Legendary ‘godfather’ of country music
Pat Dugan
musician b August 20, 1926 d January 18, 2020
It was about the performance for country music legend Pat Dugan – telling a story on the stage. ‘‘He was a lover of songs that people could relate to,’’ his student, Peter Cairns, said. ‘‘Getting that expression in that song, how to bring the story out in the song rather than just singing it.’’
Dugan was known as ‘‘the Godfather of country music’’ and was nationally recognised as a legendary teacher and performer. He died peacefully in Christchurch on January 18, aged 93.
Patrick Joseph Dugan, who was born in Canterbury in 1926, attributed his enthusiasm for music to his time at Villa Maria College.
As one of the last boys at the school, he was coached as a boy soprano and touted as the boy with the ‘‘golden voice’’.
At age 11, he was noticed singing at the school Christmas concert.
‘‘In the audience was a lady [radio personality] Grace Greene,’’ Dugan told RNZ in 2014.
‘‘I sang those two songs and she invited me to do shows on the broadcaster 3ZB. That was the first broadcast, when I was 11 years old.’’
But, at 14, in the middle of a concert, he reached for a high note and found an unfamiliar sound. His voice had broken.
‘‘It was bloody awful,’’ he said in a 2014 Stuff interview. He quit singing for two years, before starting to sing Irish music and soon took up country.
Dugan never owned a guitar – he started learning on someone else’s but stopped. Instead, he took up the drums.
A farmer by trade, Dugan taught young musicians and performed ‘‘as a hobby’’. He didn’t charge for anything except line dancing lessons.
‘‘Through one or two people that I had got to know in the music circle, they suggested him as a good person to go to,’’ Cairns said.
‘‘He was very big on teaching performance in a song – when it came to competition stuff, that really was a big thing in terms of giving you that extra advantage.’’
Dugan left school at 15 to start a cabinet-making apprenticeship, but the dust aggravated his asthma and he gave up the role.
Several jobs followed: warehouse worker, carpet factory machinist, ploughman (including winning several ploughing championships), agricultural contractor, transport operator, and real estate salesman.
Dugan met the love of his life, Coral, while working at a carpet factory in Upper Riccarton and they married in 1950. ‘‘I was on one of the machines making carpet and Pat was the overseer,’’ Coral told RNZ in 2014.
Dugan said it was ‘‘exactly’’ love at first sight.
‘‘I was introduced to her on a lie by some young guy . . . that she had said she recognised a bit of all right, and she hadn’t opened her trap at all. My chest stuck out a mile and I’d thought, ‘I’ll follow this one up’.’’
The couple had three children, Kevin, Annette and Brendan, who is an acclaimed Kiwi country music star in his own right.
‘‘They were very, very supportive parents, they really were,’’ Brendan said.
‘‘We played music together, we went to all the dancing competitions together as kids, the sports days, every Christmas we used to camp at Caroline Bay – it was just a wonderful way to live.’’
Brendan was given a guitar for his 11th birthday and was soon obsessed. ‘‘My sister and myself basically followed in Dad’s footsteps,’’ Brendan said.
Dugan was proud to be recognised for his achievements – he received a Queen’s Service Medal for services to country music and was inducted, with Brendan, into the Hands of Fame in Gore.
One of his most memorable gongs was at the national Country Music Awards in Hamilton in 2014.
‘‘Brendan and I had done a couple of broadcasts, they asked us to open,’’ Dugan told RNZ in 2014. He wasn’t expecting to win the Legend Award.
‘‘I stood there absolutely staggered, my knees wobbled. I had to go walk on stage. I walked past Brendan – he had a big grin on his face. As I walked past him he said, ‘Gotcha’.
‘‘They asked me to speak and they handed me the microphone and for the first time in my life, nothing happened, I couldn’t get a word out.’’
Dugan played at the Old Timers Christmas Party at the Hornby Working Men’s Club (now the Hornby Club) almost every year since 1957.
Christchurch musician Allan Barron, known locally as the frontman for Remedy, said Dugan was like a father figure to him.
‘‘It wasn’t intentional – I gravitated towards him because he was that sort of person, undisputed head of our type of music in Christchurch.
‘‘He could see the potential in young people even before the young people themselves saw it.’’
In August last year, Dugan told Stuff his life was ‘‘like [a] lovely old song’’.
He is survived by his wife Coral, their three children, eight grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.