Celebrating Slim Dusty

Slim Dusty was an Australian singer and songwriter who recorded over 100 albums and sold over seven million copies during a career spanning nearly seven decades. Today’s Doodle celebrates the Australian icon being awarded the Outstanding Achievement award at the ARIA music awards in 2000.

Born David Kirkpatrick in Kempsey, New South Wales, and raised on his family farm in nearby Nulla Nulla Creek, as a little boy he dreamed of being a country singer. At the age of 10, he wrote his very first song, “The Way the Cowboy Dies”, and at 11, decided his future name was to be “Slim Dusty”, much better suited to a singing cowboy.

At age 15, Slim made his first recording, paying for it himself. By sending his records to radio, and singing where he could get a hearing, he eventually signed a recording contract with Columbia Graphophone Records where he remained for the rest of his career. 

He left the farm to follow music as a full-time career in 1949, performing at venues, rodeos, local concerts and eventually, in 1954, taking the big step of setting out with his small family and at times other fellow singers to tour the Australian countryside over roads good and bad. This took him to every State and Territory in Australia on what eventually became his famous Round Australia tours covering by car and caravans at least 30,000 road miles across 10 months of the year. He continued writing, collecting and recording the songs that became known as Bush Ballads, musical histories of the people and places in the Australian bush, little towns and the outback of Australia.

In 1957, he released his recording of “A Pub with No Beer”, written by his mate, Gordon Parsons. It became the best-selling song recorded by an Australian, and Slim was awarded the first Gold Record presented in Australia.

In 1983, astronauts in the spaceship Columbia beamed Slim’s voice singing “Waltzing Matilda” to earth as they passed over Australia. Slim was the first singer to have his voice sent to earth from space. He performed the same song as the closing act of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

Slim Dusty won multiple Gold and Platinum record awards and 38 Golden Guitars. Amongst numerous awards, including being voted A National Treasure by the Australian public, Slim was one of the first inductions into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame. In tribute to Slim, The Royal Australian Mint issued a coin celebrating his life, and the Slim Dusty Centre and Museum in his hometown of Kempsey opened in 2015.

Photographed: Slim Dusty and Anne Kirkpatrick, from the Travellin’ Still…Always Will album photo shoot (2002).

Courtesy of EMI Music Australia.

Photographed: Slim Dusty from the Natural High album photo shoot.

Courtesy of the Estate of Slim Dusty. Photographer: John Elliott.

Photographed: Slim Dusty at the Carlton Hill Station Cattle Yard (Kimberley, WA).

Courtesy of the Estate of Slim Dusty. Photographer: John Elliott.

Special thanks to Slim Dusty’s family for their collaboration on this project. Below, his daughter, Anne Kirkpatrick, shares her thoughts on her father. 
 

I adored my dad. I was lucky and thankful to spend weeks and months with him touring all around Australia with the Slim Dusty Show as I was growing up. As I followed my own path in the music game, I’d still drop in on the family show like a bird flying home to the nest. The magic of his raw talent as a singer and performer had to be seen and heard to be believed and I still believe he has one of the most recognisable voices in Australia. I treasure the two duet albums we recorded together with the last in 2001 Travellin Still..Always Will, being the last full album he recorded.

He treasured a tattered book of Henry Lawson poems that he referred to as his ‘Bible of the Bush’, a precious birthday gift from my mother, Joy McKean, in 1952 during their first year of marriage. In later years he wrote in the front cover “All my dreams and ambitions are basically fulfilled”. That was the dream of an 11 year old kid to become Slim Dusty, a kid of immense raw talent and drive who met a kindred spirit in my mother. Together they made his dream come true. Our family is immensely proud of what he achieved. So many firsts! 

It’s a long way from Nulla Creek (near Kempsey in NSW) to be walking out with your guitar and singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. The list of awards and accolades is astonishing enough, however, perhaps more importantly, I saw how Slim Dusty and his music became woven into the fabric of people’s lives. His music lives on. 

He was happiest on the road touring with his band, collecting, writing and recording great songs and, in his downtime, going fishing! 

Slim Dusty was my dad, and while I shared much of him with Australia and thousands around the world, we wouldn’t have had it any other way.