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Praising the Tall Poppy ~ Celebrating Our Heroes
With more than 5 million recordings sold in Australian, Slim is
the country's most prolific and biggest selling recording artist.
Slim Dusty, A.O., MBE
 First Australian to receive a Gold Record.
First Australian to have an international record hit.
First singer in the world to have his voice beamed to
earth from space. In 1983, astronauts Crippen and
Young played Slim singing Waltzing Matilda from the
space shuttle Columbia as it passed over Australia.
Slim Dusty, born David Gordon Kirkpatrick, was an Australian country music singer, songwriter and a true Aussie icon. Kirkpatrick was born 13 June 1927 in Kempsey, New South Wales. Young David was introduced to music by his father (known as Noisy Dan) who was an amateur musician and farmer. By the time David was 10 years old, he had written his first song, The Way The Cowboy Dies. He changed his name to Slim Dusty the next year and with his boyhood friend Shorty Ranger (Edwin Haberfield) began appearing regularly on local radio soon after.
While it may seem like Slim was successful from the beginning, it's not the case. When he was 15 his father arranged for him to audition for Columbia Records in Sydney. He recorded two songs, but they didn't make much of an impression.
Slim and Shorty turned to touring with travelling tent shows until Slim's father died suddenly in 1945. As a result, he left to take care of the family farm. Slim's  passion for music was still alive and well. In 1947 he released the hit song When The Rain Tumbles Down In July. Unfortunately he didn't receive any royalties for it. So he went on singing and recording whenever possible while working on the farm.
Slim started his own travelling show and went on the road in 1954. He still wrote and recorded his songs, during this 3 year period, but none were a commercial success.
Everything changed in 1957 when he recorded The Pub With No Beer. The song was written by his friend Gordon Parsons, who enjoyed his beer and his pub. (The pub actually exists in Taylors Arm, NSW, not far from Kempsey where Slim was born.)
The Pub With No Beer was a hit and gave Dusty the recognition he sought. He recorded two more Pub songs, but finally stopped when the third Pub-theme song flopped. His 1957 original hit A Pub With No Beer was the biggest-selling record by an Australian at that time, the first Australian single to go gold and an international hit reaching No 1 in Ireland and No 3 in Britain.
Slim and his family continued touring Australia for the next six years, but this time with Frank Foster's Touring Extravaganza. It was an odd mixture of strippers, boxers and the Slim Dusty Show. In 1964 he began his Round Australia Slim Dusty Tours and they became a regular event.
 Wearing his trademark bush hat and his ever present guitar, Slim Dusty gave us bush ballads shaped by the land and the Aussie way of life. Often humorous and sometimes sentimental, they touched us in ways that made him finally a successful and a much loved father of country music.
Over the course of his career, he has collected more gold and platinum albums than any other Australian artist. Slim won a record 36 Golden Guitars for his music over the years. In 1979 he was elevated to the Country Music Roll of Renown.
In 1970 he became the first Australian country music entertainer to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his service to music and in 1998 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
Slim died at home in Sydney at 9.10am Friday, 9 September 2003 in the company of his wife Joy McKean and his two children, Anne and David, after a lengthy battle with cancer.
When he died, Slim had been working on his 106th album, for EMI Records. On 8 March 2004 the album Columbia Lane - the Last Sessions debuted at number one on the country charts and number five in the Australian album charts. Less than two weeks later it went gold. The first single Answer to Billy received more airplay than any other country song in the same period.
A Few Highlights in Slim Dusty's Career
- 1937 - Slim, aged 10, writes his very first song, The Way The Cowboy Dies.
- 1958 - Slim receives Australia's first Gold record for A Pub With No Beer
- 1960 - Slim releases his first LP album titled Slim Dusty Sings
- 1973 - At Tamworth's first Australasian Country Music Awards, Slim receives
an award for Best LP for Me And My Guitar and Best EP or single for
Lights On The Hill.
- 1981 - Slim's 50th album, The Golden Anniversary Album, reaches multi
Platinum status in Australia
- 1992 - Helping form the Country Music Association of Australia, Slim held
the position of Chairman since its inception.
- 1997 -
 By special invitation from the Country Music Association of America,
Slim appears 15 August at the Grand Ol'
Opry in Nashville, Kentucky to mark his
50 years of commercial recording for one
company.
- 2000 - Slim was the final act at the Closing
Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics,
October 1, with a lively rendition of
Waltzing Matilda.
 2001 - The Australian country music industry
pays a unique tribute voting
unanimously to make Slim Honorary
President For Life of the Country
Music Association of Australia (CMAA). - 2001 - Australia Post pays national tribute by
naming Slim among its Legends stamp
series.
- 2002 - Edith Cowan University in WA awards an honorary doctorate in
recognition of his contribution to Australian music.
More Information
 Slim Dusty Centre- Official Slim Dusty Website
- Country Music Association of Australia (CMAA)
- Australian Country Music Foundation (ACMF)
- Pub with No Beer website
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