More than any other genre, country music has championed the duet. Its history is dotted with duos either tailormade, brought together by marriage or combined for one-off recordings, from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, to Brooks & Dunn, to Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves.
The mega crossover smash ‘Islands In The Stream’ performed by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (written by the Bee Gees), went to No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, but only reached No.2 in New Zealand in 1984, where it was held off by another duo, Foster & Allen, and the saccharine ‘Maggie’. Parton’s big break was as a duet singer with Porter Wagoner on his TV show in the 60s; Rogers had already released two successful duets albums with Dottie West in the 70s, and toured New Zealand as early as 1973.
Other popular duet partnerships in American country were Johnny Cash and June Carter, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, The Bellamy Brothers, The Judds, and Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Waylon and Willie followed the first platinum-selling country LP Wanted! The Outlaws (a compilation) with the mostly duets album Waylon & Willie.
Tami Neilson with Willie Nelson, together on ‘Beyond The Stars’, written by Neilson and Delaney Davidson; Willie’s titfer by Hills Hats of Petone.
In New Zealand country music we have Les Wilson and Jean Calder, Danny McGirr and Patricia Lennon, and The Topp Twins. Delaney Davidson has released multiple duets albums with Marlon Williams and Barry Saunders, and in 2024 Jodi Vaughan and Aly Cook released a duets album as Sisters In Country called Down Under Girls.
Impresario Joe Brown knew the buying appeal of a duets LP. He had his main act John Hore (later known as John Grenell) record three of them: Together with Paul Walden, Take Ten with Howard Morrison, and We Should Be Together with Eddie Low.
Among the most successful New Zealand country music duets albums by New Zealanders are Bill & Boyd’s self-titled release of 1976, and Fairweather Friends by Brendan Dugan and Jodi Vaughan, released in 1982. Bill & Boyd spent 19 weeks on the New Zealand album chart, peaking at No.1. The unforgettable ‘Put Another Log On The Fire’ spent 20 weeks in the NZ Top 40 and peaked at No.5. Fairweather Friends got as high as No.15 on the album chart. Its first single, ‘No Fool Like An Old Fool’, peaked at No.12 and spent 10 weeks in the New Zealand Top 40.
After moving to Australia in 1987, Michael Roycroft recorded an album of duets with Jan Cooper called Good Friends, which won vocal duo or group of the year at the Golden Guitar Awards in Australia in 1992. Roycroft and Cooper first sang together at the NZ Country Music Star Awards in Tauranga in 1983.
Ritchie Pickett and I [Glen Moffatt] wrote ‘English Rose’ about a barmaid in Hamilton (before the death of Princess Diana), that we recorded as a duet on my CD A Place To Play. It hasn’t made this list of 10 random New Zealand country duets, but the songs that have range from the early 1950s to the 2020s.
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The Wahine Song – Les Wilson and Jean Calder
One of husband-and-wife duo Les Wilson and Jean Calder’s most popular songs, ‘The Wahine Song’ was also released by the pair as ‘The Wahine’s Farewell’. It was under the latter title that The Hickey Sisters released it in Australia.
Les Wilson and Jean Calder. - Ron Hayward Collection
The 1955 song expresses a parting of some kind, but it doesn’t reveal whether it’s temporary or otherwise. The protagonist says, “Take my heart, dear, and remember you’re a Māori.” She completely nails the sentiment with the refrain, “For you’ll never find another wahine like me.”
Younger brother of Cole Wilson of The Tumbleweeds, Les Wilson first appeared on stage at the age of nine, playing harmonica. He married Jean Calder in 1952, and they began singing together. Other popular songs from Les Wilson’s pen were ‘Rolling Wagons’, ‘Silver Wings’ and the oft-covered ‘Rockonover River’.
Look What You’ve Done – Ken Lemon and Kay Reilly
Ken Lemon’s career was in limbo when he was added to TV show The Country Touch in the late 1960s, often as a duet partner for Kay Reilly. With producer Ron Dalton leaving Viking Records to manage Maria Dallas, Lemon was left stranded with little prospect of recording for the label again.
While it seems Reilly never recorded, Lemon released A Slice Of Lemon for Zodiac in 1972. When the production went over budget, Eldred Stebbing refused to spend any money on promotion. Lemon more or less retired, popping up occasionally, including as a duet partner for Jodi Vaughan on ‘Rising Above It All’ from her 1986 LP Straight From The Heart.
