Country Music in Australia – its roots & branches.
Country Music in Australia is related to the old bush songs, although you wouldn’t believe it if you turned on your radio today. Early country music here was born of amateur hour broadcasts, travelling tent shows and the success of early radio.
Distant cousin to the old bush songs, the original country music songs, if the performers weren’t singing about the ‘Rolling Blue Hill of Kentucky’, were about Australia’s outback, dogs, horses and mother. They were mostly sentimental songs similar to American radio hit songs. In some cases, the same American hits were re-recorded here with a slight Australian accent and then played on popular radio.
In the following pages, you will find the story of the early days of country music and information on some of its star performers.
Country Music in Australia
AUSTRALIA AND ITS TRADITIONAL MUSIC – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
CONTEMPORARY COUNTRY MUSIC
Contemporary country music tries hard to provide itself with an Australian stamp but usually not as successfully as the Country Music Association of Australia (CMAA) would probably like. I say this with some knowledge of the artists and the association. In many cases young people have come to this music as an entertainment and it not from a cultural root. Singers and musicians tend to sing in American accents although not necessarily consciously. Most would deny that they have such an influence but even Blind Freddie can hear it.
The songwriters still find it difficult not to introduce Americanisms in their words, also probably unconsciously. This is a sad reflection of a music that does try to define itself as Australian. I have a problem with country music as it never seems to ring true to any tradition. I acknowledge it has some cultural root however it simply isn’t true to its own tradition. A listen to old timey and bluegrass roots music will show a different tradition. That said, I do appreciate country music as a way of maintaining the sung story and, apart from the tear-jerking, truck-driving and yankee-fied variety, I can appreciate the value. I guess I like my songs more open-faced.
One of the most widely known early country songs was popularised (and written by) by Gordon Parsons and, later, by Slim Dusty.
THE PUB WITH NO BEER
It’s lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there’s nothin’ so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
Now the publican’s anxious for the quota to come
There’s a faraway look on the face of the bum
The maid’s gone all cranky and the cook’s acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer
The stockman rides up with his dry, dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar, pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
When the barman says suddenly: “The pub’s got no beer!”
There’s a dog on the verandah, for his master he waits
But the boss is inside drinking wine with his mates
He hurries for cover and he cringes in fear
It’s no place for a dog round a pub with no beer
Then in comes the swagman, all covered with flies
He throws down his roll, wipes the sweat from his eyes
But when he is told he says, “What’s this I hear?
I’ve trudged fifty flamin’ miles to a pub with no beer!”
Old Billy, the blacksmith, the first time in his life
Has gone home cold sober to his darling wife
He walks in the kitchen; she says: “You’re early, me dear”
Then he breaks down and he tells her that the pub’s got no beer
It’s lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there’s nothin’ so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
There is a parody of this song on my ABC CD ‘Larrikins, Louts & Layabouts’ titled ‘The Pub With No Dike’. A dike being slang for toilet.
For information on country music – CMAA visit www.cmaa.com.au
COUNTRY & WESTERN
Yes, C&W was what ‘country music’ was called before it got all sophisticated! It was greatly affected by the music performed on feature films and cowboy serials known as ‘westerns’. In the 1940s and 50s, before rock and roll took over, it was a regular feature of Australian radio.
Queenie & David Kaili play ‘When It’s Springtime in the Rockies’ 1920s
AUSTRALIAN HILLBILLY MUSIC: 1926-1933
The original term “hill billy” (later “hillbilly”) was a fairly common expression in the United States of America from about 1900 onwards, as a description for a native of the Ozark Mountains.
Some historians believe that Ralph Peer, a pioneer field recordist (and later music publisher) was the person responsible for coining the name “hill billy” as a description for rural music, now termed Country Music.
In January 1925 Peer recorded a group of musicians led by Al Hopkins, who told Peer that his band had no official name and were just a bunch of hill billies from Carolina. Peer chose to issue these sides as ‘by The Hill Billies’. Thus the term was born and within a year or so it had become accepted as a description of the music itself.
The first major hill billy music influences in Australia included Vernon Dalhart, The Carter Family, Carson Robison, Frank Crumit, Frank Luther, and Jimmie Rodgers. The first recordings by Rodgers appeared in the 1929 Australian Zonophone catalogue. He became the idol of Tex Morton who pioneered local country recordings, starting in February 1936. With the birth of the Australian disc recording industry in 1925/26 it was not unusual that cover versions of overseas rural music started to be recorded in Sydney.
P.C. SPOUSE Percival Claude Spouse was born at Lauriston, near Kyneton, in Victoria, on 3/10/1885. He died at Manly NSW: on 7/9/1970, aged 84. Spouse rose to fame in 1925 when he commenced winning national mouth organ championships in a range of competitions, which attracted many musicians and huge audiences.
Percy C Spouse plays ‘The Prisoner’s Song’ 1920s
Between 1926-1936 he visited the Columbia Sydney studio on seven occasions, recording 23 sides of which 20 were commercially issued. He is regarded as the best known and most talented of Australia’s early mouth organists. He was greatly admired by composer Alfred Hill who suggested the mouth organ be called the ‘Australian Pipes’ as he considered it Australia’s national instrument.
MAYO HUNTER A talented stringed instrumentalist, of whom little is known. He was heard on the wireless from both 2FC and 2BL during 1927-1933 and teamed up with ‘Gladys’ as Hawaiian Entertainers for vaudeville appearances in Sydney in 1928. Hunter recorded 9 titles for Columbia in Sydney during 1926-1928, using both Hawaiian and steel guitar, of “which six sides were made available to the public.
Mayo Hunter sings/plays ‘My Blue Heaven’ 1926-28
Mayo Hunter plays ‘Honolulu March’ 1920s
HARRY CASH A colourful and distinctive entertainer whose career has yet to be traced by musicologists. It has been suggested that he may have been South African. Another theory is that Cash was either a black person or worked in blackface along the lines of Al Jolson.
Harry Cash sings ‘The Black Yodel’ 1920s
During at least four years on the Australian variety circuit from 1925-1928 he was billed as ‘The Black Laughter King’ or The Black Laugh’. The possibility exists that he was the first Australian aboriginal entertainer co be recorded. We do know that he only made one recording on which both sides highlighted his energetic yodelling.
LEN MAURICE Leonard Arthur Maurice (or Morris) recorded his country songs as Art Leonard. He was born on 10 March, c. 1900 and died c, 1952 (aged 52 years). Maurice enjoyed a long and varied career, commencing in the theatre, and then working as a radio announcer in the 1930s with 2GR and 2UW.
Len Maurice sings The Prune Song
Len Maurice sings Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister?
Len Maurice sings The Face on the Bar-room Floor
His main claim to fame revolves around the long period during which he was the main studio recording artist for the Columbia Graphophone Company, Homebush, Sydney. Between 1926-1933 he recorded prolifically, using the pseudonym Art Leonard for many of the country-associated songs he waxed for Regal-Zonophone and Columbia. After the war his career declined and he took up managing hotels. Prior to his radio and recording career Len Maurice (working as Leonard Morris) gained extensive stage experience, working the Tivoli and Fullers circuits as well as being a member of J.C. Williamson’s Grand Opera Company in 1919/1920.
