Slim dustys biography
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Bio
Early Years
He’s known universally as Australia’s King of Country, and it’s a title to which Slim Dusty can still lay an unchallenged claim, close to a decade after he passed away and took up his place at the head of the table in Country Music Heaven.
Slim has been the face of Australian country music for its entire history – close to 70 years, since its early roots in hillbilly and folk music. In that time, he evolved with the industry – setting the agenda and changing with the times.
Born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in 1927, at Nulla Nulla Creek near Kempsey, changed his name in 1938 at the age of 11 and never looked back.
In 1951 he married fellow country singer Joy McKean, and the pair set off on a lifetime of travelling Australia, performing the music that emerged from their much-loved homeland, and that conveyed its passion and spirit so well. Along the way, they brought daughter Anne Kirkpatrick and son David Kirkpatrick into the world.
Recording Success
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Dusty, Slim
Singer
For the Record…
Selected discography
Sources
Although few people outside Australia are aware of his decades-long popularity in his home country, Australian singer Slim Dusty is one of the most prolific and best-selling recording artists in his native land. His music celebrates the lives and spirit of Australian rural people. He has written more than 1,000 songs, has recorded more than 100 albums, and has sold more than five million copies of those albums during the six decades of his career. Several of his songs, most notably “A Pub with No Beer,” have become unofficial Australian anthems of national identity.
In his website biography, Dusty described his music as “songs about real Australians. I have to be fair dinkum [honest] with my audience. I can’t see any other way of doing it. You have to believe in what you are singing about.” The website also notes that Dusty works hard to make his fans feel that “
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David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE (13 June 1927—19 September 2003) was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. 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 (Pub With No Beer). He received an unequaled 37 Golden Guitar and two ARIA awards and was inducted into the ARIA ingångsrum of Fame and the Country Music Roll of Renown. At the time of his death at the age of 76, Dusty had been working on his 106th skiva for EMI Records. In 2007 his domestic record sales in Australia surpassed seven million.
Over the course of his career, he collected more gold and platinum albums than any other Australian artist.
Dusty not only recorded songs written by han själv and other fellow Australian performers, but