The name change seemed to work as Rusty Greaves went on to a long recording career on RCA, Zodiac, Mascot, Viking and Crescent, appeared on stage with legends such as Hank Snow and George Jones and headlined seasons at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles and the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas.

As well known for his storytelling as his singing and yodelling, he was in demand as a compere in New Zealand and overseas and worked tirelessly for all manner of charities.

With the radio in the cowshed tuned to a short-wave country-and-western station from Australia, Greaves was introduced to bushman ballads, American western songs and the art of yodelling.

Born Trevor Francis Greaves in Hamilton on August 25, 1931, his early years were spent on a farm at the foothills of the Ruahine Ranges and he started singing in plays in primary school at Papatawa, just outside Woodville.

With the radio in the cowshed tuned to a short-wave country-and-western station from Australia, Greaves was introduced to bushman ballads, American western songs and the art of yodelling.

Run-ins with a bad-tempered horse and an angry bull saw him endure two lengthy stays in hospital where he attended night classes to catch up on high school missed while working on the farm.

“After I was smashed up by a wild bull, we moved to Middlemore, where I was patched up and later did the rounds of the local lodges, singing and yodelling with my dad,” Greaves told Mal Finlayson of NZ Country Music Magazine in 1993. “We were a big success because no-one had heard this sort of stuff before.”

In his teens, he came under the influence of George Tollerton who changed his name to Rusty Greaves and booked him all over New Zealand. He made his radio debut on Radio 1YA in 1947 and a year later made his first recordings, ‘The Overlander Trail’ and ‘Australian Bushman’, direct to acetate for Noel Peach at Astor Records.

“The recordings made by myself and others like Tex Morton at this time were not sold in New Zealand but overseas,” Greaves told NZ Country Music Magazine. “Tex found this out by accident.”

Greaves became a qualified carpenter while employed at the railway workshops in Auckland and was quite a handyman. He once built a boat in his lounge but had to remove the frame of the French doors when the completed boat was too big to fit through. Another time he reconditioned a V8 engine on the family’s kitchen table.

He and his wife, Gladys, founded one of New Zealand’s earliest country music clubs in Pakuranga in 1958 and operated the Auckland Country Music Club in Newmarket for 23 years, fostering the young talent coming through. Greaves almost single-handedly rebuilt the top floor of the building after it was gutted by fire.

In 1960 he cut his first record, ‘Muleskinner Blues’, for Zodiac, which was followed in 1963 by ‘She Taught Me To Yodel’.

In the late 1950s, he appeared on television in the first live show broadcast in New Zealand – on the Bell Radio-Television Corporation – and in 1960 he cut his first record, ‘Muleskinner Blues’, for Zodiac, which was followed in 1963 by ‘She Taught Me To Yodel’. He spent 23 years with Zodiac, releasing numerous singles and EPs.

When Phil Warren bought Fullers from George Tollerton in 1959, he instantly found Greaves could work anywhere with any group, under any conditions. One afternoon he hosted Jerry Lee Lewis at the Auckland Country Music Club and he, Lewis and Warren were still jamming at seven the next morning.

During the 1960s, Greaves performed and compered on touring shows by The Howard Morrison Quartet, Lou and Simon, Peter Posa, Bill & Boyd and The Chicks, for promoters Benny Levin and Joe Brown. But he refused to sign a contract with Brown. “I saw how that tied up John Hore (Grenell) for ten years,” he said in 1993. “It meant that John got more work and guaranteed recording, but I didn’t want to be owned by anyone.”

Greaves was part of the New Zealand leg of an American Country Music Association UNICEF tour that also took in Australia and Japan in 1972 to aid the children of Bangladesh. The tour featured American stars Leroy Van Dyke, Connie Smith and Tex Ritter, who invited Greaves to appear on the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and to sit on the board of the Country Music Association.

The success led to a spot on Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree radio show.

The crowd at the Ryman gave Greaves an unheard-of four standing ovations for ‘She Taught Me To Yodel’ and prompted Ritter to declare, “I have travelled all over this world, but this little guy from New Zealand is the ace of all yodellers I have ever heard.”

The success led to a spot on Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree radio show, concerts with Ritter and Hank Snow, a tour of the major military bases in the United States and headline seasons at the Palomino, the Golden Nugget and Canada’s biggest country nightclub, the Horseshoe Club.

Back in the Southern Hemisphere, he toured alongside Tex Morton, Buddy Williams and Shorty Ranger and worked in circus shows in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. He appeared on New Zealand television shows The Country Touch and That’s Country.

In 1976 Rusty Greaves was awarded the Benny Award for lifetime achievement by the Variety Artists Club of New Zealand.

He continued to perform throughout New Zealand until his death on Waitangi Day 1998, at the age of 66. His 14 children all sing, and son Kevin Greaves was based in Nashville for more than a decade from the mid-1990s.