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Phil Gifford on the mysterious footnote in New Zealand’s music history ddd. PHOTO / FFFF
Whatever happened to pop idol
RON N I E? R
onnie Sundin was a Kiwi pop idol. His debut single, Sea Of Love, was a massive hit. He sang to 20,000 people at Western Springs. There was a sell-out national tour in 1960, during which ecstatic fans ripped his clothes. One even wrenched a shoe off his foot and ran into the night. At the end of that year Sundin turned 17. Then he disappeared. For six decades he lurked in my mind. In the summer of 1959-60, when I was 13, I’d watched him sing at a packed-out Waihi Beach soundshell. I’d seen live shows before, but this was different. Teenage girls crowded the rim of the low-set stage and called out “We love you Ronnie!” How did a household name, as he was for a heady 12 months, become the most mysterious footnote in New Zealand pop music? Last year I made contact with him by phone and text. But to my genuine regret, between Covid-19 and his heart problems, we never managed to meet faceto-face, and he passed away on May 19 this year. In the months since he died, I’ve spoken with his family members, old bandmates and a neighbour who became a rugby league legend. A melancholy tale of the sad pitfalls when a school kid becomes an overnight sensation emerged. Ronnie was a fifth former at Avondale College, just 15, when on September 9, 1959, he recorded the single that would, in his older brother Nils’ words, “basically ruin his life”. Until then music had been a joy — and there
was a lot of it in the neighbourhood. The Sundins lived at 114 O’Donnell Avenue, Mt Roskill. Across the road at 113 was Wilfred Jeffs, better known by his stage name, Bill Sevesi, the king of the then-thriving Auckland dancehall circuit. The Sundin boys’ mother, Clara Elizabeth Cocker, was the daughter of a wealthy British trader, Robert, and Mele Tu’ifonualava from Pangai, once the seat of the Tongan monarchy. In Nuku’alofa Clara met and married Ron Sundin, an Australian managing the local branch of the powerful Sydney trading company, Burns
Philp. They had three sons, Bill, Nils, and baby Ronnie, born on December 18, 1943. The boys were still toddlers when the family moved to Auckland for father Ron to take a job with Fisher & Paykel. As a teenager, Nils put together a skiffle group, the Glow Worms, which was evolving into a pop band. “We were practising in Mum’s lounge one day. Bill Sevesi used to listen to us, and we played at the Orange Hall in his breaks. We won Have A Shot twice on ZB. Bill asked Dad if he could borrow Ronnie for a Town Hall concert because the English singer he’d had, Vince Callaher, had gone back to Britain. “Dad said he could have Ronnie as long as he sang Waltzing Matilda. Dad was a true-blue Aussie. He reckoned he could see Australia if he went to the right beach in Auckland.” The concert was a huge success, and the next step would change everything for the sweet-voiced school kid. Auckland record producer Ron Dalton had just come back from a trip to Britain with a copy of Sea Of Love, a song written and recorded by a rhythm and blues singer from Lake Charles, Louisiana, Phil Phillips. The original hadn’t been released here. Backed by Sevesi’s band, using the name Will Jess and His Jesters, Dalton recorded Sea Of Love with Ronnie, backed by an up-tempo version of Waltzing Matilda. Sundin’s single, released on the local Viking label, was the biggest-selling New
