August 18, 2019
Blue Smoke still a cause for celebration
As celebrations continue for the 70th anniversary of the release of Blue Smoke, three of its creators are to be inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame at the 2019 APRA Silver Scroll Awards in October.
Ruru Karaitiana wrote the song while on a troopship leaving for war with the Māori Battalion.
In 1949 he recorded it for the new Tanza label, enlisting Pixie Williams as the singer and Jim Carter to play the distinctive lap steel parts.
Amelia Costello, Pixie's daughter, says even before it became the first song to be commercially recorded and pressed in New Zealand, Blue Smoke was known and loved as a reflection of people's experience leaving for war.
"It helped the boys on the battlefield because it was played at troop concerts and on battlefields and then when it came home it reminded people of their boys still there so it has so much depth to it and so much back story, I think that's why it has survived all these years and that's what we've got to celebrate," she says.
Jim Carter turned 100 in March this year, and lives in Nelson.
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