musician singer songwriter record producer
Born David Gordon Kirkpatrick on June 13, 1927, in Kempsey, New South Wales, Dusty grew up on a remote dairy farm in the hill country near Nulla Nulla Creek.
Dusty married Joy McKean, a country singer and songwriter, in 1951, and the couple had their first child, Anne, in 1952; in 1958 they had a son, David.
As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a country music singer, and when he was ten years old, he wrote his first song, "The Way the Cowboy Dies." In 1938 he began calling himself Slim Dusty. In 1942 Dusty made his first recording, at his own expense, and by 1946 he had signed his first contract with Columbia Gramophone on the Regal Zonophone label. He recorded six titles, including When the Rain Tumbles Down in July.
He has remained with Columbia, which later became EMI, ever since.
He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush Lifestyle, and also for his many trucking songs.
Dusty was the first Australian to have a No. 1 Hit song with Gordon Parsons (A Pub With No Beer)
Dusty's 1957 hit "A Pub With No Beer" was the biggest-selling record by an Australian to that time, the first Australian single to go gold, and the first and only 78 rpm record to be awarded a gold disc. Over the course of his career, he collected more gold and platinum albums than any other Australian artist. (The "Pub with No Beer" is a real place, in Taylors Arm, not far from Kempsey where Slim was born).In 1959 and 1960 Dutch and German cover versions of the song became number one hits (even evergreens) in Belgium, Austria and Germany, brought by the Flemish country singer-guitarist and amusement park founder Bobbejaan Schoepen.
1964 saw the establishment of the annual Slim Dusty Australia-round tour, a 48,280 kilometres (30,000 mi) journey that went on for ten months. This regular event was the subject of a feature film, The Slim Dusty Movie, in 1984.
Dusty recorded not only songs written by himself and other fellow Australian performers but also classic Australian poems by Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, with new tunes to call attention to the old 'Bush Ballads.' An example is The Man from Snowy River by Paterson. In 1970 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to music In 1973 he won Best Single at the inaugural Country Music Awards of Australia at the Tamworth Country Music Festival (McKean won Song of the Year as writer of "Lights On The Hill"). In all, he won a record 35 "Golden Guitars" over the years.
Slim Dusty and his wife were patrons of the National Truck Drivers' Memorial located at Tarcutta, New South Wales. The General Manager of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, invited him and his wife to perform in 1997, recognising 50 years contributing to Country Music. The following January, he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to the entertainment industry.
Dusty recorded and released his one hundredth album, Looking Forward, Looking Back, in 2000. All 100 albums had been recorded with the same record label, Electric and Music Industries, making Dusty the very first music artist in the world to record 100 albums with the same label. He was then given the honour of singing Waltzing Matilda in the Closing Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, with the whole stadium singing along with him.
