Whilst through the years the name Lonnie Lee is synonymous with Pop Music, many do not know just how much his career has touched the country music genre.

This association with the country starts well before his birth in fact. In 1908 his grandfather Laurie, settled in the far North West area of NSW after spending several years in the goldfields of Western Australia and Northern Territory.

He met and married a young girl from the Murrurundi area and in 1910 built their homestead which they named 'Bleak House'; after the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Laurie was a friend of Dicken's son who had settled in Moree. There they produced high grade Merino wool for the world market.

They raised a family of 3 boys of which the middle son David was to become Lonnie's father.

On September 18 in 1940 David and his wife Nancy became the proud parents of a baby boy whom they named David Laurence after his father and grandfather.

Both his parents played the piano and sang and this natural talent was to be passed on to the next generation.

Young Laurie was raised on the property until it was school time and he was sent off to Trinity Grammar School in Strathfield and Summer Hill and he later went on to Crows Next Technical College to learn some tradesman arts which it was assumed he would need when working on the property. Previously his father had attended university in Sydney to gain his Mechanical and Electrical Engineer Degrees so appreciation of this knowledge was highly regarded.

Most of his school holidays he would travel overnight by the 'North West Mail' train the 20 plus hours to either Narrabri or the siding at Rowena where he would be picked up and taken by car to the property. Typically everyone was a very early riser and listening to the radio in the early mornings is where he would get his first taste of country music. Not just from the stations 2NZ Inverell, 2DU Dubbo and 2VM Moree, but from many US radio stations via the short wave radio which they'd listen to most nights.

Whilst he appreciated the talents of the very few Australian country stars of the time such as Tex Morton, as a youngster he was drawn to the more sophisticated and beat driven America styles of country music like Webb Pierce, Left Frizzell and Hank Williams sang.

As fate had it, many years later he would become friends with Tex Morton, Webb Pierce and Lefty Frizzell's son Ricky.

He was taught piano but wanted to play a stringed instrument so bought and taught himself to play a ukulele. This gave him more freedom to learn the country songs he listened to. When he was 15 he decided to buy and teach himself guitar which he did, just as the world on music was about to explode with the new music to be called Rock'n'Roll. Up until this time the early 50's style of pop had gained popularity on radio and like most teenagers of the time took to the singing styles of Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine and Nat King Cole.

As the time went on he gravitated more to the country style of Rock'n'Roll which mostly came out of Nashville and is today what we call Rockabilly. This is where he found the music closest to his heart and which features today in his shows.

In 1956 he entered a radio 2UW Amateur Hour with the legendary radio announcer Alan Toohey and became the very first to sings a Rockabilly and Elvis song on Australian radio. Just a couple of months before, RCA had released 'Heartbreak Hotel' by the new singer with the funny 'Elvis' name and this is what he sang. His success on the show led to his first bookings as a singer and little did anyone know, one of the longest successful singing careers in Australia had begun.

In February 1957 was talked into entering a competition run by the MGM film studios to help promote Elvis' first movie 'Love me Tender'. At that time was Elvis was not known very much and the movie needed as much publicity as possible.

He was the last to go on stage and after the audience voted him as the winner, he sang every one of the 8 Elvis songs he knew. He became know as 'Australia's Elvis Presley' and the full page story in the Sydney Sunday Sun became the first major story about a local Rock'nRoll singer.

During this time he was still singing and playing country music with his friends who were all only into country music and he decided to form a country rockabilly combo using some of these friends. His first combo in March 1957 was with Billy Mostyn on lead guitar and Kenny Hands on Hawaiian steel with Lonnie on rhythm guitar. Kenny had to leave the band after a few weeks so his brother Barry who was a banjo player joined. The band was called 'Laurie Rix and The Blue Cats'. (Years later, he used one of these friends such as Kenny Kitching, on his HMV album 'A Country Boy at Heart'). The new single 'My Rockabilly Band' is a story about the band.

Lonnie decided a slap bass sound was better than a banjo, and as no one in Australia had started using an upright bass as a country slap instrument yet, they built one out of a T-Chest, broom and string.

They mostly sang country songs with any rockabilly songs they could get their hands on.

This was arguably the first real Rockabilly combo in Australia.