FREDDIE WITT An American; came to Australia in 1919 for vaudeville work; returned to USA in 1919, then back to Australia permanently in 1924. Joined 2KY as record librarian about 1933, graduating to program manager in the 1940s, Recorded with The Melody Men (1943) and made duets with his old vaudeville colleague Mike Connors (of ABC breakfast program tame) in the late 1940s. Freddie Witt was also a member of The Big Four vocal quartet and prior to his radio career spent some twenty years on the variety stage, working the Fullers Theatres and appearing at the Sydney Tivoli,
Freddie Witt and Len Maurice sing ‘They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree’ 1920s
THE TWO BARNSTORMERS Vic. Massey, violinist (born c. 1893, died 24/11/1957 (age 64), a well-known professional musician in Sydney; and Thomas (Tom) Stevenson (born Glasgow, 1901), guitar. Stevenson settled in Australia in 1927 after spending his childhood in New Zealand. Had a long stint with Jim Davidson’s orchestra in the 1930s, playing guitar, banjo, trombone and drums. The Hill-Billy Singers: Identity never revealed, but probably Len Maurice &. Freddie Win.
SHIRLEY THOMS will be remembered by her many fans as the first female solo recording artist in Australian Country Music. The only female artist to record earlier was Sister Dorrie (Dorothy Ricketts) but all her work on record was with Tex Morton in duet. Shirley was also the first Queenslander ever on record. The late Arch Kerr, who fathered so much of Australia’s vintage Country Music, supervised the session. She was taken to the Sydney recording studio by Bundaberg (Qld) businessman Bill Cook, who saw great potential in her vocal artistry and nurtured her management at the very start. In this retrospective article I am grateful for Hedley Charles, Tasmanian historian, for his 1962 article on the subject from the Garth Gibson edited Country and Western Spotlight, number 37.
Shirley was born in sunny Queensland, at Toowoomba on January 12, 1925. The earliest years of her life were spent on her parent’s sugar farm near Bundaberg. She was one of a large (by today’s standards) family, having three sisters and three brothers. After she left school, she made her first public appearance, when, at tender age of 15, she entered and was successful in winning The Amateur Trials, aired from 4BU Bundaberg.
After this early success, Shirley continued with her singing and began composing her own songs. She later won a second radio series of Amateur Trials, this time from one of the largest radio stations in Brisbane — 4BC. On this occasion she sang a typically Swiss number, Mocking Bird Yodel. Following this success she journeyed to Sydney, NSW, to have an audition with Australia’s larges recording company, Columbia Record Co. After a successful audition, her first records were released on the Regal Zonophone label. At this time she was 16 years old. As her records were successfully received by the public, Shirley continued to compose numerous songs of Australian life as she saw it, while travelling the various states of the nation.
The earliest tours were of NSW and Victoria with Sorlies famous travelling show. When this tour concluded she returned to Sydney to cut a further series for Regal Zonophone. An interesting feature of her recording career was that the greater number of songs she recorded came from her own pen and featured an art that in the 40s was almost extinct, that of a female singer successfully yodelling. Those of you who have records by Shirley will be well aware of this. With the outbreak of World War II, Shirley joined an Australian army entertainment unit giving concerts to various members of the forces seven nights a week. Included in the course of her concert tours at this time was a trip to Darwin in the Northern Territory. After the war ended she was again on tour, taking in areas West Queensland and NSW and as a great lover of this land and its people, two of her most popular numbers were recorded, Rodeo In The West and Australia, Land Of My Dreams. Following Vernon’s Variety Revue. A leisurely tour of South Australia and Victoria followed and after this me Vernon’s returned to their home in America. Shirley also went across the water to New Zealand, where she joined Sole Bros Circus with which she made a tour of the North Island. Time did not permit a tour to the South Island. It was on this tour that Shirley met her husband-to-be, John Sole. At the completion of her tour she returned to Australia to continue her singing career. There was one print album of her songs published in Australia in 1947 by Davis & Co, the music publisher headquartered in Sydney. In 1952 her last recordings were made in Sydney for the Australian Record Co. released on the Rodeo label. On these discs she was accompanied by one of Australia’s leading piano-accordionists Herbie Marks. After these records were released Shirley decided to hang up her guitar and retire from the active world of Country Music to settle down in her native State of sunny Queensland. However, life offered not ease, but a little pain, as in 1958 her husband passed away following a severe illness.
Shirley told Hedley Charles that the yodel she so often used on her records was claimed by her grandfather to be hereditary, as he was born and spent his early years in a town on the border of Switzerland and Germany.
Shirley’s returned to recording in August 1970 when Eric and Hilary Scott, co- partners in Hadley Records, persuaded her back to a recording Studio. It was an absence of nearly 20 years away from the microphone. The return to recording followed Shirley’s renewed interest in music and show business again.
In the early part of 1970, Max Ellis put together the 2TM Australian Centenary Show on the Tamworth Town Hall stage. It was a gathering of the clan. The pioneer artists of Country Music came together with the great songwriters. Many had never been on the same stage before in their respective careers. Shirley Thorns was amongst them and her reappearance was a highlight of the Tamworth megashow. Eric Scott’s immediate impression of the recording session was how easy Shirley was to work with. “Everyone loved working with her. “I know it’s fashionable to say those things but in this case it really was true! “Those sessions of original recording we did with her exuded a superb rapport between artist and musicians. “She was taken with Bob Dark as a musician like you wouldn’t believe.” The Hadley/Thoms sessions contain some very distinctive Bob Dark guitar style. Eric sums up his impression of Shirley at Hadley: “She was a very special sort of person. “On the one hand feet firmly on the ground, on the other hand also a dreamer. “Always placid, yes, but ever- ready to pass on a positive musical opinion but never forceful”. Eric got the decided impression Shirley had itchy feet for the footlights and the microphone all over again. “As I recall, she came along with a fist full of songs and we had to whittle them down to the dozen on each album.” It was a highly successful comeback. Hadley followed that return to the studio by leasing the Shirley Thorns 78s from both EMI and CBS vaults. CBS handled material Shirley had recorded on the Rodeo label. This recycling produced three compilation album packages for Hadley. There were two albums of Hadley original recordings. “This gave us her entire recorded repertoire, available once again,” Hadley’s Eric Scott recalls. “Those titles are still in the catalogue too.” She was elevated to the Australasian Country Music Roll Of Renown in 1980.
There was one brief Shirley Thorns reappearance on record in 1985. That was a one-track overdub in tribute to Buddy Williams which came out through RCA on the Nichols ‘n’ Dimes label. Shirley sang Over Hilltop And Hollow with the Williams’ original for the commemorative concept developed by Barry Forrester and Nev Nichols.
BOB DYER, billed as “The Last of me Hillbillies”, first came to Australia in 1937 with an American revue called The Marcus Show. He later settled here, initially dividing his time between the variety stage and radio. His radio quiz shows proved extremely popular, especially Pick-A-Box, which survived the transition to television and lasted until his retirement in 1971.
Bob Dyer sings ‘The Death of Willie’
I used to quiz myself silly on Bob Dyer’s Pick-A-Box. Firstly on radio and then on television, I would sit there concentrating with brows fixed, one hand on the imaginary buzzer and (hen spring for it if I knew the correct answer. I dreamt of being a contestant but, alas, I was destined to be just another of Bob Dyer’s ‘customers’ sprawled out on the carpet. Bob was a ‘fool’ in the good sense and it is easy to see how he travelled from vaudeville to the radio theatre stage and then to television. They (whoever ‘they’ were) always said that Bob Dyer was luckier than Jack Davey when it came to television but then. Jack always said that he had a ‘better face for radio’. My radio memories of Bob Dyer certainly included his hillbilly style of singing and especially (hose songs about ‘The Martins and The Coys’ and then television came along and it appeared that the song segments had been replaced by Bob and Dolly’s fishing escapades! Whatever the case, I am delighted to be able to present this unique recording from the early days of radio featuring one of the brightest stars. (Warren Fahey)
BOB DYER (1909-1984) arrived in Australia in 1937 as a brash and colourful 28-year-old hillbilly singer. By the time he retired from television on June 28, 1971, he was recognised as one of the most successful performers in our broadcasting history.
