Australian country music

The distinctive themes and origins of Australia's bush music can be traced to the songs sung by the convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of the British colonisation, beginning in 1788. Early Australian ballads sing of the harsh ways of life of the epoch and of such people and events as bushrangers, swagmen, drovers, stockmen and shearers. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: "The Wild Colonial Boy", "Click Go the Shears", "The Eumeralla Shore", "The Drover's Dream", "The Queensland Drover", "The Dying Stockman" and "Moreton Bay".[3]

Later themes which endure to the present include the experiences of war, of droughts and flooding rains, of Aboriginal identity and of the railways and trucking routes which link Australia's vast distances. Isolation and loneliness of life in the Australian bush has been another theme. For much of its history, Australia's bush music belonged to an oral and folkloric tradition, and was only later published in print in volumes such as Banjo Paterson's Old Bush Songs, in the 1890s.

"Waltzing Matilda", often regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem, is a quintessential early Australian country song, influenced more by Celtic folk ballads than by US country and western music. The lyrics were composed by the poet Banjo Paterson in 1895. This strain of Australian country music, with lyrics focusing on strictly Australian subjects, is generally known as "bush music" or "bush band music".[3]

Country and folk artists such as Gary Shearston, Lionel Long, Margaret Roadknight, Tex Morton, Slim Dusty, Rolf Harris, The Bushwackers, John Williamson, and John Schumann of the band Redgum have continued to record and popularise the old bush ballads of Australia through the 20th and into the 21st century – and contemporary artists including Pat Drummond, Sara Storer and Lee Kernaghan draw heavily on this heritage.

Country singer Reg Lindsay and Joan Clarke on the Hour of Song radio program, 2UW Radio Theatre, Sydney in 1954

Pioneers of a more Americanised popular country music in Australia included Tex Morton (known as The Father of Australian Country Music) in the 1930s and other early stars like Buddy Williams, Shirley Thoms and Smoky Dawson. In 1932, Tex Morton arrived from New Zealand, aged 16, and humped his swag around outback stations where he began to earn a name as a performer. In 1936 he cut his first commercial records in Australia. He went on to establish a distinctly Australian bush ballad style, shifting from American songs to songs about Australia. He attained national popularity in the 1930s and formed a traveling "Rodeo and Wildwest Show" in the 1940s. In 1949 he travelled to North America and Europe enjoying great success as a stage hypnotist, working in film and with artists such as Hank Williams. He returned to Australia in the early 1960s, by which time a generation of performers had carved a place for the Australian themed country music he pioneered.[4]

Chad Morgan, the "clown prince" of Australian country music. Morgan has been performing since the 1950s. His works are peppered with colourful Australian vernacular.

Smoky Dawson cut his first recording in 1941: "I'm a Happy Go Lucky Cowhand". In 1952, Dawson began a radio show, and went on to national stardom as a yodelling, whip cracking, knife throwing, singing cowboy of radio, TV and film.[5]

Known as "Canada's Yodelling Cowboy", Donn Reynolds (1921–1997) began a 40-year international career upon cutting several popular sides in 1947 on the Regal Zonophone label including "Old Bush Shanty of Mine" and "Stockman's Lullaby". He toured with Willard (Bill) Ferrier's Famous Hillbillies in what was Sydney's first all-country format variety shows[6] and became the voice of Australia's iconic Peters Ice Cream as the "Peter's Singing Cowboy". Reynolds achieved notoriety through song and screen performances worldwide, and later established 2 world records for yodeling.[7][8]

Slim Dusty (1927–2003) was known as the "King of Australian Country Music", and helped to popularise the Australian bush ballad. His successful career spanned almost six decades and his 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. Dusty remains Australia's most successful and prolific performer, and won more Gold and Platinum albums than any other Australian artist. Dusty recorded and released his one-hundredth album in the year 2000 and was given the honour of singing Waltzing Matilda in the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Dusty was accorded a state funeral upon his death and with over 7 million Australian record sales he remains Australia's most successful domestic music artist.[9]

Slim Dusty's wife Joy McKean penned several of his most popular songs including "Indian Pacific", "The Biggest Disappointment" and "Lights on the Hill".[10] Their daughter Anne Kirkpatrick is also a successful singer-songwriter. The family began annual round Australia tours in 1964 – encompassing a 30,000-mile, 10-month journey which was the subject of a feature film, The Slim Dusty Movie in 1984.

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. Coster wrote popular Dusty bush ballads including "The Cunnamulla Fella" and "Three Rivers Hotel" based on his own experience of working as a sheep hand and railway construction worker. Drawing on his travels and such writers over a span of decades, Dusty almost inadvertently 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 like Dusty and despite record sales in the multi millions, he and other successful Australian country artists were rarely heard on air outside regional centres in Australia until the new cross-over pop-country styles of the 1990s began to be heard again on city airwaves.[10]

In 1951, country singer-songwriter Reg Lindsay began broadcasting on Sydney radio and remained on air for 12 years. In 1964 he took over Channel 9's The Country & Western Hour, which was networked around Australia and ran for seven and a half years. Soon after the show was replaced with Reg Lindsay's Country Homestead from Brisbane. The show gave hundreds of young artists a boost and helped to boost the Australian country music industry.[11]

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

Another enduring talent of Australian country music has been Chad Morgan, who began recording in the 1950s and is known for his vaudeville style of comic Australian country and western songs, his prominent teeth and goofy stage persona. In reference to his first recording he is known as The Sheik of Scrubby Creek. Johnny Ashcroft had an early country-rock chart success in Australia and New Zealand while Frank Ifield achieved considerable success in the early 1960s, especially in the UK Singles Charts. Reg Lindsay was one of the first Australians to perform at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry in 1974.[12] His international hit Armstrong, a tribute to the historic 1969 moon landing by American astronaut Neil Armstrong is now included in a time capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.[13]

Ted Egan began recording in 1969 and has released 28 albums, mostly themed around outback life, history and Aboriginal affairs. Eric Bogle's 1972 folk lament to the Gallipoli campaign "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" recalled the Celtic origins of Australian folk-country.

