete, was to have recently moved from Victoria to WA to be with family.
He made his name in the 1960s as a popular presenter of Melbourne radio station 3AK. 
TV-radio station manager Nigel Dick recruited him as a 16-year-old in 1963 in an effort to score publicity for the station that had just been taken over by GTV-9.
It proved successful with visually-impaired Grantley and his guide dog Penny becoming popular station personalities.

Rich radio history
Grantley Dee 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’.
By the following year he was one of the station’s top announbcers and had graduated to the ‘drivetime slot from 4pm-7pm, as well as regular weekend shifts.
Grantley Dee was a close child-hood mate of 3AW Overnighters host Keith McGowan, each of them living near Belmore Rd, Balwyn, in the late 1950s, and each having dreams of being radio DJs.

Accomplished singer
Grantley Dee was an accomplished singer, and during 1966, he was vocalist in a short-lived Melbourne-basedband called The Hurricanes.
He was signed to EMI’s subsidiary label HMV, for whom he recorded five singles, an EP and an LP.
His first (and best known) single was a creditable cover of Billy Bland’s 1960 hit Let The Little Girl Dance, which is also notable as an early example of an Aussie-rock single that was not sung in a mock-American accent.
As an aside, Grantley Dee’s single is now traded as a collectable at $75 a copy for the vinyl single.
Grantley’s next two singles during 1966 were a cover of  Bobby Rydell’s  Wild One, followedby the Johnny Burnette perennial You’re Sixteen.
Grantley Dee recorded two more singles in 1967, We Must Be Doing Something Right (with Little Pattie), and his final single for HMV, It Hurts Me.
His last release, Love Is A Happy Thing, was issued on Columbia in 1968.
He went on to host the radio station’s first all-night shift.

Music career
Grantley Dee went on to front his own band in the 1960s and 70s, and was vocalist in the Taurus band, and also perfomed with Rock Steady and The Henchmen in 1973.
He had indifferent health over recent years, but the dedicated Saints supporter had been a regular caller to the Overnighters radio program over the past 15 years.

Updated: Tuesday, February 8, 2005

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