More than half a century after his original hit recording, the legendary tunes of Mr Slim Dusty will arrive in pubs – with or without beer – in time for Australia Day.
While the overwhelming majority of pubs always served the amber gold, until now none have had the songs of the man that pondered the predicament of no beer in his 1957 release.
In fact, every pub was the Pub with no Slim. The rights to one of Australia’s best-known artists have been closely protected and not commonly available for public performance.
The great bush balladeer crooned stories of Australia and Australians like no other artist, delighting crowds with ditties about drovers, ringers, rogues, rascals, truck drivers, pubs and publicans.
The celebrated ‘Pub With No Beer’ was in fact the first Australian track to break onto the international charts in Britain, US and Canada. But many Dusty odes have held appeal for the humble public house; music provider Nightlife reports pleas for the likes of ‘Cunnamalla Fella’ at Cunnamalla, ‘Ringer From the Top End’ in Katherine, and ‘Duncan’ from virtually every country pub in the country.
For the past ten years Nightlife has attempted to negotiate access to the Dusty back catalogue, penning proposals, propositions, and pitch decks. Finally, the company has been granted special access from Joy McKean, Slim’s wife.
As part of the debut, Nightlife’s video specialist has remastered two of the man’s quintessential tracks (‘Pub With No Beer’ and ‘Duncan’), bringing a little more definition to the faded old video recordings.
ALH’s Victoria Hotel in Goondiwindi, south-east of Brisbane on the NSW border, is planning an esky full of Australia Day activities, including thong-throwing and pie-eating competitions. There will be the customary rendition of ‘Goodiwindi Moon’ – a tune written about the town by Lee Kernaghan – and of course the welcome addition of Slim.
“We’re excited to deliver Slim’s music to our staff and patrons who have all been calling out for Slim and ‘more Aussie country music please!’” offers venue manager Hannah Bayley.
Slim Dusty’s body of work is voluminous, counting over 100 Albums. More will be released over time, and Nightlife calls on venues using its crowdDJ system to turn it up this Australia Day.
“Slim’s legacy to Australian music is immense,” says Matthew Lymbury, Nightlife’s head of music and content.
“Not only did he blaze a trail to the international market that hadn’t existed previously, but he showed that you could sing songs about Aussies and sound like an Aussie.
“Bringing these film clips to life has not only been an honour but great fun. Seeing classic Aussie blokes from the 70s sitting in a bar singing along is such a great little time capsule of Aussie history.
“With advancement in digital technology our video archaeologist Maurice Powell was able to clean up a lot of the noise and make it really feel like you are sitting in the pub with Slim having a beer with Duncan.”