Robert Neal Dyer was born on May 22, 1909 in a small farmhouse, near Hansville in Tennessee, only a short distance from Nashville. This was hillbilly country and his father was an impoverished share farmer. Bob often commented that “all the Dyers had was a team of mules, a wagon and old furniture.”
The family grew maize and tobacco, with most of the maize going into the making of illicit liquor known as either ‘corn likker’, mountain dew or moonshine.
Young Robert Dyer went to about a dozen different schools, finishing up with two years at a High School in Nashville. Then at 17 he dropped out to go barnstorming round the country as a hillbilly singer and ukuleleist with various touring shows and in small-time vaudeville theatres. When no singing engagements were available, he washed dishes, drove a taxi and even fired boilers on a Mississippi showboat.
In 1932 he won a permanent spot with the Marcus Show, a big-time travelling vaudeville company. He worked up a routine of songs and patter and was billed as The Last Of The Hillbillies. This was still his act when he arrived with the Marcus Show in 1937 for an Australian tour. On stage he appeared in old-fashioned yellow lace-up boots and loud checked suit with trousers that did not reach his ankles. Perched on his head was a tiny hard-hitter hat.
His principal song was a mournful ditty which parodied the traditional hillbilly tearjerker. It was called “The Death Of Willie” and commemorated ‘our darlin’ blue-haired cockeyed boy … who never died so suddenly before’. Dyer played the harmonica and guitar as well as the ukulele and from the beginning was an instant hit with Australian audiences.
Critics praised Bob’s act and his £10 a week salary was increased. Radio 2UW in Sydney employed him to do 15 quarter- hour radio shows to help sell motor vehicles for car dealer, Bill Stack. The Last Of The Hillbillies was such a success in Australia that when the Marcus Show moved on he decided to stay for a while. After an engagement at the Regent Theatre, Melbourne, he toured the Ozone Theatre Chain in South Australia, which was followed by 10 weeks with Jim Davidson’s Orchestra on the ABC.
In 1938 Bob Dyer sailed for England to try his luck. While there he made his debut on BBC television and appeared on stage in London and the provinces. But English audiences were slow to warm to the extrovert, wisecracking American hillbilly. Despite a recording session for Columbia (February 1939), he decided to retrace his steps to the hills of Tennessee, where he rejoined his family in April 1939. He kept working round Nashville when out of the blue came a cable from Australia. The Tivoli Circuit wanted his services. Dyer couldn’t accept quickly enough. He soon found that Australian audiences still liked him and except for holiday trips he never returned to the United States. In July 1940 he opened in Melbourne with George Wallace in the “Crazy Show”. It was a big success and after a few months was transferred to Sydney. Several weeks later Dyer was running late for the show when he collided in the Tivoli stage door with ballet girl Dolly Mack who was sneaking out to buy ice creams for the girls (no one in the ballet was supposed to leave the theatre during a show). The impact with the 6’3”, 17 stone hillbilly sent Dolly Mack sprawling. Bob apologised and bought ice creams for the whole ballet. Nine days later Bob proposed to Dolly and they were married nine days after she accepted. The newly-weds had a one-day honeymoon at Surfers Paradise prior to appearing in a new show at the Cremorne Theatre in Brisbane. Altogether Dyer did 10 seasons with the Tivoli Circuit and from 1941 was appearing in a weekly radio show in Sydney and Melbourne as a hillbilly singer. His reputation was being established.
A duodenal ulcer kept Dyer from enlisting in the services, but he helped the war effort in many ways, including appearances in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. His entertainment troupe consisted of Dolly and several other dancing girls, three musicians, a juggler, a magician and of course the last of the hillbillies as the singer and master of ceremonies. Their Australian and American audiences ranged from 12,000 troops to single hospital wards. They slept only when they were flying between engagements. Often Dyer and his unit performed for front-line troops while knowing that Japanese snipers were operating in the area.
On returning to Australia Bob Dyer continued on stage and radio until 1944. Then he dropped the theatre and began packaging radio shows, which were sold to sponsors by his own company. After almost 20 years as a hillbilly singer, he decided to hang up his bridle and concentrate on the wireless. His reputation expanded nationally through many radio programs circulated throughout the country on 16” diameter disc recordings. These included the Bob Dyer Variety Show, It Pays To Be Funny, Country Store and, in 1946, Can You Take It? Bob’s trademark became his raucous greeting “Howdy customers”. All the while, Dyer was competing with Jack Davey, firmly established as the most popular of all radio personalities. A pseudo feud developed between them in the manner of the Jack Benny-Fred Allen radio battles in the USA. Davey called Dyer “one of Australia’s worst dressed men” whilst Dyer would tell contestants on his show that the booby prize was Jack Davey. Once, with a straight face. Dyer confided to listeners that in reality he and Davey were great friends. “There’s nothing we would not do for each other,” he said. Then came the crack: “In fact, we go through life doing nothing for each other.” It was to keep up his ratings against the rival Davey shows that Dyer in 1946 began a series of outrageous publicity stunts. A classic example was his Can You Take It? show in which he dared someone in the studio to do something unexpected and then come back the next week to tell listeners what had happened. In the first show he offered a male contestant £50 to dress as a woman and push a pram and baby up Pitt Street, Sydney, during the lunch-time rush period. When attempted the stunt caused a major traffic hold-up with trams banked up for miles either way. Dyer was fined £2 for ‘procuring, aiding and abetting the commission of a public nuisance’. The story was front page news and made the newsreels. Undaunted at the £2 penalty (!), Dyer then challenged a man in his studio audience to walk along Bondi Beach in a woman’s bikini swimsuit. The contestant agreed if Dyer would accompany him similarly clad. The following Sunday 100,000 people turned up to watch. Bob’s ratings went through the roof. In 1948 Bob Dyer, assisted by Dolly, started his quiz show Pick-A-Box. It was an instant success and in 1957 he switched it to television. Aided by the discovery of the brilliantly knowledgeable Barry Jones – subsequently long-term Labor Government minister — Dyer built up what he claimed was the largest television audience per head of capita in the world.
The man who had started out in Australia as a vaudeville hillbilly singerhad ended up as the giant of Australian television. He was enormously wealthy although he never revealed his earnings. By Dyer’s wish the curtain came down on “Pick-A-Box” on June 28, 1971.
He and Dolly retired to Queensland where they pursued their passion for big game fishing at which the Dyers together broke 38 world records. With the death of Bob Dyer on January 9, 1984 (age 74) millions of his ‘customers’ mourned and an era of Australian show business history ended. Thankfully, eleven commercial 78rpm sides from 1939-1940 (two in London and nine in Sydney) were preserved of his hill billy singing.
TEX MORTON I knew Tex Morton fairly well in his later life when he would regularly call on me after recording his annoyingly successful ‘Where d’ya get it!’ commercials. He was well and truly a legend and I was in awe of his personality and ability as a storyteller. There was none finer or more elusive and, as they often said, Tex never allowed the truth to get in the way of a good yarn! His fondest memories were for his radio years’ for not only did they take him ‘electronically’ all over Australia but they also guaranteed that the ‘house full’ sign would be placed on the door of his live shows.
