Gray Bartlett
Musician
Born in Auckland in 1942, Gray Bartlett's first musical experience was at age fifteen after leaving Auckland Grammar School. One of his four brothers taught him to play the guitar and after answering a newspaper advertisement, he joined a band called The Phantoms. They played local dances and came runner-up in a radio competition called Have A Shot.
Gray was offered his first chance to record by Zodiac Records in 1961, and the result was a single Last Stage West. Tours followed over the following years and finally in 1965 the break came. He released a single La Player, which while charting moderately in New Zealand, was issued in Japan where it reached number two on their charts selling an unprecedented 410,000 copies.
In the late sixties Gray toured New Zealand with Tom Jones, Hermans Hermits, and Rolf Harris while also travelling to China where he has become a huge selling artist. With twelve concert tours of the country now completed the Chinese marketplace has loved his Kiwi style of music and his concerts have been screened to in excess of forty million viewers. Gray has thirty albums and twenty singles and has sold to date over a million units of his music worldwide.