Slim DuSty &Joy mcKean’S

lifetime of tRaVel, StoRieS anD SonGS

JOY MCKEAN

Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000www.hachette.com.au

Standard edition — Hardcover with Jacket (255 x 235 mm)

224 pages. ISBN 978 07336 2728 6. RRP $39.99

the limited 1927 edition — Slipcased HardbackOnly 1927 produced. Leatherette hardback (255 x 235 mm) 224 pages.

Record sleeve containing a signed Slim Dusty & Joy McKean photo and a limited

edition CD containing 25 of Slim Dusty and Joy McKean’s recordings.

ISBN 978 07336 2866 5. RRP $100.00

AvAILABLe

25 OCtOBeR 2011

i’Ve been tHeRe(and Back Again)

For publicity enquiries please contact Jaki Arthure: jaki.arthur@hachette.com.au

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t: (02) 8248 0800

JOY MCKEAN

Introduction

JOY MCKEAN

I’ve been there

(and Back Again)p h OtO g r A p h s b Y J O h N E l l i Ot t

I’ve Been There (and Back Again)

Introduction

COntentSintroduction 1i’ve been there (and back Again) 5

Part I SOnGS FOr the AUSSIeS: the early Days 15 the biggest Disappointment 17 the Wind-Up gramophone 25 song For the Aussies 33 lace-Up shoes 39 D towards the head 41 Yellow gully 49 local Mary Magdalene 55 the Valley where the Frangipanis grow 65 Our Wedding Waltz 79 bible of the bush 87 Part II GUMtreeS bY the rOADWAY: People and Places 93 When the rain tumbles Down in July 95 Kelly’s Offsider 103 ringer from the top End 109 grandfather Johnson 117 gumtrees by the roadway 125 plains of peppimenarti 133 Part III WALK A COUntrY MILe: Performing and travelling 143 Old time Country halls 145 the Front row 153 lights on the hill 159 On the Move 167 indian pacific 177 Country revival 189 Walk a Country Mile 195 travellin’ still . . . Always Will 205Epilogue by Anne Kirkpatrick 209About slim Dusty 213Acknowledgments 214Credits 216

The old portable typewriter at work

again for the lyrics of ‘Just Rollin’ ’.

1

IntrODUCtIOn

in 2010, i travelled to tamworth for the Country Music Festival and for the

golden guitar Awards. slim and i had attended all but two of the awards

nights since they were inaugurated in 1973, and i have usually managed to

keep up the tradition since his death in 2003. January 2010 was rather special

for me as it marked my eightieth birthday and my daughter, Anne, had organised

a birthday concert for me in the Capitol theatre there during the festival.

As well, organisers of the bush laureate Awards had paid me the compliment

of inviting me to become their patron. the annual awards are to honour the best

among the bush poets of the nation, and i was surprised and touched when i was

presented with an award in recognition of ‘a lifelong contribution to Australia’s

bush verse heritage’. When MC Jim haynes read out the lyrics of ‘indian pacific’,

he closed by saying, ‘And if that is not bush poetry, i don’t know what is.’ i thought

that was a lovely thing to say; it was a very moving moment for me.

that night was the culmination of a feeling among friends and colleagues of

mine that i should publish a book of my song lyrics as poetry. the idea of a book

of stories behind a collection of songs written by slim and me, and illustrated by

many of the photos from our private collection, grew quickly. Of course, these

I’ve Been There (and Back Again)

lyrics were originally meant to be sung, not recited as

poetry, and so there are some differences in the way

the words are used or placed.

Most of the photos in this book have not been seen

before, and many of the stories behind the songs are

new to most people. i’ve enjoyed writing the stories

– the words of each of the songs i wrote bring back

so many recollections from my life, and the words of

slim’s songs remind me so vividly of the stories he

always told me about his youth when we were driving

somewhere, out on the road. he told me so much that,

sometimes, i felt as if i had been there with him since

his boyhood – and let’s face it, i was with him for

more than fifty-two years. What you have in front of

you is the result of a lot of work, a lot of laughs and

more than a lot of memories. some memories brought

laughter, certainly, but some brought sighs as well.

When i look at some of the photographs used to

illustrate a song or story, i think that, at the time the picture was taken, none of

us would have thought so many other people would see it one day. Never would

i have believed that my life and slim’s would produce such richness in friends,

family and experiences as it has. We were adventurers in a way . . . the road had a

beckoning feel to it. it’s true that the pair of us could never wait to see what was

over the next hill, whether it was a bulldust hole in amongst the corrugations or

a boggy stretch of a blacksoil road, or even just a good spot by the side of the

road where we could stop and boil the billy, waiting for the others to catch up.

Whatever it was, we loved it as we sailed eagerly along our way, grizzling about it,

laughing about it and sticking to it regardless of our reservations or complaints.

What’s a few whinges between friends and lovers, after all?

2 I’ve Been There (and Back Again)

Onstage at the ‘Concert for Slim’ at Tamworth, 2004. As a tribute to Slim, his country music friends came together to raise funds towards building his Centre in his hometown of Kempsey, NSW.