Much has been written about Tex Morton and his way with a song or a monologue (not to mention stockwhips, magic and hypnotism!). All was true and in listening to Tex singing and yodelling there is a real magic because he lived to entertain. His singing style appears to have borrowed from all over and is all the better for it. His songs beg you to follow the story, be it a tragic or sentimental tale or a rib-cracking novelty song. I know I used to hang on every word as he took me droving, sheep shearing, chasing bushrangers and waving at passing sundowners. He taught me that there was ‘no such person as an indispensable man’ and he made me cry at the story of faithful ‘Old Shep’. Good old values learnt from the wireless! (Warren Fahey).
The music on the early radio programs made by Tex Morton is testimony to the enormous impact American country music made on the Australian form. Surprisingly, there is virtually nothing of Australian origin in these shows, despite the fact that Morion had already written and recorded some Australian material. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, there was a steady influx of American hillbilly music into Australia, where it struck a responsive chord with local record buyers, especially those from rural areas. It is likely that much of Morton’s early repertoire stemmed from records he had heard, as well as songs he had learned from sailors on the wharves in Nelson, NZ – When The Cactus Is in Bloom and Hobo Bill acknowledge Morton’s debt to Jimmie Rodgers, America’s ‘Blue Yodeller’. Rodgers’ records made an immediate impact on Australians, and the basis of early Australian country music can be traced to his style. Rodgers wrote When The Cactus Is In Bloom and recorded it in 1931; the song was released in Australia in 1932. Morton recorded it for Columbia in 1941 (Regal-Zonophone G24394). Rodgers waxed the Waldo O’Neal song. Hobo Bill’s Last Ride, in 1930. It was released in Australia later that year. Morton possibly heard both these classics when he was a teenager in his hometown of Nelson.
BUDDY WILLIAMS was born Harold Taylor in September 1918 and became known as ‘The Yodelling Jackaroo’ in a career that saw him as a tent performer, recording star, songwriter and showman. He was born in Sydney and spent the first seven years at Glebe Orphanage. He was sent to a family at Dorrigo, NSW, where he developed his love of hill billy music. Two days after his 21st birthday Buddy made his first recordings for Regal Zonophone. His popularity soared and he recorded extensively for EMI and RCA. He died in 1986. His most popular songs include The Overlander Trail, Waiting For A Train, Where the White Faced Cattle Roam and The Lonely Boundary Rider.
SMOKY DAWSON. Most Australians of the mid 1950s grew up with Smoky Dawson. He started at us from the back of cereal boxes every morning, he was in the Sunday comics and, of course, he was there nearly every time we turned on the wireless. He was a typical ‘cowboy’ singer.
“I am fiercely proud of Australia and its people.” Herbert ‘Smoky’ Dawson wrote in 1985. “I like to think of myself as an old-fashioned troubadour trying to preserve a feeling of the Australian past in word, pictures and songs. My long rugged trail of experience has seen the light of joy and shadow of sorrow.”
Smoky was born in 1913 in rural Victoria and came to music during the harsh days of the Great depression, after being forced to lay aside competitive cycling due to a heart condition. Around 1933 he took guitar lessons from Rudy Wayne and his Honolulu Boys and, with his brother Ted Dawson, formed the Coral Island Boys.
In the 90s I produced a retrospective of Smoky’s songs from his Festival catalogue. These notes are being written in 2006 and I note that Smoky released yet another album – last year!
STAN COSTER. Best known as a songwriter Coster was born May 27, 1930, in Casino, NSW and died, March 25, 1997, at Manilla, NSW.
Stan wrote 161 titles, from age 25 in 1956 to the end of his life. Stan introduced his writing to Slim Dusty at Longreach, Queensland. Slim’s first recording of a Coster composition was in January 1962 – Return Of The Stockman. In 1978, record producer and Opal label owner Ross Murphy convinced Stan he ought to record his own material and my larrikin Entertainment distributed these releases.
Coster the writer/singer also released This Old Land, a 1983 album for the Nulla label. He had a minor airplay hit with his musical version of the Henry Lawson story of The Loaded Dog.
Stan appeared along with Buddy Williams, Gordon Parsons and Brian Young at a Sydney ‘Legends’ concert produced by Warren Fahey at the Balmain ‘Three Weeds’ hotel.
BRIAN YOUNG. Brian is renowned as Australia’s classic bush balladeer who tours his country music show extensively through regional and outback areas of Australia. After travelling the rodeo circuit, Brian started his singing career in 1959 when he toured with Rick & Thel. As a solo recording artist, he first recorded with W&G and has since released a number of EPs and albums. He won the Heritage Award at the 1991Country Music Awards and is regularly a finalist. (ACMF). Larrikin distributed all of Brian’s LPs and tapes.
REG LINDSAY. One of the pioneers of Australian country music, Reg Lindsay was making a comeback in 1995 when he suffered an aneurism. In his career, Reg won three Golden Guitars, was awarded an OAM (for services to music), had his own top-rating nationally-syndicated TV and radio programs, written more than 500 songs and toured all over Australia. Reg also had success in the USA with his own brand of Australian country music. Four of his biggest hits were Armstrong, July You’re A Woman, Silence On The Line and Empty Arms Hotel. He was inducted into the Hands of Fame in 1977. In tandem with his busy musical career, and his wife Ros, Reg held a very strong association with Australian rodeo. Reg Lindsay was the first Australian to appear at the world famous Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, USA in 1974. Although he was accused by die-hards as ‘selling out his music to the American country sound’ he was truly unique and probably our best country voice. In his later years he recorded for the Larrikin label. His Rouseabout record offers his early work including some songwriting.
GORDON PARSONS. Known affectionately as ‘Old GP’ Gordon Parsons was an accomplished songwriter. Born in 1926 and raised in far north coast town of Belligen, he first came to attention on the hugely popular Amateur Hour radio program. He recorded for EMI in 1946 and embarked on national country touring ad variety shows.
He is best known for writing the Slim Dusty hit A Pub With No Beer. Gordon Parsons. “The Yodeling Bushman” died in 1990.
SLIM DUSTY. Much has been written about Slim Dusty as one of the landmarks of Australian country music. Anyone who witnessed a ive Dusty performance will testify to the man’s charismatic stage manner (and his shy off stage persona). Warren Fahey complied and wrote the 5-CD Slim Dusty box set issued by EMI to celebrate the artists 100th album recording release.
CHAD MORGAN. Born Chadwick William Morgan in Wondai. Queensland, Chad was another discovery of Australia’s Amateur Hour. After recording for EMI in 1952, he toured extensively with a number of shows including the Slim Dusty Show, the All Star Western Show and his own Chad Morgan Show.
Chad’s songs, like The Fatal Wedding, The Duckinwilla Dance and My Own Grandpa, are classics of Australian country comedy. After leaving EMI Chad released his albums on the Larrikin label. He is a unique performer.
Mention should also be made of Rick & Thel Cary, Ron Peters, Shorty Ranger, Tim McNamara, Joy & Heather McKean, Johnny Ashcroft, Rex Dallas, Roger Knox and Jimmy Little, amongst others, who pioneered Australia’s unique country sound.
DOWN THE OVERLANDER’S TRAIL.
