Johnny O’Keefe 1935-1978

By 1970 O’Keefe began to reappear in the record charts. In 1973 he appeared before an initially hostile audience of 35,000 hippies at a Sunbury rock festival, and eventually won them over. The year 1974 brought him his last major Top Ten hit – ‘Mockingbird’, a duet with Margaret McLaren. Later that year he assembled a show package called The Good Old Days of Rock ’n’ Roll, featuring his old friends Johnny Devlin, Lonnie Lee, Barry Stanton, Jade Hurley, Tony Brady and Laurel Lea. It premiered at St George’s Leagues Club in August 1974 and played to packed houses all over Australia. In October 1975 Johnny O’Keefe was honoured on This is Your Life. He was also instrumental in establishing the entertainment industry’s annual ‘Mo’ Awards, and chaired the steering committee.  

O’Keefe’s idol, Elvis Presley, died in August 1977. His fans organised a granite memorial in Melbourne General Cemetery, which O’Keefe unveiled a few months later. The Good Old Days of Rock ’n’ Roll was still going strong when O’Keefe himself died of a drug overdose in Sydney on 6 October 1978. He was only 43.

O’Keefe’s enormous legacy of recordings has been transferred to CD. His daughter, Vicky, who was 17 when her father died, has developed into a charismatic popular vocalist, and continues to sing many of her father’s old hits. His nephew, Andrew, is a familiar television personality. 

‘My act is not an act,’ Johnny O’Keefe had said. ‘It’s me. I’m the sort of guy who is what he sings.’ It was undoubtedly this inherent honesty, this ingenuousness, that endeared him to his thousands of fans, and that has helped keep his legend alive. Equally important was his gutsy determination to succeed, to show that an Australian performer could command star status in his own country. His achievements have paved the way for the performers who have followed.

His memory has been honoured in two biographies; in the 1986 TV mini-series Shout! The Story of Johnny O’Keefe, with Terry Serio in the title role; in his selection as a foundation inductee of the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1988; in Real Wild Child, a tribute exhibition at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum in 1994; and in Shout! – The Legend of the Wild One, a major new musical by John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow, presented by Kevin Jacobsen Entertainment and the Victorian Arts Centre from December 2000. David Campbell played O’Keefe. 'The musical will be remounted at the Arts Centre in January 2008.

In 2004 a statue of O’Keefe by Alex Sandor Kolozsy was unveiled at Coolangatta–Tweed Heads Twin Towns Services Club.

Two of O’Keefe’s flashy stage outfits are preserved in the Powerhouse Museum. One is a bright yellow shawl-collared jacket and trousers, trimmed with black velvet and diamantes; the other is a bright red suit with a leopard-print velvet trim. It was reputedly made by O’Keefe’s mother, Thelma.

Frank Van Straten, 2007