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Name | Slim Dusty |
---|---|
Background | solo_singer |
Birth name | David Gordon Kirkpatrick |
Born | June 13, 1927Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia |
Died | September 19, 2003Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
Instrument | Vocals, guitar |
Genre | Country |
Occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, record producer |
Years active | 1938–2003 |
Label | Regal Zonophone, EMI |
Influences | Jimmie Rodgers |
Url | www.slimdusty.com.au |
David Gordon "Slim Dusty" Kirkpatrick AO, MBE (13 June 1927—19 September 2003) was an Australian country music singer-songwriter. He was the first Australian to have a No. 1 Hit song (Pub With No Beer). He received an unequalled 37 Golden Guitar and two ARIA awards and was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and the Country Music Roll of Renown. At the time of his death at the age of 76, Dusty had been working on his 106th album for EMI Records. In 2007 his domestic record sales in Australia surpassed seven million.
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. McKean wrote several of Dusty's most popular songs, including: "Walk A Country Mile", "Indian Pacific", "Kelly's Offsider", "The Angel Of Goulburn Hill" and "The Biggest Disappointment". Although himself an accomplished writer of songs, Dusty had a number of other song writers 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 post-war 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 multi millions, after the 1950s, Dusty was rarely heard on-air outside regional centres in Australia.
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. Over the course of his career, he collected more gold and platinum albums than any other Australian artist. (The "Pub with No Beer" is a real place, in Taylors Arm, not far from Kempsey where Slim was born). 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.
1964 saw the establishment of the annual Slim Dusty Australia-round tour, a , journey that went on for ten months. This regular event was the subject of a feature film, The Slim Dusty Movie in 1984.
Dusty not only recorded songs written by himself and other fellow Australian performers, but also recorded 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. In 1970, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. 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 35 "Golden Guitars" over the years.
Slim Dusty and his wife were patrons of the National Truck Drivers' Memorial located at Tarcutta, New South Wales. The General Manager of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee invited him and his wife to perform in 1997, recognising 50 years contributing to Country Music. The following January, he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the entertainment industry.
Dusty recorded and released his one-hundredth album, Looking Forward, Looking Back in 2000. All 100 albums had been recorded with the same record label, EMI, making Dusty the very first music artist in the world to record 100 albums with the same label. He was then given the honour of singing Waltzing Matilda in the Closing Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, with the whole stadium singing along with him.
Thousands gathered at St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney on 26 September 2003 at a State Funeral attended by the Prime Minister and Opposition leader. Anglican Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen's tribute included leading the congregation of family, statesmen, fans and musicians in the singing of "A Pub With No Beer". The funeral featured tributes from Slim's children as well as words from other national music stars Peter Garrett, 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.
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
In 2005, a statue of the "Cunumulla 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. 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.
EMI Records' Australian sales of Slim Dusty records surpassed 7 million in 2007.
Category:1927 births Category:2003 deaths Category:ARIA Award winners Category:Australian country singers Category:Australian country singer-songwriters Category:Australian male singers Category:Australian people of Irish descent Category:Officers of the Order of Australia Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:People from New South Wales Category:ARIA Hall of Fame inductees Category:Australian country guitarists Category:Cancer deaths in New South Wales
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