THE EARLY DAYS OF COUNTRY MUSIC IN AUSTRALIA
At a time, country music ruled the Australian capital city radio airwaves. This was the 1940s and early 1950s when we didn’t feel as ‘musically pigeonholed’ as today. There was also a lot of ‘light classical’ music available but it was ‘country and western’, for that’s what it was called, that you heard when you tuned into the more popular stations. In some ways it was strange music and, more often than not, performed live in the studio – and sounded like it! A typical radio station ‘band’ would be comprised of piano accordion, harmonica, acoustic guitar and drums. A sound effects person was also ready to provide turning wagon wheels, clip-clop hooves and even the occasional cracking stockwhip. The songs were introduced in a congenial style reminiscent of homespun yarners fresh from the high hills of Montana. Much of the music was used for station breaks, interludes and to back spoken commercials. It had a ‘western’ sound familiar to anyone who had seen a Hollywood western film – for this is where ‘country and western’ got its name. Nowadays the music is universally known as ‘Country’ music and more likely to sing about trucks, city life and emotional heartbreak like D I V O R C E and vagabond husbands.
Country and Western accompanied quiz shows like Bob Dyer’s ‘Cop the Lot’, and for serials featuring heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, and then there were the crazy comedies like Willie Fennel’s ‘Life With Dexter’ and the famous ‘Bunkhouse Show’. Radio was far more music-based in those days and the talking heads, like Eric Baume, were only heard at special times. Now the reverse is true, and music is seen as incidental to everything else. Reg Lindsay once described the early days of Australian country music radio like this: “Radio stations didn’t have to have a committee to listen to the record, or a program manager to see if it fitted their format.”
The pioneer recording industry played an important role in popularising early country music and worked closely with radio performers. Local recordings were made of American C&W and novelty hits because there were government restrictions as to importing gramophone recordings and, of course, transportation by sea freight meant unbelievably long delays in getting the songs into the local market. These local recordings were known as ‘cover’ versions, and our earliest country pioneers were actually artists who recorded popular covers for the local radio and gramophone industries.
Radio talent shows, forerunners to today’s shows like Australia’s Got Talent attracted country artists including some who actually wrote their own material. Many of these artists, including the great Tex Morton, were part country artist and part vaudeville. Some, like Bob Dyer, were complete showmen from the vaudeville circuit.
Undoubtedly, Australians carried an innocent cultural cringe throughout much of the nineteenth century. We had been born primarily of an Anglo-Celtic background where we had been led to believe we were ‘colonials’ and certainly not British like the British! We were gawky hayseeds from Down Under. Maybe this had something to do with our convict birth, maybe something to do with the large Irish population and maybe it was simply that we were still struggling to find our identity. In many ways, we found that identity on the frontlines of WW1 and WW2 but it was also evident on the 1850s goldfields where men of every background came together to seek their fortune in a hostile land where we needed to be fair dinkum, true blue and Aussies. It was also where our ethos of mateship was born – you needed a mate to work the mine, guard the tent etc. Our national poets like Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson recognised these traits. They became crucial in making us understand that we had a special affinity with the bush and although we weren’t British we were just as good, possibly better.
Early bush poets and songwriters, mostly anonymous, also gave us a voice. It was a voice that was common to shearers, drovers, bullockies, timber cutters, farming families and anyone else who toiled this great brown land. The voice remained when we experienced the reality of a massive population shift that coincided with the decade surrounding Federation in 1901, when the bulk of our population found itself living on the coasts and in cities rather than the bush. We were bushies in the cities, and we knew where we came from and the debt we owed our pioneers.
The early days of Australian country and western found us confused. Radio had replaced the campfire and we were hearing a lot of American music. Although we had pioneered feature films ‘Ma and Pa Kettle’, an endless supply of ‘singing cowboys’ significantly outnumbered our ‘Dad and Dave’s’. Songs about tumbling tumbleweeds, Red River Valleys and Blue Kentucky Mountains had started to replace our stories of legendary shearers, overlanders and the outback. We called each other ‘partner’ and greeted each other with ‘Howdy-do’. We were becoming Americanised and the bells were already ringing in a new world. The songs our country pioneers sang were mostly American because that is the way the musical world was going.
We cannot ignore the influence and the popularity of the guitar and harmonica in our story. Pick up any early songster, especially the Boomerang Songster, and you will find ‘teach yourself’ advertisements in every edition. The harmonica was so popular it was often referred to as ‘the band in a waistcoat pocket’. You will also find the songs that our singers sang and recorded including some that were massive gramophone and radio hits. There were hobo songs, love duets, novelty songs, cowboy ballads and, of course, the inevitable cowboy yodels. The music also illustrates musical fashion and fads. Songs about horses, dogs, lovesick blues, and country music with a Hawaiian flavour all saw popularity. The square dance was also popular in the 40s and 50s and popularised Western Swing and Bluegrass. American music often known as the ‘high lonesome sound’, and is notable because of many of its key players, like Flatt and Scruggs and Bill Monroe, featured amazing instrumental dexterity. Bluegrass was admired but had little influence in Australia until Slim Dusty highlighted it by performing with the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band who actually hailed from New Zealand.
Thankfully many Australian pioneer country and western artists started to pen their own songs and, in several instances, make changes to the words of songs so those rolling plains became dusty plains and the tumbling tumbleweeds got replaced with saltbush. The fact that many of these early artists travelled the land performing tent shows must have helped them steer a more Australian cultural course.
The main thing about the artists represented in this collection is that they are all storytellers and represent a time in our music history when stories were very important. Radio served a similar role and it’s often been said that radio is superior to television because the pictures are better in your imagination. Ballad writers and singers know this and in many ways the early country writers and singers were a continuation of the old bush tradition of storytelling and campfire entertainment.
I was privileged enough to know Tex Morton quite well. When I set up my independent Larrikin record label, above the Folkways record store in Paddington, Tex used to visit me every couple of weeks. He had a contract to do the voice-over for advertising commercials for David’s Holdings, a grocery supply chain. The somewhat irritating commercials hung on the line “Where’dya Get It?” which Tex delivered in one of his high-pitched character voices. Tex had hundreds of character voices and thousands of stories, I still kick myself that I never recorded our conversations where he would relate stories of travelling the bush, presenting tent shows, recording and, of course, early radio. I loved his monologues and he was a master at telling them in his droll, matter-of-fact style. I was also impressed he could roll a ready-rub cigarette with one hand. We also talked about my field of folk music. Tex always believed folk music and early country music were kissing cousins.
I also knew Reg Lindsay, Smoky Dawson, Chad Morgan, Slim Dusty, Gordon Parsons, Johnny Ashcroft and Stan Coster well enough to know they all possessed a passion for Australian stories and, of course, Australian country music. I recorded several albums with Reg Lindsay and two with the wonderful Chad Morgan and distributed Stan Coster’s albums on Ross Murphy’s Opal label.
There are a few distinct characteristics that identify our pioneer artists. Their guitar style was simplistic yet very effective – Gene Autry, Hank Snow, Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Vernon Dalhart and the Carter Family, many of whom had been themselves influenced by either American old-timey bluegrass or the blues, influenced us. Yodelling was another feature Australian artists embraced and Shirley Thoms, Reg Lindsay, Tex Morton and Slim Dusty were all wonderful yodellers. Many of our artists were influenced by the British singer Harry Torrani and the American Jimmie Rodgers. Our pioneers also dressed ‘cowboy’ style, no doubt influenced by what they saw in Hollywood films, although most morphed into a much more acceptable bush attire, as they grew older (and wiser).