Singer-songwriter John Williamson began to build his reputation as an iconic Australian entertainer with his 1970 performance of his first song "Old Man Emu" on New Faces (influenced by novelty works of Rolf Harris such as "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport"). It was the first of many popular songs employing Australian slang. In 1982 he released "True Blue" and subsequent works including Mallee Boy, the lyrical "Galleries of Pink Galahs" and reworkings of Australian bush ballads and folk songs earned him a permanent position as leading exponent of Australian country and folk music.[14][15]

In 1970, Tamworth's Radio 2TM organised the landmark Bicentennial Concert to mark the 200th anniversary of the voyage of Captain James Cook along the coast of Eastern Australia. The pioneers of Australian country music Slim Dusty, Joy McKean, Barry Thornton, "Smiling" Billy Blinkhorn, Smoky Dawson, Shirley Thoms and Buddy Bishop all featured in the concert which contributed to a revival of interest in Australian country music which had struggled for airplay since the arrival of rock and roll in Australia.[16] The Tamworth Country Music Festival began in 1973 and now attracts up to a 100,000 visitors annually.

Olivia Newton-John received the Country Music Association's Top Female Vocalist award in the US in 1974.

In 1974, popular cross-over artist Olivia Newton-John received the Country Music Association's Top Female Vocalist award in the US, despite protest from American country purists. Her popular hits have included "I Honestly Love You" and "Tenterfield Saddler" by Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen as well as country classics such as "Banks of the Ohio" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads".[17]

Country music has been particularly popular among the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples,[18] creating a sub-genre often termed Aboriginal country music.[19]

Jimmy Little was a pioneer, Georgia Lee was of the same era (1940s–50s). Dougie Young, Lionel Rose, and Harry and Wilga Williams and their band the Country Outcasts were very popular during the 1960s and 1970s.[20][21][22][23] Gus Williams, Auriel Andrew, and Isaac Yamma were active from the 1970s, and the 1980s brought Roger Knox ("godfather of Koori music"[24]), Warren H. Williams, Kev Carmody, Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Tiddas, and the Warumpi Band, among many others.[22] Troy Cassar-Daley is among Australia's successful contemporary Indigenous performers. Carmody and Roach have employed a combination of folk-rock and country music to sing about Aboriginal rights issues.[18]

The book, documentary film, and soundtrack Buried Country (2000) showcase significant Indigenous musicians from the 1940s to the 1990s.[25][26]

Country singer Melinda Schneider with folk-rocker Paul Kelly

In 1992, the Country Music Association of Australia was launched in Tamworth, New South Wales to encourage, develop and promote Australian country music. Slim Dusty was its first chairman, John Williamson its vice chairman, Joy McKean was treasurer, Max Ellis secretary and Phil Matthews public officer. After negotiations, Tamworth's Radio 2TM agreed to hand over responsibility for the Golden Guitar Awards to the new body.[27]

Kasey Chambers

Lee Kernaghan

Keith Urban

In recent years, country music has consolidated its position as a popular genre in Australia, with well attended festivals and a large number of top-selling albums and songs. By the 1990s, Country music had attained cross-over success in the pop charts with artists like James Blundell, James Reyne singing "Way Out West", and country star Kasey Chambers winning the ARIA Award for Best Female Artist in 2000, 2002 and 2003 and becoming the youngest artist to ever be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. The daughter of steel guitarist Bill Chambers, Kasey Chambers' hits include "Not Pretty Enough" (2002), "True Colours" (2003) and "Pony" (2004), which were all top ten hits in the ARIA Charts.

The cross-over influence of Australian country is also evident in the music of successful contemporary bands The Waifs and The John Butler Trio. Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly whose music style straddles folk, rock, and country is often described as the "poet laureate" of Australian music.[28]

Eclectic rocker Nick Cave has been heavily influenced by the US country music artist Johnny Cash. Cave has recorded a number of country covers including several on his 1986 album Kicking Against the Pricks, which has such well-known country classics as "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "Long Black Veil" and "The Singer" (a.k.a. "The Folksinger"). In 2000, Cash, covered Cave's "The Mercy Seat" on the album American III: Solitary Man. Subsequently, Cave cut a duet with Cash on a version of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" for Cash's American IV: The Man Comes Around album (2002).[29]

Popular and emerging contemporary performers of Australian country include: Lee Kernaghan (whose hits include the contemporary country classic "Boys From the Bush") and sister Tania Kernaghan, Melinda Schneider, Gina Jeffreys, Beccy Cole, Felicity Urquhart, Shannon Noll, Tracy Coster, Sara Storer, and brother Doug Storer.

Sara Storer's award-winning second album Beautiful Circle prompted Melbourne's The Age newspaper to report that "As we lament the death of Slim Dusty, here is evidence that authentic, yet contemporary Australian bush country has not died with his passing". Her Australian accent, song subject matter and collaborations with established balladeers John Williamson and Paul Kelly link her to the oldest traditions of Australian country music.

In the United States, Australian country music stars including Sherrié Austin and Keith Urban have attained great success. In 1991, Urban released a self-titled debut album and charted four singles in Australia before moving to the United States in 1992 going on to chart more than fifteen singles on the US country charts, including ten number ones.[30] Urban has proven extremely successful internationally and has won the Country Music Association Award for Male Vocalist of the Year three times and their top Entertainer of the Year honour twice.