Known as "the Otago Rambler," western singer Les Wilson began his career in his teens, singing live on the radio in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand. According to the chatty liner notes of his first album, Wilson soon found the pressures of show business to be onerous, and retired from his musical career for a few years, up until the outbreak of World War Two. Wilson served in the Air Force, was demobilized, and moved to the North Island upon his return, where he met his future wife, Jean Calder, in the coastal town of Gisborne. Like Wilson, she was an accomplished country music artist, having been in a western/hillbilly family act with her sister and playing professionally since the age of eleven. Calder and Wilson formed a new act, initially playing at military service clubs for other returning veterans, then gradually for a wider, national audience. Here's a quick look at their work...
Les Wilson (And Jean Calder) "The Otago Rambler" (His Master's Voice/HMV Records, 1957) (LP)
After meeting in 1945 Wilson and Calder formed a musical duo got married, and landed a recording contract with HMV. They cut a string of 78s dating back at least as far as 1950, with those singles most likely making up the bulk of the tracks on these old 10" LPs. Notably, Calder and Wilson stuck pretty closely to sentimental western repertoire that stuck to the musical style and subject matter of American cowboy music, and rarely dipped into the kind of regionally-themed lyrics favored by many early kiwi and Aussie country artists. The exception here is "The Wahine Song," a Hawaiian-themed love song which became one of his best-known hits, and later inspired a disaster ballad about the sinking of a ferry boat called The Wahine, which was the biggest maritime accident in New Zealand's history, causing over fifty deaths. (For details, see below).
Les Wilson & Jean Calder "Rambling With Les And Jean" (His Master's Voice/HMV Records, 1958) (LP)
More of Calder and Wilson's 1950s singles are gathered here on their second ten-inch LP. Though there's still plenty of ridin'-down-the-trail western material, there's also an uptick in more modern country material, including postwar honkytonk tunes such as "The Mother Of A Honky Tonk Girl" and "Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw," from Hank Williams. They also cover Hank Snow ("A Garden Of Roses") and the Gordon Parsons novelty classic, "A Pub With No Beer," both as a straight cover and in the answer song, "Answer To The Pub With No Beer. Most of these tracks were reissued on the Jasmine Records CD (below) though two were not, possibly due to sound quality: "Down The Trail Of Aching Hearts" and "Dusty And Mrs. Whittaker."
Les Wilson & Jean Calder "Death Of The Wahine" (Les Wilson Records, 1977) (LP)
Throughout the 1970s, Les Wilson ran his own private record label, releasing an unknown number of singles, which seem to be the source material of this late-decade LP. Wilson's inspiration for returning to the studio may have been the tragic 1968 sinking of the ferry boat Wahine, which sank in bad weather just off the coast of Wellington, on its way to Christchurch. The topic must have been a natural choice for Les Wilson, as one of his biggest early hits was the Hawaiian-themed "The Wahine Song," back in 1953, which he mentions in the liner notes, and covers here as "Wahine's Farewell." The rest of the album includes remakes of a few of his old western songs, as well as some newer, more contemporary-sounding country material.
1968
Les Wilson & Jean Calder "Sixteen Original Tracks" (Queensland Country Music, 1984-?) (LP)
The duo's legacy was in limbo for quite a while until the archival label, Queensland Country Music, embarked on a career to revive the memory of several older, and old-school Australian and New Zealand country artists. This LP hones in on Les Wilson's original material or at least the songs that were credited to him as composer, which includes all the tracks on here but one, with "Rock & Roll Yodelling Song" crediting him only as the arranger. Most of these tracks later resurfaced on the Jasmine Records collection below, but there's about a three-decade gap before that occurred.
Les Wilson & Jean Calder "The Otago Rambler" (Jasmine Records, 2020) (LP)
The bulk of Calder and Wilson's classic recordings for HMV are included on this generously-packaged, 26-song retrospective, which will probably remain the definitive Les Wilson collection for some time to come. The set is about evenly split between his solo numbers and a ton of duets, including almost all the songs from their first two LPs from 1957 and '58, as well as a bunch of songs that were apparently only released as singles. The Jasmine archivists caution potential buyers that the sound quality might not be great, as the original masters were made with "experimental facilities," and not in a proper, controlled studio environment... possibly on horseback while riding the Otago range, herding wild wallabies. Or not.