In this excerpt from The Country Touch, Lemon and Reilly, who previously sang on the show with her brother Shane, perform ‘Look What You’ve Done’, a song written by Wes Farrell (co-writer of ‘Boys’ and ‘Hang On Sloopy’) and producer Bob Johnston, that was a hit for The Pozo-Seco Singers. Lemon’s bass-baritone was not unlike the Singers’ Don Williams, who went on to great solo success in the 1970s and 80s.
If I Needed You – Brendan Dugan and Jodi Vaughan
The second single from their platinum-selling 1982 duets album Fairweather Friends, ‘If I Needed You’ didn’t reach the Top 20 heights of its predecessor ‘No Fool Like An Old Fool’, but by then everybody had bought the LP and Brendan Dugan and Jodi Vaughan were weekly visitors to the lounge rooms of the nation on TV show That’s Country.
Dugan came to national prominence at the age of 16 when he won Studio One’s New Faces competition in 1968. He joined forces with guitarist Gray Bartlett in 1973, and they added Vaughan in 1976, a year after she arrived in the country from New South Wales. They have toured in New Zealand and overseas, appeared on TV and released music together or solo practically ever since.
Puzzlingly, Fairweather Friends and Dugan’s mid-1980s LPs aren’t available online, but in 1982, he and Vaughan performed ‘If I Needed You’ on That’s Country. Written by wild Texan troubadour Townes Van Zandt, it was a US Top 10 country hit for Emmylou Harris and Don Williams in 1981.
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Ritchie Pickett & The Inlaws
The Hank Williams tearjerker ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ was a late addition to Ritchie Pickett & The Inlaws’ Gone For Water sessions in 1984 after the band politely declined to record a couple of producer Ray Columbus’s originals. But it was Columbus who suggested making it a duet for Pickett and lead guitarist Dave Maybee.
Maybee had had to take off from the studio in Auckland to tend to sick daughter Tahi in Raglan. Filled with immense relief his daughter was now stable, he returned and reached deep into his soul to deliver a killer vocal. “I hadn't really heard the song before,” he told AudioCulture, “so didn’t really know it. However, emotionally and lyrically I felt very connected with the sentiment of it, so sang from the heart.”
A Hank Williams zealot, Pickett remains faithful to the tune, harmonising with himself in the opening verse, before a forlorn Maybee squeezes out every ounce of emotion he can, as he bends the melody of his own free will. A breathy, vibrato-heavy Pickett is back, then a brief Maybee reprise, and a double-tracked Pickett brings it home.
Where We Goin’ Mama – Michael-Roy Croft and Becky Hobbs
Michael Roycroft (then using the stage name Michael-Roy Croft) met Okie singer-songwriter Becky Hobbs in 1984 when she was a guest artist on That’s Country. After Roycroft’s joint EMI America-EMI New Zealand deal was put together for what would become Slow Burnin’, he and Ray Columbus flew to Nashville to select songs with Hobbs, producer Don Goodman, and Hobbs’s manager Rick Sanjek.
“Don had a couple and Becky had three or four,” Roycroft told AudioCulture. “‘Where We Goin’ Mama’ really appealed to me, and we were sitting in Don’s lounge and picked up the guitar, and Becky and I sang it together just like that. So, it was added to the list.”
After the rhythm section was recorded at Mandrill in Auckland, the lead instruments and vocals were cut at Young’un Sound in Nashville; Roycroft and Hobbs sang together in the booth. Written by Goodman, Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose, the song tells of a “little ask-a-lot-of-questions boy” who notices a man looking at his mum on a Greyhound bus journey. By the end of the ride, the trio decide to see where things might lead together.
Rockin’ With The Rhythm Of The Rain – The Toner Sisters
Quite probably the most joyous moment of the ill-fated TVNZ series Dixie Chicken – well, the episodes that have been unearthed since its fleeting 1987 run – was when the Toner Sisters ripped through ‘Rockin’ With The Rhythm Of The Rain’, a recent US country No.1 for The Judds.
The Toner family in their Napier home, 1980. Left to right: Adrienne (front), Evelyn, Lynne, Celine, Peter, Richard (front) and Jim.
Resplendent in satin pants and shirts, middle sister Celine and little sister Adrienne (at 17, the youngest of Jim and Evelyn Toner’s five children) are all personality as they turn on the charm for the cameras. Band members Bob Smith and Rob Winch are obviously having a ball too as they add chorus harmonies. At its conclusion, host Andy Anderson tries twice but still gets Celine’s name wrong.
