Slim Dusty

David Gordon Kirkpatrick was born on 13 June 1927 in Nulla Nulla Creek west of Kempsey, New South Wales, the son of a cattle farmer. His childhood home, "Homewood", survives and is now heritage-listed. He was known by his middle name, Gordon. He wrote his first song "The Way the Cowboy Dies" in 1937 and adopted the stage name "Slim Dusty" in 1938 at age 11.[2] His earliest musical influences included the American Jimmie Rodgers, New Zealander Tex Morton and Australia's own Buddy Williams. In 1945, Dusty wrote "When the Rain Tumbles Down in July" and released his first record that year at the age of 19. In 1946, he signed his first recording contract with Columbia Graphophone for the Regal Zonophone label.[3]

Statue of "The Cunnamulla Fella" erected as a tribute to songwriter Stan Coster and Slim Dusty

Slim Dusty's hit "A Pub With No Beer" was inspired by the Lees Hotel, Ingham.

In 1951, Dusty married singer-songwriter Joy McKean and, with her help, achieved great success around Australia. In 1954, the two launched a full-time business career, including the Slim Dusty Travelling Show. McKean was Dusty's wife and manager for over 50 years. Together the couple had two children, Anne Kirkpatrick and David Kirkpatrick who are also accomplished singer-songwriters.[4]

McKean wrote several of Dusty's most popular songs, including "Lights On The Hill", "Walk a Country Mile", "Indian Pacific", "Kelly's Offsider", "The Angel of Goulburn Hill" and "The Biggest Disappointment".[5]

Although himself an accomplished writer of songs, Dusty had a number of other songwriters, including Mack Cormack, Gordon Parsons, Stan Coster, and Kelly Dixon, who were typically short on formal education but big on personal experience of the Australian bush. Drawing on his travels and such writers over a span of decades, Dusty chronicled the story of a rapidly changing postwar Australian nation.

Nevertheless, the arrival of rock and roll music saw major metropolitan music radio stations abandon support for country artists, and despite record sales in the multimillions, after the 1950s, Dusty was rarely heard on-air outside regional centres in Australia.[6]

Dusty's 1957 hit "A Pub with No Beer" was the biggest-selling record by an Australian to that time, the first Australian single to go gold and the first and only 78 rpm record to be awarded a gold disc.[7] (The "Pub with No Beer" is a real place, in Taylors Arm, not far from Kempsey where Slim was born.)[8] In 1959 and 1960, Dutch and German cover versions of the song became number one hits (even evergreens) in Belgium, Austria and Germany, brought by the Flemish country singer-guitarist and amusement park founder Bobbejaan Schoepen.

In 1964 the annual Slim Dusty Australia-round tour, a 48,280 kilometres (30,000 mi) journey that went on for ten months, was started. This regular event was the subject of a feature film, The Slim Dusty Movie, in 1984.

Dusty recorded not only songs written by himself and other fellow Australian performers but also classic Australian poems by Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, with new tunes to call attention to the old "bush ballads". An example is "The Man from Snowy River" by Paterson. The 1980 album and songs The Man Who Steadies the Lead and The Pearl of Them All were the works of Paterson's rival for the title of Australia's bush balladeer, Scottish-Australian poet Will H. Ogilvie (1869–1963). In 1970, Dusty was made a member of the Order of the British Empire for services to music.[9] In 1973, he won Best Single at the inaugural Country Music Awards of Australia at the Tamworth Country Music Festival (McKean won Song of the Year as writer of "Lights on the Hill"). In all, he won a record 37 "Golden Guitars" over the years.

Dusty and his wife were patrons of the National Truck Drivers' Memorial located in Tarcutta, New South Wales.

