Slim & I

Today's rodeo has been approved by...

An all round rodeo champion for 1983.

And now, we draw your attention to the arena stage.

It's our pleasure to present the man

who will need no introduction.

Over a span of 40 years, his music has reached out

to all of us, he is a legend.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you put your hands together

for a big Mount Isa welcome to the man who is Australia.

Ladies and gentlemen, Slim Dusty!

Thank you very much. God bless you all!

Sure it has.

I do remember my first impression of

Slim Dusty of being

the most Australian sound that I've ever heard.

It was almost like, it was like a painting of Australia,

those songs.

And you know, without a doubt, we would not have

the career that we have i... in Australia

in music if it wasn't for Slim and Joy.

Slim and Joy were definitely trailblazers

and, and pioneers, not trying to sound like anywhere else.

I think they were a huge influence.

And, you know, I... I see myself

in that tradition, too, of, you know,

perfectly comfortable with writing about the things

around me and signing in my own voice,

but they set a precedent.

Slim, to me, is my earliest guitar memory of, ah...

The first thing I wanted to do was sound like Slim Dusty.

Things don't change.

The road has a certain attraction

and a certain pull that you can't get away from it.

Oh, it's a great feeling when you know you can just go.

And, we were just young people, fell in love,

loved what we were doing, and I'll tell you what,

it turned into a lifetime.

Yes, I just fell in love with the man, not the name.

I didn't care much about the name.

Oh, I don't need that, do I?

Why not?

- Thank you. - That's better.

Too much talking.

I was born in the Hunter Valley

of New South Wales in 1930.

My sister, Heather, was born two years after me

and so, Heather was a bit like Annie Oakley,

anything you can do, I can do better.

Um... So, when was the first time

you heard Slim Dusty's music?

Ah, well, I heard Slim...

and it must have been on one of his records

being played on air.

And, the next day at lunch time, I went down

to either Nicholson's or Palings store

and had a look for this new Slim Dusty song album.

And that's the one where they printed

his photograph back to front.

And it came out looking like a fair-haired 40-year-old,

left-handed, and I wasn't really impressed, you know.

'Cause remember mum said, "Who is that?"

No, I don't remember that. I don't.

- Yeah, she said, "Who is that?" - She probably did.

And, this is when Joy was talking about Slim.

'Cause she knew that you were attracted to Slim,

and she was sort of keeping her eye on him... her girl.

To make sure what she was doing.

- Mm. - Like who is that man?

It wasn't country music back then,

it was hillbilly music.

That was the term everyone, everyone called it, you know.

And hillbilly music, I think, in the 1930s

was the punk rock of the day.

You had lots of cool clothes associated with it.

It came from America and also,

best of all, middle-class snobs hated it.

But certainly it was young people's music

and it had all those kinds of things

that we associate with rock and roll.

So, it really was the, the latest

kind of degenerate music form.

When I was four...

the strangest thing,

legs just gave way.

So, I crawled then the length of the hall.

I was not at all disturbed by the fact

that my legs weren't working.

But I remember dad picked me up

and he sat me on the edge of the kitchen table.

And he would try to get me to lift my legs

and, um, I just couldn't do it.

So, the panic set in then.

And... I was affectively

separated from my family for about three years,

having treatment for polio.

And... the right leg came good.

By the time that I was, um, six,

I was walking quite well.

But I missed the family and

it made me very different.

It was because that's a very impressionable stage

of your life.

See, I used to tinker with the piano

and everything from the time I was little.

Once I found out how the chords fitted together,

um, I could clap and sing to that.

So that's how I began, and, of course, Heather said,

"I want to do that, too."

And so, Heather began singing,

and she was a darn good singer, too.

Mum and Heather, from the time they were

about ten and twelve,

started performing at charity gigs

or church dos for fun.

We did gigs all over the place.

And we had begun recording for Rodeo Records as well.

And I wrote the songs that we were recording.

I wanna know, what was it about yodeling

that got you hooked?

Well, nobody had a band.

And you had to have some sort

of a melody break in between the verses, didn't you?

But, I think that, um, yodeling was very popular...

- In those days. - In those days.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

It was part of the cowboy tradition.

- In those days, yeah. - Yeah.

It's the... it's the guitar solo, you know.

Yodeling is the guitar solo of Australian country music.

And The McKean Sisters, you know,

they were, they were the Hendrix's other,

they were amazing.

And, that was The McKean Sisters,

and this is Radio 2KY Sydney

bringing you another program of "Melody Trail."

It was an exciting time in Sydney.

In, when mum and Heather were in their late-teens.

Country music scene was burgeoning.

Mum was working part-time at Alert Radio

in Parramatta and, um, her boss, Gerry Ormsby

ended up getting them a spot on 2KY.

When we started out, I think Heather must have been

the youngest, um,

radio, ah, host anywhere.

- I think you were only 16. - Yeah.

That was pretty amazing for two young women in that era

to have their own radio show

and everyone wanted to be on it, of course.

You know, jostling.

Tim McNamara was a singer and a promoter.

And, really and truly, he was

like a superstar in Sydney.

He was running these concerts everywhere.

Heather and I worked regularly on all of his shows.

And mum and Heather had quite a unique act,

they were huge.

He knew we had drawing power, too.

There was no one else doing

the sort of act that we were doing.

So you've been writing music

from a very early age, so by this time,

you... you've you've written a lot of songs, do you think?

Oh, yes!

She was always the best writer of the lot, weren't you?

Huh?

'Cause I always used to say to Joy,

"You write them, I'll sing them."

I had the louder voice, but write a song, forget it.

My first job after school was working on the Indian Pacific

as a server boy.

And, um, I never, didn't know the song a... at that time.

I would sort of, came across the song m... much later.

So, that was a very nice surprise to, you know,

liking these songs and then realizing

"Oh, Joy wrote that."

And, uh, and... "Joy wrote this."

So, people say, "Ah, they're simple songs."

But there's poetry, and within, like, half a verse,

you got a driver waving his grey hat,

you got kids catching yabbies down by the river

and a woman hanging her washing on the line.

And it's quite a cinematic song, you can see that song.

That's the end of the song, you should hear the whole song.