Country music is not folk music, although they do share some of the same characteristics, and although we have now dropped the ‘western’ moniker, we can now claim a new breed of modern country writers and singers who continue to tell our stories. They should never forget their debt to our musical pioneers. Call me old-fashioned (and no doubt you will), but I still prefer these wonky old recordings to any of the new breed. This isn’t to say our contemporary singers aren’t terrific performers – many of them are – but, for me, there’s something special about these old ‘scratchies’ and, dare I say it, some of the recent Australian country albums are too slick for their own good and tend to sound too commercial, too influenced by the record and radio industries.
Here are some of my favourite pioneer tracks.
Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister? Art Leonard.
When I Get To The End of the Way. The Hillbilly Singers.
Hillbilly Valley. The Singing Stockmen.
The Face on the Barroom Floor. Art Leonard.
They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree. Art Leonard and Freddie Witt
The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Len Maurice.
Cuckoo Waltz. P. C. Spouse
South American Joe. Tex Morton and Harry Thompson.
Hand Me Down My Walking Cane. Tex Morton & Sister Dorrie
Mandrake. Tex Morton.
Along the Stock Route. Tex Morton.
Poor Ned Kelly. Smilin’ Billy Blinkhorn.
Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny Oh. Jenny Howard.
I Never See Maggie Alone. Bob Dyer.
The Cowgirl Yodel. Shirley Thoms.
Last Night On The Prairie. Shirley Thoms.
Happy Yodelling Cowgirl. June Holms
The Australian Bushman. Gordon Parsons.
Mary Jane Waltz. The Two Barnstormers.
Wildflower Waltz. The Two Barnstormers.
I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night. Tim McNamara.
Red River Valley. Tim McNamara with the McKean Sisters.
The Country Hour. Reg Lindsay.
Then I’ll Keep On Loving You. Reg Lindsay.
Down By the Old Slip Rail. Reg Lindsay.
When It’s Springtime in the Rockies. Queenie and David Kaili.
Hawaiian March. Mayo Hunter.
The Black Yodel. Harry Cash.
On the Gundagai Line. Buddy Williams.
The Overlander Trail. Buddy Williams.
Little Boy Lost. Johnny Ashcroft.
The Duckinwilla Dance. Chad Morgan.
The Sheik of Scrubby Creek. Chad Morgan.
The Chicken Yodel. Tex Croft.
Where the Frangipani Grow. The McKean Sisters.
The Rain Still Tumbles Down in July. Slim Dusty
When the Bloom is on the Sage. Smoky Dawson.
Smoky Dawson Radio Serial Episode 110.
Here’s background information on the tracks.
Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister? Art Leonard.
Leonard Maurice (1900-1952) recorded several country covers for radio between 1926-1933. In the 1930s he worked in radio with 2GR and 2UW. He was the main recording artist for the Columbia Graphophone Company with 78s released on Columbia and Regal Zonophone. In his recordings, he came from a music theatre background where he worked for the Tivoli and Fullers vaudeville circuits. Recorded 1932.
When I Get To The End of the Way. The Hillbilly Singers.
Another radio act with a more classical approach to country were the Hillbilly singers. This duet, recorded in 1933, is reminiscent of American country gospel with a bass and tenor vocal arrangement for fiddle, piano and guitar.
Hillbilly Valley. The Singing Stockmen.
The Singing Stockmen were another radio studio act. Rich is harmonies and American popular music styles they had a brief influence.
The Face on the Barroom Floor. Art Leonard.
So-called tearjerker songs were extremely popular in Australia. Maybe these sentimental songs about tragedy suited our outback loneliness, where separation from home and loved ones was such a reality. Tearjerkers about families ruined by wicked alcohol were particularly popular.
They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree. Art Leonard and Freddie Witt
Another tearjerker but this features Len Maurice in duet with the American Freddie Witt who came to Australia in 1919 for work on the vaudeville circuit (returning to America the same year) and returned in 1924 later joining Sydney radio station 2KY where he eventually became station program manager. He recorded as a member of The Big Four vocal quartet.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Len Maurice.
This song by ‘wobbly’ (International Workers of the World) songwriter Harry McClintock was a massive worldwide hit as it told the story of hobo heaven where rivers ran free booze and lamb chops hung from trees. The song finds Maurice with a more country sounding style that gives the song a definite lift.
Cuckoo Waltz. P. C. Spouse
The harmonica, or mouth organ, was synonymous with early Australia and drovers tell of softly playing it during their long night shifts overseeing their herd. The music reassured the cattle and prevented any sudden panic and subsequent stampede. Shearers played the instrument, as they lay exhausted in their bunks after a day of backbreaking shearing. The instrument also found its way to the stage and radio and harmonica competitions were staged across Australia for many years. Percival Spouse (1885-1977) was our most-awarded player.
South American Joe. Tex Morton and Harry Thompson.
Tex Morton regularly featured Australian champion harmonica player Harry Thompson in his tent and radio shows. Thompson, a noted teacher of the instrument, also recorded many tunes. Here he plays a Latin influenced western tune for Tex Morton’s radio show.
Hand Me Down My Walking Cane. Tex Morton & Sister Dorrie
This song comes from the so-called ‘war years’ (during WW2) when Morton (1916-1983) refused to record any songs with Columbia because of a disagreement with one of its key managers, Arch Kerr. Luckily some radio wire recordings show us what the master was up to. Here he sings one of his most popular songs with his long-time female singer, Dorothy Ricketts. Dorothy had been a member of The Rough Riders vocal group. Thins was recorded in 1948.
Mandrake. Tex Morton.
Songs about horses and dogs were always popular and audiences used to shout out particular songs names “Sing us Old Shep” or “What about Mandrake?” Morton was always a crowd pleaser and could turn any request into a monologue or completely different songs.
Along the Stock Route. Tex Morton.
Here is one of Tex’s most popular monologues. Self-penned as far as we know and it is stamped with his own brand of outback delivery. I can see him standing there, audience hanging on every word, whilst Tex casually rolled a cigarette with one hand, occasionally looking up as to remind the audience he was the king of country music.
Poor Ned Kelly. Smilin’ Billy Blinkhorn.
In 1939 a young Canadian singer known as Smilin’ Billy Blinkhorn (1914-1977) came to Australia to try his luck as a country performing artist. He was offered an opportunity to record for Regal Zonophone in that same year and wanted to record some favourites plus a song, which would tell about an aspect of Australia’s history. He chose the story of bushranger Ned Kelly and set the highwayman in a contemporary setting. It was an inspired move.
Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny Oh. Jenny Howard.
Set dancing, especially versions of the old-fashioned barn dance and Lancers had a long history in 19th century Australia and started to disappear in the early 20th century. In the late 1940s and throughout the 50s square dancing became popular. Flashily dressed couples (in American cowhand costume) would do-se-do to the singing instructions of a dance caller. There were many 78r pm recordings available in Australia. My parents were members of a square dance club and this song, Oh Johnny Oh Johnny Oh was one of my favourites. Jenny Howard came from the Tivoli circuit regularly playing the pantomime ‘boy’. The song was recorded late 1940s.
I Never See Maggie Alone. Bob Dyer.
