Mike Harvey

Keyboard player, producer and arranger Mike Harvey has made a significant contribution to the great New Zealand soundtrack. Crusher - the instrumental track from his solo Great Expectations album - was used for a Lemon Paeroa advertisement and won Best Musical Score for TV Soundtrack at the CLIO International Awards in New York awards in New York in 1978. Harvey is oen of the few New Zealanders who have won two APRA Silver Scroll Awards, and between 1973 and 1977 he produced all the Silver Scroll winners. His double awards were for Jangles, Spangles & Banners which he wrote for Ray Columbus in 1973 and All Gone Away in 1977 which he wrote for his own group Salty Dogg, which featured wine connoisseur Vic Williams on drums and guitarist Martin Winch. He also produced and worked extensively with John Hanlon (2). He left to work in Australia in 1978 and continued his winning way writing an endless string of TV and radio commercials, soundtracks, before exhaustion and a heart attack stopped him in his tracks a few years back. Mike Harvey, was forced into semi-retirement but returned eventually to playing music and writing.