Renee Geyer, Little Pattie, Margaret RoadKnight get lifetime achievement gongs at AWMAs

Renée Geyer, Little Pattie and Margret RoadKnight are the first Lifetime Achievement recipients of the inaugural Australian Women in Music Awards (AWMAs).

They will be lauded as part of the awards, held on Wednesday, October 10 at Brisbane Powerhouse.

The gong was initially to recognise one outstanding identity, from the field of recording and/or live performance during her lifetime.

But AWMAs’ director Vicki Gordon says that it didn’t quite work out that way.

“Our jury council could not separate these extraordinary women and decided to acknowledge all three!” she says.

“All were nominated by the public and then peer-voted in the jury process.

“Patricia, Renée and Margret represent everything the AWMAs are about: the diversity and recognition of women in Australian music, each a true pioneer in her own right.”

All three will be attending the event to personally receive their awards.

Geyer, a respected soul and R&B singer, was fronting her own band in the ‘70s and making a statement with a hit cover of James Brown’s It’s A Man’s World in 1974.

Her other hits include Heading In The Right Direction, Say I Love You and Stares and Whispers.

During a stint in Los Angeles in the 1980s, she was a sought after session singer for Sting, Neil Diamond, Jackson Brown, Joe Cocker, Chaka Khan and Buddy Guy.

Geyer returned to Melbourne in the 1990s and released her frank life story, Confessions Of A Difficult Woman in 1999.

Patricia ‘Little Pattie’ Amphlett began performing at surf club dances on Sydney’s southern beaches and released her debut single, He’s My Blonde Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy in 1963, aged 14.

At 17, she became the youngest Australian entertainer to perform in Vietnam and 1972 took part in the famous Labor Party ‘It’s time’ advertising campaign.

Amphlett served on the Council of the Australian War Memorial, was the national president of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, served on the federal executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and vice-president of Actors’ Equity.

She is a music teacher, mentor and AWMA patron.

Emerging in the 1960s folk scene, RoadKnight’s signature song, Girls In Our Town explored the isolation of young Australian married women living in suburbia and made it into the charts.

Her styles spanned jazz, blues, folk, cabaret and gospel.

In the 1970s, not only was she a lightning rod for the feminist activist movement and a pioneer of social justice and gender equity issues, she was one of the first Australian female artists to produce her own records.