Bob Dyer (10909-1984) was a Tivoli vaudeville performer from Nashville. He always played up his ‘hillbilly’ roots. He was a decent ukulele player and a terrific novelty singer, regularly injecting comments into his songs. His famous songs were all hillbilly favourites and he did two recording sessions in 1939 at the BBC studios in London. Dyer eventually became one of Australia’s most popular and successful artists, especially through his comedy radio and television quiz shows.
The Cowgirl Yodel. Shirley Thoms.
Shirley Thoms (1925 – 1999) has the distinction of being Australia’s first female solo recording artists. Sister Dorrie recorded before her but it was alongside Tex Morton in duet. Thoms was also the first Queenslander to be recorded. Known as ‘Australia’s Yodelling Sweetheart’, the two things that make Thoms stand out is the fact she wrote the majority of her songs, even if they still sang of cowgirls, prairies and Texas Sally; the other is her remarkable yodelling ability.
Last Night On The Prairie. Shirley Thoms.
Shirley is in fine voice as she sings about the legendary prairies. Prairies are technically grasslands, savannahs and scrubland so one can assume the defiant Thoms was actually thinking of the word in the context to Australian scrublands. I certainly like to think she was.
Happy Yodelling Cowgirl. June Holms
June Holms was another Regal Zonophone recording artist although she only made half a dozen recordings including this one ‘Happy Yodelling Cowgirl recorded in 1942 at Homebush, Sydney.
The Australian Bushman. Gordon Parsons.
Gordon Parsons (1926-1990) was born a city slicker in Paddington, Sydney, but there is no denying he had a great affinity for the Australian bush. His first recordings were made at the age of 18 in 1946 after he had won the Terry Dear Talent Show contest. He continued to write and record. His most famous composition is ‘The Pub With No Beer’.
Mary Jane Waltz. The Two Barnstormers.
Viv Massey (1893-1957) was a well-known Sydney fiddle player who teamed up with Thomas (Tom) Stevenson (B.1901) who played guitar, banjo, trombone and drums. Stevenson eventually joined Jim Davidson’s Orchestra in the 1939s. We didn’t record very much early country-inspired music and are lucky to have these two terrific tracks recorded in 1933.
Wildflower Waltz. The Two Barnstormers.
A popular American country tune and it fairly rockets along.
I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night. Tim McNamara.
Tim McNamara (1922-1983) was our first ‘singing cowboy’ on film when he appeared in the 1948 feature film ‘Into The Straight’ where he sang two of his own songs, ‘Riding Along’ and ‘We’re Going to the Rodeo’. He went on to record for EMI and was one of our most popular radio hosts.
Red River Valley. Tim McNamara with the McKean Sisters.
Tim McNamara’s radio programs introduced many artists to the Australian public including Heather and Joy McKean. Heather married Reg Lindsay and Joy married Slim Dusty. As the McKean sisters they recorded from 1951 for Rodeo records. They were recognised for their wonderful yodelling which was reminiscent of early Carter Family recordings. After their perspective marriages they pursued solo careers alongside their husbands. Joy became a notable songwriter and musical arranger and performed alongside her husband, Slim Dusty, for many years. Their daughter Anne Kirkpatrick continues their legacy.
The Country Hour. Reg Lindsay.
Reg Lindsay (1929-2008) first came to the stage as a performer on Tim McNamara’s radio talent quest live show at Sydney Town Hall in 1951. He went on to become the host of that same program taking it to the position of most popular show on Australian radio, second to Jack Davey. Reg was a fantastic singer, guitar player and yodeller. He was a true star of Australian country music.
Then I’ll Keep On Loving You. Reg Lindsay.
Soaring vocals like this gave Reg Lindsay radio chart successes that spanned several years. There is something magical in his early recordings and it is evident that his vocal style was distinctively Australian. Country love songs similar to this were regular chart visitors and even appeared on juke box playlists.
Down By the Old Slip Rail. Reg Lindsay.
Reg Lindsay was not a prolific songwriter in his early days but when he did, he usually gave us something memorable. This is one of his originals. I often talked to Reg about the way the Australian ‘country music mafia’ tended to brand him as ‘too American, too slick’, referring to his American tours and Nashville recording sessions. He simply said he did it because he wanted to ‘give it a go’. There is nothing too American about his early recordings. They are some of our best reminders as to how talented Reg Lindsay was as a pioneer performer.
When It’s Springtime in the Rockies. Queenie and David Kaili.
The Kaili husband and wife duo were regulars on Reg Lindsay’s hugely popular radio program The Bunkhouse Show. With clunking upright piano and steel guitar accompaniment for Queenie’s high pitched crooning along with David’s solid baritone makes this a country curiosity and the perfect introduction to the popularity of Hawaiian music in our country sound.
Hawaiian March. Mayo Hunter.
One cannot underestimate the influence Hawaiian music had on our early country music. It was featured at concerts, on recordings and live on air. Mayo Hunter was a multi-instrumentalist who recorded nine tracks for Columbia between 1926-1928, using Hawaiian and steel guitar. He later teamed up with ‘Gladys’ as a vaudeville act known as the Hawaiian Entertainers.
The Black Yodel. Harry Cash.
This is a hell of a yodelling song that seems to bridge the patter between music hall and country music. Cash is a mystery to us music historians because during the 1920s on the vaudeville circuit he was billed as ‘The Black Laugh’ or ‘The Black Laughter King’. This could mean he was an African, a Negro, an Aboriginal or, most likely, a black face artist. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he turned out to be our first indigenous country artist? The Register (Adelaide) reported his first stage appearance (as The Black Laugh) in December, 1926.
On the Gundagai Line. Buddy Williams.
Buddy Williams (1918-1986) loved telling the Australian story and he took those stories and songs across Australia performing in local halls, clubs, festivals. He was one of our best songwriters and also had a knack for selecting great country songs to sing including those of Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Webster and, in this one, Tex Morton. Buddy’s first recordings, for Regal Zonophone, were made in 1939 and he later recorded for Columbia and RCA.
The Overlander Trail. Buddy Williams.
Buddy was known as the Yodelling Jackaroo and this song, self penned, was one of his most successful and lasting. Recorded in 1946, it smacks of real Australian country music that had come directly from the earliest of our country pioneers.
Little Boy Lost. Johnny Ashcroft.
Johnny Ashcroft (B. 1927) recorded his first record in 1946 when ‘When I Waltzed My Matilda Away’ was distributed to Australian radio stations. He became a country performer and notched up some major hits including Slim de Grey’s ‘The Girl Behind the Bar’ and a series of sides in 19504 for Rodeo Records. In 1960 he and a radio announcer, Tony Withers, wrote another chart hit, a tearjerker, based on a true story of a four year old, Steven Walls, who was lost in the bush near Guyra, NSW. The lad was found alive and the song tore at everyone’s heartstrings to make it a country classic.
The Duckinwilla Dance. Chad Morgan.
Recorded in 1955 this comic country song is typical of Chad Morgan stage persona as a country bumpkin. Country music has always had a clown and Chad is ours. In real life he is a rather shy and modest fellow who takes his craft seriously. Time has certainly been on Chad’s side and he can claim an illustrious career as a tent show artist, radio and stage star and, of course, recording artist. His most famous song, The Sheik of Scrubby Creek is a perennial favourite for anyone interested in old time country humour.
The Sheik of Scrubby Creek. Chad Morgan.
This is the first song Chadwick Morgan (B. 1933) recorded and it has been part of his stage act ever since. Slim Dusty once referred to Chad as ‘The crown prince of country comedy’. After winning a talent contest, he recorded the Sheik for EMI’s Regal Zonophone label in 1952.