3Introduction

At eighty plus one, i no longer perform onstage six nights a week in small towns

and big cities all over the nation. but i wouldn’t have missed the chance of doing it

for anything. looking at the photos i took on our very first tour in 1954, i know

that slim and i had no idea our lives would turn out the way they did. We just

wanted to be able to travel and sing, to write about what we saw and how we lived.

how could we have even dreamed that technology would one day broadcast slim’s

voice and image to the world as he led Australia in singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’

during the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, or that he would be the first

singer to have his voice beamed to Earth from outer space?

i also see the photos of my family in front of me. Anne grew up to be a leader

for country women artists in her breakthrough early recordings, a fine singer and

songwriter; David went a different way to begin with . . . an emergency medicine

specialist, but still a musician and songwriter at heart. Kate, Anne and greg’s

daughter, is a good writer who can sing and harmonise; James, her brother, is a

singer and songwriter involved in music and film work. Daniel, David and Jane’s

son, is a medical student at present; hannah, his sister, is a singer and writer

working in the music industry. they were almost all onstage for my birthday

concert, and they all came on tour a couple of years ago for the Family Reunion

album we recorded together in 2008. how many other eighty-year-olds have such

a record of a family that sings with her? i wonder how many other women can say

that their family has given them as much love and care as ours has given to slim

and to me?

slim and i have certainly been there, as the saying goes. We’ve also been there

and back again, and you know what? We would probably still be doing it if we’d

had our own way. Even now, and even on my own, there is nothing better than to

head out of town on one of the roads we travelled so often. Yes, been there . . . and

back again. You’re telling me we did!

Joy McKean

I’ve Been There (and Back Again)

A familiar sight backstage was Slim and his battered red teapot.

Introduction 145

OLD tIMe COUntrY hALLSSlim Dusty, 1983

As I pick up my guitar to sing another songI hear the walls of this old hall: ‘You’ve done this thing too long;

You know you’ve been around for years, I guess you’ve shown us all.’I talk like this when I reminisce, with an old time country hall.

I joined a tent show as a kid with a dream and an old guitar, De Silva’s All-Star Cavalcade and Dante was the star;He taught me lots about the game, today I understandHe was a great magician, and he was a fine old man.

I’m a howling cattle crooner, I’m an old time dinosaur;

Hey, let me sing where the rafters ring,In an old time country hall.

I’ve been on the road for forty years and Dante could equal that,You’ll find his faded posters still in some halls way out back;I like to go backstage and dream sometimes and just recall

The shows I’ve had, the good and bad, shared with these country halls.

I’m a howling cattle crooner,I’m an old time dinosaur;

Hey, let me sing where the rafters ring,In an old time country hall.

146

OLD tIMe COUntrY hALLS

When we began travelling with our own show in september 1954,

the usual places to perform were theatres and halls. to the end of

our touring days slim and i always preferred them to clubs. halls

normally had a proper stage and were built to accommodate acoustic instruments

and voices, whereas modern club auditoriums catered more for electronic

instruments with huge sound systems.

Even most picture theatres of the time had a stage because they doubled as

venues for live shows as well as for showing movies. they often had artists and

comedians onstage at interval, especially for saturday matinee showings. the

Mayfair theatre in Kempsey was the stage where young slim Dusty and shorty

ranger made some of their first ‘professional’ appearances. theatre managers were

more approachable then than they are today!

the old halls in many country areas have been allowed to fall into disuse, mainly

due to the availability of local clubs that provide food, drink, and entertainment

in the shape of either pokies or bingo and occasional live performances. Add the

attraction of more comfortable seats and air conditioning . . . An old hall that stifled

you in summer and froze you in winter didn’t have much chance of competing.

147Old Time Country Halls

however, there’s nothing that can beat the

atmosphere of an old time hall that is used

regularly and looked after, and slim loved

showing in them. the very walls lift the sound,

and to walk around one before the show makes

you wonder who has sung or acted on this same

stage, and whether they got a good house or not –

especially when you remember the cost of hiring

the place! then, after the show, when you’ve either

had a good or a bad house – when the audience

has been happy and responsive or the sort that

‘sits on its hands’ – someone has to go down to

the front of the hall and ‘turn out the lights’.

it was surprising how often that ‘someone’ was

reluctant to do the job. but having had to do it

on a very few occasions, i can understand why. it

doesn’t matter whether you have a torch or not,

when the lights go out after the audience has left

and we have packed up our stage gear (and often

all the seats as well), every creak and murmur

of the floor or the walls seems amplified. You

are alone in an empty echoing hall. if you are

superstitious, you start hearing sounds like voices

or audience noises. some halls do have stories to

them; like the one where you can’t keep a certain

door locked. it’s always found open, despite being

secured the previous night.

Dante the Magician was the star of the first

night show slim ever travelled with, and he

Dante the Magician.

Dante and the sawing-the-lady-in-half trick, in our show.