Eldest sister Lynne and Celine both released albums on Music World in the 1980s before combining for the 1983 single ‘Crying In The Rain’ on CBS. All three Toner girls finally recorded together in the 2010s with the acoustic EP Full Circle, produced by themselves and Dave Maybee.
Nights In My Day – The Gypsy Pickers and John Grenell
Whenever New Zealand country music icon John Grenell got to sing ‘Nights In My Day’ with The Gypsy Pickers, he would tell its writer, Ron Valente, “You wrote that song for me.” A highlight of 1992’s The Gypsy Pickers And Friends, the song is a conversation between Grenell’s “worn-out honky tonk star” and Valente’s younger counterpart.
The Gypsy Pickers (Lindy and Ron Valente) paired with John Grenell to sing their song ‘Nights In My Day’.
The bar is closed, the older man laments about former sins and the greying of his hair, the laughter and tears, one-horse towns and broken-down saloons. A new night comes and they’re singing their songs again in another bar amid old stale beer and a barmaid from Hokitika. But you can bet they’ve had some nights in their day, they declare. It could well be the perfect country song.
Ron Valente arrived in New Zealand from the US in 1980 and gravitated to Grenell, living at and performing at his Whitecliffs property. It was at a Grenell show that Valente met Lindy Friend. They married and became The Gypsy Pickers. After Grenell passed away on 27 July 2022, The Gypsy Pickers added ‘Nights In My Day’ to their YouTube account, writing: “Farewell, old friend. We sure had some nights in our days together.”
Hey Heart – Camille and Stuie
Before their big move to Nashville, Tennessee, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resultant break-out success of The French Family Band through weekly livestreamed concerts from their lounge, Camille (Te Nahu) and Stuie French were raising a family and forging a career as a duo in Sydney, Australia.
Camille left her Gisborne home for Australia in 1999, toured the United States as Kasey Chambers’s backing singer, met guitarist Stuie French on a Troy Cassar-Daley gig, released a solo album, married Stuie in 2006, started a family, and by 2012 they were working on Big Days & Little Years, their fourth album together.
They wrote ‘Hey Heart’ on the eve of recording sessions after realising they didn’t have a duet for the record. A search through their extensive music collection brought no joy so they sat down and conjured up ‘Hey Heart’, recalling the early days of their romance.
Warrior Spirit – Jackie Bristow and Jason Kerrison
Artist manager Michelle Bakker inspired Jackie Bristow and Opshop frontman Jason Kerrison’s duet on Bristow’s ‘Warrior Spirit’ after bringing the two together for a show in Los Angeles in 2015. They enjoyed the occasion so much they laid the song down in LA.
In a press release from the time, Bristow revealed she had written the song while undertaking a solo US tour, playing shows in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. “‘Warrior Spirit’ is a song about finding your inner strength and drawing deep from your roots. It was a soulful and inspiring time in my life. I am thrilled to have recorded this song as a duet with Jason Kerrison, his voice soaring with joy and soul.”
Both hail from Southland: Bristow moved to Sydney in 1998 and later to LA, Austin, and Nashville, and Kerrison ventured to Auckland where he formed Opshop. ‘Warrior Spirit’ was produced by Bristow’s long-time collaborator and guitarist Mark Punch.
Beyond The Stars – Tami Neilson and Willie Nelson
Yes, that Willie Nelson – the “Red Headed Stranger”, a bloody music legend, let alone country legend. During the pandemic an online Texan music festival – during which Tami Neilson beamed in her performance via her phone from New Zealand – brought a new fan in the shape of Nelson’s wife Annie. A friendship grew.
When it came time to record her new album Kingmaker, Neilson asked if Willie would join her to duet on ‘Beyond The Stars’, a song she had written with Delaney Davidson in honour of their late fathers. Time was of the essence, and Neilson, her band and a nine-piece string section recorded the track in an appropriate key for Nelson before he’d even said yes.
Upon listening to the song, he did say yes and, due to border restrictions, recorded his vocal and guitar – his beaten-up Martin N-20 classical guitar named Trigger – in his Texas studio. At the Luck Reunion Festival in Texas in March 2022, Tami Neilson brought Willie Nelson onstage to sing ‘Beyond The Stars’ side by side; her tribute album Neilson Sings Nelson came out in 2024. In mid-2025 Neilson will be on the same bill as Nelson and Bob Dylan as part of the Outlaw Music Festival touring the US.
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