The Chicken Yodel. Tex Croft.
Wilf Carter, also known as Montana Slim, recorded this song in the 1930s and West Australian singer and guitarist, Tex Croft, then recorded it. We know little of Croft, but he continued performing in West Australia until the early 1960s. It is typical of several animal impersonation songs made popular on the Grand Ole Opera by artists such as Grandpa Jones type characters.
Where the Frangipani Grow. The McKean Sisters.
Sisters Heather and Joy McKean recorded this song in 1953. They had been performing and entering various talent shows including the popular Dick Fair Australian Amateur Hour. In 1949 they were enlisted as featured regulars on The Melody Trail, a weekly country music program on Sydney radio station 2KY. It was so successful that they stayed until the program ended in 1956.
The Rain Still Tumbles Down in July. Slim Dusty
In 2000, EMI commissioned me to write part of the booklet that accompanied a 5CD set of Slim Dusty’s ‘The Man Who Is Australia’. I remember listening to the many tracks and being in awe of this man who became the voice of Australian country music. It’s the most important voice because it was always an Australian voice. David Gordon Kirkpatrick aka Slim Dusty (1927-2003) was a remarkable musician, singer, songwriter and showman selling millions of recordings and inspiring legions of supporters. He wrote his first country classic When the Rain Tumbles Down in July’ in 1942 and recorded it a year later for Regal Zonaphone. It became one of his most requested songs and inspired this later song – a song about a song – recorded in 1953.
When the Bloom is on the Sage. Smoky Dawson.
Smoky Dawson (1913-2008) was a country showman who soared to national popularity through radio. I grew up with Smoky Dawson. He was starring at me from the back of s cereal box every morning, he was in the Sunday comics and, of course, he was there every time I turned on the wireless. He was definitely ‘country and western’ and wasn’t shy about saluting American country roots including bluegrass and western swing. He was a country gentleman.
Smoky Dawson Radio Serial Episode 110.
This episode should put a smile on the face of any reader who was a member of Smoky Dawson’s Wild West Club as you join Smoky’s ever-bumbling, ever-present sidekick Jingles as they take their listeners down the track on another adventure. In 1985, Smoky said, “I like to think of myself as an old-fashioned troubadour trying to preserve a feeling for the Australian past in word, pictures and songs. My long rugged trail of experience has seen the light of joy and the shadow of sorrow.”
This eye-opening article, published in The Sunday Herald (Sydney) on 3 December 1950 explains how the music swept the country. By the way, Mr. Jones certainly got a few facts wrong – Tex Morton was a Kiwi.
Hillbilly Music Sweeps Through Australia
By BERTRAM JONES
HILLBILLY music – the haunting, sentimental songs of the prairies and timberlands – is sweeping Australia in a burst of popularity unequalled in the memory of the big publishing firms. Hillbilly records are snapped up as soon as they come on the market. Hillbilly song albums vanish from music shop counters in hours. Hillbilly sessions take peak hour places in the programmes of dozens of radio stations. It is a phenomenon that the music moguls find hard to explain. But, like the cinema, songs are getting back to the Wild West and the blue ranges, to a simple level that finds enjoyment on lonesome trails under silver moons, or in the arms of a sweet girl who waits faithfully for her man to ride out of the sunset on his patient pinto pal. The words are saccharine sweet. The melody is unambitious but usually catchy. It is enlivened with falsetto yodels. And the theme, more often than not, points a moral that sticks out a mile.
As popular entertainment in Australia, hillbillies are 20 years old at least. And their routine has not changed much.
No one can say with certainty when the popularity charts began their upward sweep. And there is equal doubt about the reason. The only man who could even suggest a cause was the song publisher who said yesterday: “People have had enough of space-ships and rocket-guns and brittle modern stuff. They find a sort of restfulness in the unashamed sentiment of hillbillies.”
BUT, no matter what started the vogue, the fact is that in any average month in Sydney now music shops sell about 200 guitars to people who have yielded to the hillbilly influence and who want to strum and yodel in the cowboy style.
They pay, as a rule, anything from £5 to £12 each. A big publishing firm has added a special hillbilly guitar course to its music college curriculum, promising to teach you in ten fortnightly lessons – price £2 – how to accompany your own songs, even though you have no previous musical knowledge.
ALTHOUGH the hillbilly is American in origin, Australian opportunists remoulded it. Under their influence the hillbilly has gone bush. The Texan prairies have given way to the outback plains. The sage has become saltbush and the cowpuncher a boundary rider. But the earthiness and the simplicity remain.
A music-store man from Lismore said the other day that no matter how many hillbilly records the makers send him he can sell them all -and ask for more.
Boys write to their radio stations clamouring for autographed pictures of their hillbilly idol just like other boys appeal to Hollywood for photographs of their favourite western screen stars.
And back the photographs come – usually of a curly-haired young man with a shy grin, a 10-gallon hat, an embroidered shirt and a pair of highly decorative riding boots. The western rig, although the repertoire may be Australian.
TAKE Kid Mahoney, from Queensland, who bills himself on the music halls and in the radio programmes as ‘The Yodelling Cowboy’. Kid paid £4 for his rodeo top black boots, £7 for his leather chaps (a flapping-legged garment like a pair of very tough trousers, usually topped by a gun belt and two Colts), and 45/ for his hat. His mother makes his cowboy shirts – usually black and white ones – so he gets those cheap. And his fan mail in one year reached 17,000 letters, he says.
Like Australian Tex Morton, Kid Mahoney really has roughed it in the wide-open spaces. He has been a station hand and a Queensland rodeo rider, and soldier in Pacific Island jungles. Tex Morton, the first indigenous Australian hillbilly singer, once turned down a radio offer of £ 100 a week.
BUT before you go rushing to buy that guitar and strain your vocal chords trying to yodel, pause a moment. Every week at least two aspiring hillbilly singers present themselves at a recording company’s studios in Sydney, full of ideas and hope-hope to get into the big money. Hardly any succeed in passing an audition. And when they do, their immediate reward may be no greater than Kid Mahoney’s one shilling and halfpenny on every record. You have to sell an awful lot to pay for a guitar.
AUSTRALIA AND ITS TRADITIONAL MUSIC – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
RADIO
As the cities grew, including many ‘new Australian’ migrants, the music changed to reflect their urban edge. One of the major influences was ‘the wireless, as the radio was called. Radio, especially from the early 1940s, relied on ‘live’ studio music and especially dance music, light classics and what was referred to as ‘country and western music’. Some of this country music lent on the old music of the bush but it was predominantly American country music re-recorded by Australian artists – including an American twang. Hollywood films that featured the songs of Gene Autry and Tex Ritter influenced much of it.
WAR
Australia’s participation in war also influenced our music landscape. WW1 and WW2 had a particular impact as we readily supported our allies by embracing whatever popular songs were being played on radio or sold on gramophone records. We also created our own parodies and ditties about the wartime experience.
Refer to my book ‘Diggers’ Songs’ published by Australian Military History Press, Loftus, for a comprehensive survey of the music Australians sang in the eleven wars (at that time) we had fought in.
ECONOMIC DEPRESSION
In the early 1930s Australia, along with most of the western world, experienced a bitter economic depression. Once again we responded by creating songs and ditties to tell of this experience.
Refer to my book ‘Ratbags & Rabblerousers’ Currency Press, Sydney, which details the music of this period. This book was previously released as ‘The Balls of Bob Menzies’, Angus & Robertson, Sydney.