The general manager of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, Bob Whitaker, invited Dusty and his wife to perform in 1997, recognising 50 years contributing to country music. The following January, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the entertainment industry.[10]

Dusty recorded and released his 100th album, Looking Forward, Looking Back, in 2000 and became the first artist in worldwide commercial recording history to do so; second was Cliff Richard. All 100 albums had been recorded with the same record label, EMI, making Dusty the first music artist in the world to record 100 albums with the same label.[11] He was then given the honour of singing "Waltzing Matilda" in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics, with the whole stadium (officially 114,714 in attendance, the largest in Olympic history) singing along with him.[12][13]

Dusty died at his home in St Ives, New South Wales, on 19 September 2003 at the age of 76 after a protracted battle with lung and kidney cancer.[14]

Thousands gathered at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, on 26 September 2003 at a state funeral attended by the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, and the federal opposition leader, Simon Crean. The Anglican Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen paid tribute by leading the congregation of family, statesmen, fans and musicians in the singing of "A Pub With No Beer". The funeral featured tributes from Dusty's children as well as words from other national musicians (Peter Garrett and John Williamson) and music from Graeme Connors, Kasey Chambers and Troy Cassar-Daley. Thousands of fans travelled from around Australia to stand outside the cathedral.[15] Dusty was cremated at Northern Suburbs Crematorium, Sydney.[16]

At the time of his death, Dusty had been working on his 106th album for EMI. The album, Columbia Lane – the Last Sessions, debuted at number five in the Australian album charts and number one on the country charts on 8 March 2004. It went gold after being on sale for less than two weeks.

Columbia Lane is a tribute to the laneway juxtaposed to Parramatta Road in Strathfield (near the railway bridge link), where the EMI studios once stood (now Kennards Hire), and it is where he traversed to begin his music career.

In 2004, Tamworth hosted the "Concert for Slim" as a memorial tribute featuring more than 30 Australian musical artists including Paul Kelly, Keith Urban, Lee Kernaghan and Kasey Chambers.[17]

In 2005, a statue of the "Cunnamulla Fella" was unveiled in Cunnamulla, Queensland, in tribute to Dusty and Stan Coster and to the iconic song of that name performed by Dusty with lyrics by Coster.[18] The song recalls Coster's days working as a sheep-shearing "ringer" around Cunnamulla in the 1950s. Dusty recorded the song and it became an enduring country music hit, later covered by Lee Kernaghan. The statue was unveiled by country music personalities Anne Kirkpatrick (Dusty's daughter), Jayne Kelly, and Tracy and Russell Coster.[19][20]

EMI Records' Australian sales of Dusty's records surpassed seven million in 2007.[21]

Slim Dusty was Australia's most successful and prolific musical artist, with more Gold and Platinum albums than any other Australian artist.[22] He was also:[11]

• The first Australian to receive a Gold Record.
• Made a Member of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer of the Order of Australia for services to entertainment.
• On 14 April 1981, on Space Shuttle Columbia's first mission, Dusty's rendition of "Waltzing Matilda" was broadcast to Earth.[23][24]
• The winner of an unequalled 45 Golden Guitar awards.
• One of the earliest members of Australian Roll of Renown.[25]
• The Royal Australian Mint issued a coin celebrating his life.[26]
• Dusty's image was featured on an Australia Post postage stamp.

• EMI Records' Australian sales of Slim Dusty records surpassed 7 million in 2007.[21]
• Dusty was a guest on the Wiggles' children DVD Wiggly Wiggly World.
• His daughter Anne Kirkpatrick is also an award-winning country singer.
• Dusty's life was the subject of a 1984 feature film: The Slim Dusty Movie
• The Slim Dusty Centre was built in Kempsey, NSW, Dusty's home town, and opened in October 2015.[33]
• The 2010 book 100 Best Australian Albums by Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O'Donnell ranked The Very Best of Slim Dusty as the 24th best Australian album of the previous 50 years.[34]
• Dusty had a Floribunda Rose named in his honour, which is a Golden Orange Coppery toned bloom, reminiscent of the Australian Outback, that he often wrote and sang about.
• "Pub With No Beer" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2008.
• "Flying with the King" by Lee Kernaghan is a song honouring Slim Dusty

• Slim Dusty discography

• Official website (includes a more thorough discography)
• Slim Dusty at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Slim Dusty Centre Project
• Listen to a clip from "Pub With No Beer" and read more about it on australianscreen online.