The Australian super Blues group of the 1970's 'Chain' call him 'The Father of Australian Rockabilly' and have written a tribute song to him for their album. The song, 'Saturday Night at the Trocadero watching Lonnie Lee', depicts ones desire to be back in time in the 50's watching Lonnie Lee perform.

They performed at many places in and around Sydney with country stars of the time, Bill Kelly, Tim and Tom McNamara, Reg Lindsay, George Payne and many others but it wasn't until June 1957 that he took a 6 month engagement at the Riverview Hotel in Tempe 6 nights a week and Saturday afternoons.

Because Billy Mostyn couldn't be available for so much time, Lonnie replaced him with the Canadian Hillbilly Country Music star of yesteryear, Smilin' Billy Blinkhorn. Billy had first come to Australia in the early 30's to perform at the Tivoli with another hillbilly country singer Bob Dyer of Tennessee. Both of them decided to stay and everyone knows how popular Bob Dyer became on radio.

The shows were very popular but as the 16 year old Lonnie was still working in the bank during the day, doing shows every night of the week took their toll. One day in December 1957 he was driving to work when he lost control of his 1938 Dodge car going down a hill. Incredibly he saw what was going to happen so jumped into the back seat where his guitar was and the car hit a telegraph pole at the bottom of the street breaking it in two. The motor was pushed into the front seat and if he didn't get into the back, would have been crushed to death.

When his father heard of the crash he ordered Lonnie back to the country property where he stayed for the whole of 1958.

1958 was the year Rock'n'Roll started in Australia as it was the year Johnny O'keefe became the first Aussie Rock'n'Roller to record, The first year Lee Gordon brought American stars to the Stadium and Festival Halls, and the year TV started to shows bits and pieces of the new Rock'n'Roll stars.

Country music had its very small following in Sydney with radio 2KY leading the charge with the Reg Lindsay Show and the McKeon Sisters being amongst the most popular. Slim Dusty, Rick and Thel, Tex Morton, Buddy Williams and the like, criss crossed the Australian outback non stop without hardly touching a capital city.

While he was working on the property Lonnie kept up his singing and writing and sang at local shows in places like Rowena, Collarenebri, Walgett and Narrabri. Frank Burke and his famous White Rose to his Orchestra even offered him to be a Special Guest on a yearly tour. He declined as the music style was not to his liking.

In late December 1958 he returned to Sydney and within a few weeks had started another band. Over the next few months they played at many places adding fans with every appearance. By mid 1959 he had a fan club and was on his way to performing on Australia's first Rock'n'Roll TV show, Six O'clock Rock and recording his first record for Leedon Records. From now on his career would slant towards to the new pop music yet most everything he recorded had a country-rockabilly feel to it. Over the period 1959 to 1964 he had 8 #1 Records, 5 Gold and a bag full of awards and accolades. He was one of Australia's 3 top Super Stars of that first era having more hits here than Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry or Jerry Lee Lewis.

In 1964 the English music invasion had started and radio was starting to play that style of music rather than what they had been playing the previous 5 years. Lonnie went back to his roots and released some country style songs. Unfortunately as country music was not played in the city and country radio mainly played Australia bush ballad style of country music, Lonnie's efforts were in vain.

Meanwhile, the executives at EMI Records were thinking of how they could get a popular music star, record some country songs and try and break country into the city radio markets. They decided to offer Lonnie a contract to record on the HMV label which he accepted and for the next few years he recorded in the country and rockabilly style. His album, 'A Country Boy at Heart', was the first full stereo album to be recorded in Australia. It was recorded with The Leemen of the time at the large EMI Studious at 301 Castlereagh street and it was engineered by Bill Armstrong who later went on to be the Bee Gees engineer.

As well as the album, he wrote and recorded several singles, but unfortunately the city was not ready to play country music even if it was recorded by a well known pop star, and country radio was not ready to play modern US style country or rockabilly in its country programs.

Lonnie was 30 years too early for both these scenarios to seriously take place in major city Australia.

After this strong effort to get country music accepted in the cites failed, Lonnie decided to leave Australia for the European cabaret circuits where he stayed for a few years. Even then he would always feature his favourite country songs in the shows.