Michael Roycroft

aka Michael-Roy Croft


A shrewd business acumen ensured Auckland country music balladeer Michael Roycroft made every achievement count – winning awards, releasing albums, performing in Nashville – and used them as stepping stones to propel his career forward.

But it also stopped Roycroft from dedicating himself to a life in music, therefore protecting him from the vagaries of trying to eke out a living as a recording artist. He ran businesses of his own at the same time as releasing albums in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The B-side of Michael-Roy Croft’s joint EMI New Zealand and EMI America, Nashville, single.
Backstage on the Go New Zealand Tour, 1985. Left to right (looking at camera), Paddy Long, Michael Roycroft, Midge Marsden, Bruce Morley. 
Photo credit: Charmaine Pickett collection
Recording the Slow Burnin’ album at Young’un Sound in Nashville, 1985. Left to right, Ron “Snake” Reynolds, Michael Roycroft, Don Goodman, Tim Field.
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft inducted into the Hands of Fame in Tamworth, 1992
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft's debut album Holding Things Together, released on RCA in 1984.
Michael Roycroft at the Nashville Fan Fair in 1985
Charlie Daniels and Michael Roycroft at the Nashville Fan Fair, 1985
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
The Cosmic Cowboys, 1988. Left to right, Alwyn Aurisch, Michael Roycroft, Robbie Brown. 
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft and his daughter, Raebekah, a songwriter and recording artist in her own right, 2000
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft winning the Waihi College Art Shield competition in 1966
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft and Jan Cooper circa 1991
Slow Burnin’ was a joint project between EMI America’s Nashville office and EMI New Zealand, released in 1985. The woman on the cover is Roycroft’s wife Debra.
An RCA promo shot having adopted the stage name Michael-Roy Croft, 1984
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
The Harrington Ford And Associates Go New Zealand Tour in full swing, early 1985. Back, left to right, Andrew Kimber, Kevin Coleman, Bruce Morley, Sid Limbert, Paddy Long, Bob Paris. Front, left to right, Midge Marsden, Suzanne Prentice, Ritchie Pickett (at piano), Tom Sharplin, Michael Roycroft, The Yandall Sisters – Mary, Adele, Pauline.
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft and Murray Hawkes at Waihi, 1964
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft and Jan Cooper's Good Friends, released 1991
Ned Hunt and Michael Roycroft playing at a wedding at Tahuna, 1967
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft and Charlie Daniels shaking hands at the Nashville Fan Fair in 1985
A 1984 promo shot from the management company Harrington Ford And Associates
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Golden Guitar winners at Tamworth, 1992. Jan Cooper and Michael Roycroft for vocal duo or group of the year, Whangarei-born Keith Urban for male vocalist of the year and instrumentalist of the year.
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Gold Guitar Awards in Gore, mid-1980s. Left to right, Noel Burns, Suzanne Prentice, George Hamilton IV, Oklahoma singer-songwriter Becky Hobbs, Paul Walden, Michael Roycroft. Hobbs sang a duet with Roycroft on the 1985 album Slow Burnin’.
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
A Bay of Plenty Times photo from August 1985 when Nashville songwriter-producer Don Goodman (right) was in New Zealand to produce Michael Roycroft’s EMI America-EMI New Zealand album. Roycroft is poised with pen and notebook as Ritchie Pickett and daughter Jordan watch on.
Michael Roycroft and Jan Cooper, early 1990s
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
An early 1990s promo shot of Michael Roycroft
Photo credit: Michael Roycroft collection
Michael Roycroft's autograph to the writer from the Go New Zealand Tour program March 1985
Photo credit: Glen Moffatt collection
Trivia:

Michael Roycroft finally met his boyhood idol John Hore Grenell when Grenell was touring his Jim Reeves tribute show with Eddie Low on the Gold Coast in the 1990s. Also in the audience was another of Roycroft’s favourites, Paul Walden, and the four men partied after the show. As a boy, Roycroft had made his mother’s friends cry with his rendition of Walden’s ‘Molly’.

The drummer and assistant producer on Roycroft’s Slow Burnin’ album, Milton Sledge, went on to play on many albums by country superstar Garth Brooks.

The bass player in Roycroft’s mid-1970s band Pocket Edition, Huru Rakete, was the father of future actor, TVNZ personality and radio announcer Robert Rakete.

Credited as Micky Roy, Roycroft was part of the infamous Te Teko Phone Box Choir that provided backing vocals on the 1984 Ritchie Pickett & The Inlaws LP Gone For Water.

Labels:

RCA


EMI

Funded by

Partners with