JOY MCKEAN I’ve been there JOY MCKEAN (and Back Again) Available 25 October 2011
Standard Edition — Hardcover with Jacket (255 x 235 mm) 224 pages. ISBN 978 07336 2728 6. RRP $39.99
The Limited 1927 Edition — Slipcased Hardback Only 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
For publicity enquiries please contact Jaki Arthur e: [email protected] For sales and marketing enquiries please contact Matt Hoy e: [email protected] t: (02) 8248 0800 Slim Dusty & Joy McKean’S Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000 www.hachette.com.au lifetime of TRAVEL, stories AND SONGS JOY MCKEAN I’ve been there (and Back Again) photographs by john elliott
Introduction I’ve Been There (and Back Again) CONTENTS
Introduction 1 I’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 205 Epilogue by Anne Kirkpatrick 209 About Slim Dusty 213 Acknowledgments 214 Credits 216
Introduction The old portable typewriter at work again for the lyrics of ‘Just Rollin’’. INTRODUCTION
n 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 I 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 1 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 Onstage at the ‘Concert for Slim’ his boyhood – and let’s face it, I was with him for at Tamworth, 2004. As a tribute to Slim, his country music friends more than fifty-two years. What you have in front of came together to raise funds you is the result of a lot of work, a lot of laughs and towards building his Centre in his hometown of Kempsey, NSW. 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 BeenBeen There There (and (and Back Back Again) Again) 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
Introduction 3 A familiar sight backstage was Slim and his battered red teapot. I’ve Been There (and Back Again) OLD TIME COUNTRY HALLS Slim Dusty, 1983
As I pick up my guitar to sing another song I 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 understand He 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.
Introduction 145 OLD TIME COUNTRY HALLS
hen we began travelling with our own show in September 1954, the usual places to perform were theatres and halls. To the end of Wour 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.T heatre 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. 146 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 Dante the Magician. 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 and the sawing-the-lady-in- half trick, in our show. Dante the Magician was the star of the first night show Slim ever travelled with, and he
Old Time Country Halls 147 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 Slim’s train ticket to take him were sleeping on the ground in the show tent and living home after the Dante fiasco. 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.
148 Walk a Country Mile An up-to-date version of the old tradition of leaving your name backstage.
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
Old Time Country Halls 149 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. Slim backstage. 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
150 Walk a Country Mile 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! Another grand goldfields building, the Then, after a spell of halls like these, Coolgardie Town Hall. 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.
Old Time Country Halls 151 Published in Australia and New Zealand in 2011 by Hachette Australia (an imprint of Hachette Australia Pty Limited) Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000 www.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