148 Walk a Country Mile

learned a lot of basic stagecraft from Dante. slim and

shorty were raw boys from the bush, only eighteen

and nineteen years old, who approached Dante when

De silva’s All-star Cavalcade performed in Kempsey

at that year’s Agricultural show. Naturally, they were

looking for a job. When they fronted up to him,

Dante said, ‘No, boys, i don’t have anything for you

at the moment, but in a couple of weeks i may have

something.’ that was enough for them to plan to follow

the show run, finding casual work with showground

tent shows such as the Fosters, and join up with Dante

a bit further down the line.

slim’s brother Victor agreed to look after the farm

for a while to let slim have a break, and shorty got

away from home with or without permission. they

headed north with high hopes of the fame and fortune

waiting for them. they did join up with Dante finally,

but when neither fame nor fortune eventuated they

were sleeping on the ground in the show tent and living

on what they could make from selling photographs of

themselves at interval. As sales depended on whether

there were enough young women in the audience who wanted an autographed

souvenir from the young troubadours plus an excuse to say ‘hello’ without Mum

objecting, it was a very uncertain way of earning dinner money. slim decided it

was time to put discretion before valour.

he used the time-old ploy of a telegram from home telling him ‘Mum very ill.

Come home immediately.’ Dante probably knew all about it but gave him some

cash and his train fare from brisbane to Kempsey. shorty was still too unpopular

at home to front up so he went further north, picking tomatoes for a while.

Slim’s train ticket to take him home after the Dante fiasco.

149Old Time Country Halls

it was the usual thing for a night show to leave its name written up somewhere

backstage, and when slim and i started touring we kept seeing ‘the sloggetts’

everywhere we went. the sloggetts were a vaudeville and music family show

who were on the road for years and years. i doubt there was a town, however

small, where they hadn’t shown and left their name backstage. however, in all

our years of touring, we never ever once met any of them or saw their show. We

saw plenty of Dante’s notes on the walls, too. the old halls were a treasure trove

of show-business history. little messages such as ‘good town for a rehearsal’ or

just a list of names from a small show such as ours plus a date would give us an

idea of where the other performers were and what run they were on. there was

an old hall in Aramac, Queensland, that was a real history in itself. the walls

and even part of the ceiling were plastered thickly with posters from shows that

An up-to-date version of the old tradition of leaving your name backstage.

150 Walk a Country Mile

dated from the early twentieth century and

possibly before, and the front proscenium

was painted with advertisements for goods

and medications from local businesses.

that’s gone now, of course.

i have plenty of memories of the old

halls. Once, in south Australia, i was onstage

singing my second song when the curtains

began to close. As they were electrically

controlled, which was most unusual in the

country, i assumed they were being brought

together a little more after being opened too

widely at the beginning. but no, from the

corner of my eye i could see them coming

closer and closer. One of the men backstage

had pressed the wrong button and i ended up

singing to the microphone behind a closed

curtain with a mystified audience out front.

On one of our early tours, we were

showing in a small hall up on the north

coast of New south Wales. A big part of the programme was made up of comedy

sketches that usually finished with a blackout of lights while the participants ran

offstage. slim was playing the straight man in one particular skit, and tore offstage

after the punchline. he forgot, though, that the side of the stage led to a set of

steps going down to the dressing room and so sailed into midair, his arms flailing

wildly. he landed with a thump that shook the whole hall, and then just lay there.

he didn’t even swear at first, and i was getting really upset about his welfare till

he managed a watery grin and a couple of strong opinions on the steps, the hall

and his high-heeled boots that he reckoned were partly to blame. i gave the team

Slim backstage.

151Old Time Country Halls

progress reports on the changing colours of

a dinner-plate sized bruise for about a week

before slim got sick of it.

the halls were sometimes charming,

sometimes uncared for, and very often never

cleaned before we arrived. time after time,

and night after night, we would have to

clean a hall before using it. then we would

set up the seats. After doing the show, we

would have to clean it again – or lose our

deposit – and often stack away the chairs

as well. there were generally no dressing

rooms; once we were rather baffled when a

caretaker tried to charge us extra rent for

using the supper room to change our clothes

in privacy. the alternative was the side of

the stage that had no curtains. the audience

would have had an extra show for nothing!

then, after a spell of halls like these,

we would reach one like the old Kalgoorlie

town hall, a beautiful building that takes you back to the music hall era of the

goldfields when you walk inside. When the seats needed renovation and repair

they were covered in red velvet and, truly, you’d think you were back in the days of

paddy hannan and the goldminers. backstage was a fascinating rabbit warren of

small dressing rooms and i often had visions of cancan dancers running on and

offstage and up and down the stairs to change their costumes. i’m glad i never had

to turn off the lights in that lovely old theatre.

Another grand goldfields building, the Coolgardie Town Hall.

Published in Australia and New Zealand in 2011by Hachette Australia(an imprint of Hachette Australia Pty Limited)Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000www.hachette.com.au

Text copyright © Joy McKean 2011

This sampler is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be stored or reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

978 0 7336 2728 6 (hbk.)978 0 7336 2866 5 (hbk. Limited edition.)

Cover photographs by John Elliott and cover and internal design by Blue Cork