Slim Dusty

Slim Dusty is the most prolific and biggest selling recording artist in Australia, with more than 5 million of his recordings sold on the domestic market. In 2000 the 73-year-old Australian country music legend released his 100th album.

He was born David Gordon Kirpatrick in Kempsey NSW and spent most of his younger days at a dairy farm in Nulla Nulla Creek in the hills behind Kempsey. The first major influence on his career in music was his father, who liked to vocalise to the accompaniment of his fiddle playing when David was still a toddler. The event that changed his life forever took place when he was still ten, when Kirpatrick heard an aboriginal sing a song called 'The Drunkard's Child'. David was so fascinated, that same year he wrote his first song, 'The Way The Cowboy Died'. At age 11 he decided to rename himself Slim Dusty.

In 1942, a "seasoned performer" of 15, Slim talked his way into the studios of the local radio station, 2KM in Kempsey, and at his own expense recorded two songs 'Song For The Aussies' and 'My Final Song'. He became a regular performer on 2KM and in 1945, still living in Nulla Nulla Creek, he wrote his first classic, 'When The Rain Tumbles Down In July'.

In November 1946 at the Columbia Studios in the Sydney suburb of Homebush Slim recorded the six tracks which would be released as his first three 78rpm singles on EMI's Regal Zonophone label, starting with 'When The Rain Tumbles Down In July'. By now he had a part-time career in show business, as an intermittent radio performer, playing in music halls and tent shows. In 1952 he married country performer and songwriter Joy McKean.

Recording consistently over the past ten plus years, midway through 1957 Slim Dusty's records started appearing as 45s on the Columbia label. In April of that same year Slim was scheduled to record four more songs, but only three had been chosen. At the time Slim was travelling with Gordon Parsons who was singing a song he'd written based on a poem by Dan Shean. Needing that extra song, Slim asked Gordon if he could record his song, thinking it would make a good B-side for a song called 'Saddle Boy'. Gordon Parsons had no problem with that. It was no big deal. 'A Pub With No Beer' was just a novelty song.

Months later while Slim was working in outback Queensland Slim was told that the B-side of his latest single had made the pop charts in Brisbane, and as the months rolled on 'A Pub With No Beer' became the first-ever Australian-made single to reach the national No.1 spot. The record went on to reach No.3 in England, and also sold well in the USA. For a long time it was the biggest selling single in Australian music.

From then on the Slim Dusty career was assured. Unmistakable in his workman's hat with the turned down brim, Slim remains the kind of country music performer America laments having lost. He's someone who, throughout his 100 album career, continues to sing songs about the Australian landscape and the people who occupy it, someone who continues to tour the length and breadth of the land as he's always done.

In 1969 Slim toured New Zealand for the first time, with the Hamilton Country Bluegrass Band. They encouraged him to record wife Joy's song 'Lights On The Hill'. Until now Slim had seen himself as a bush balladeer, an entertainer. This was a song with a lot of words, with a strong story to tell. In 1980, 22 years after his first national No.1 hit, Slim went to the top again, ironically with another novelty drinking song, 'Duncan', but it is in fact songs like 'Lights On The Hill' which have endeared Slim to the people who still buy his records 100 albums later. One of the songwriters who has been welcomed into Slim's repertoire in more recent years is former Cold Chisel Don Walker. Don wrote the title track to Slim's 100th album, 'Looking Forward Looking Back'.

Over the years Slim Dusty won every accolade possible, from Tamworth Music Awards Golden Guitars to his MBE. In September 2000, he was one of the Australian performers featured in the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. Slim was given the job of singing Australia's unofficial national anthem, 'Waltzin' Matilda'. No-one else would have been as appropriate. He died on September 19, 2003 after a long and private battle with cancer and was awarded a state funeral.