AUSTRALIA'S FIRST HIT SINGLE 'A PUB WITH NO BEER' TURNS 50 YEARS OLD
 3 CD 60 SONG SET Released To Commemorate
The 50th Anniversary Of Our Most Iconic Drinking Song
21st February, 2007
It is not every year that we have the opportunity to celebrate the recording of a truly treasured song that can be called an Australian Anthem. But in 2007 we can. This year the Australian Music Industry and EMI Australia will commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the recording of Australia’s first ever hit single A Pub With No Beer.
This iconic 1957 recording by Slim Dusty, written by Slim’s mate Gordon Parsons was not only the first ever #1 hit by an Australian artist but also Australia’s first ever international hit single (In England, it entered the top three in January 1959 and Internationally sold well over half a million - staggering figures for 1959). It was also Australia’s first ever Gold Record and will always be the only Gold 78 rpm disc to have ever been presented to any Australian artist.
In commemoration of this historic recording’s 50th Anniversary, EMI Australia will release the 3 CD, 60 song set PUBS, TRUCKS AND PLAINS. The set not only commemorates A Pub With No Beer and Slim’s many beer related songs (including Slim’s other #1 Hit single Duncan) but also includes  the songs, over two other themes that Slim also made his own and served him so well over his 60 year career…and his 7 million recording sales. 

But let’s go back to early April 1957. Slim had been booked to record six songs out at the old EMI studios at Homebush. Those six songs had been reduced to four but still he was one song short. Enter his good mate Gordon Parsons who had been talking about a song he was near to completing - something about a pub that ran out of beer.
Recorded in just one take, A Pub With No Beer, or just plain 'Pub' as it is known to thousands of Slim fans, was then pressed as the b-side to Saddle Boy. And that was pretty much that.
But then Bob Rogers, a young Sydney based radio announcer who had just moved form Brisbane, heard the track and started to play it. And play it. And play it. And sales climbed. And climbed until the national tally reached almost 50,000 - EMI’s highest ever for a domestic artist. Other stations started to play the track and then the dam burst. It stayed on the charts a full six months.
A Pub With No Beer would dominate Slim’s life and career for decades. It become Australia’s most iconic drinking song...and in a country that loves a beer…that’s high praise indeed. But more than anything it’s a song that has touched Australian’s everywhere. And continues to do so, and Slim loved that.

As journalist Daniel Lewis described the day of Slim’s funeral, “It was the day an unassuming country musician officially joined Lawson and Paterson in the realm of myth and legend and proved again that overwhelmingly urban and coastal people still look to the bush for their cultural compass.”

Raise your glass. Thanks Slim
SLIM DUSTY - PUBS, TRUCKS AND PLAINS will be Released March 24TH 2007

Slim Dusty. The Legend Continues...
For further information please check out –
www.slimdusty.com.au or www.apubwithnobeer.com or www.musichead.com.au

PUBS, TRUCKS & PLAINS - FULL TRACK LISTING
CD 1 - PUBS CD 2 …TRUCKS
1. A Pub with No Beer (1979 version) 1. No Good Truckin’ Man
2. Born with an Endless 2. Bent-Axle Bob
3. The Bloke who serves the Beer 3. Under The Spell of Highway One
4. Duncan 4. Pushin’ Time
5. Must’ve Been a Hell Of A Party 5. Long Black Road
6. Three Rivers Hotel 6. Names upon the Wall
7. Wobbly Boot (with Rolf Harris) 7. Gotta Keep Movin’
8. He’s a good bloke when he’s sober 8. Truckin’s in My Blood
9. Drowning My Blues 9. Dieseline Dreams
10. Brown Bottle Blues 10. The Lady is a Truckie
11. Old Bush Pub 11. Rolling Down the Road
12. Callaghan’s Hotel 12. Kelly’s offsider
13. Pay Day at the Pub 13. Star Trucker
14. Joe Maguire’s Pub 14. Highway One
15. Nebo Pub 15. Something in the Piliga
16. Finney’s Home Brew 16.Trucks, Tarps & Trailers
17. Little Old One Horse Pub 17. Sally (the Girl on Channel 8)
18. The Pub Rock 18. Mechanised Swaggie
19. The Answer To The Pub with No Beer 19. Lights on the Hill
20. A Pub with No Beer
(Original 1957 Version) 		20. One Truckie’s Epitaph
   
CD3 - PLAINS    
1. Hard Hard Country 11. Things are not the same on the
2. Back To The Old Saltbush Plains 12. Walk a Country Mile
3. When the Rain Tumbles Down in July 13. Cunnamulla Fella
4. Land of No Second Chance 14. Keela Valley
5. The Birdsville Track 15. Paddy William
6. Plains of Peppimenarti 16. The Drovers are Back
7. By a Fire of Gidgee Coal 17. Trumby
8. Things I see Around Me 18. Gumtrees by the Roadway
9. Indian Pacific 19. The Man from Snowy River
10. Cattlemen from the High Plains 20. End of the Bitumen
 
Anyone wishing to support the drive to create the Slim Dusty Centre — at whatever level — are also invited to make their tax-deductible donation to the Slim Dusty Foundation by calling 1800 18 SLIM (1800 18 7546) or by visiting the Centre’s website at www.slimdustycentre.com.au
Further information about the Slim Dusty Centre and its aims is available from the Foundation’s
General Manager, Kathryn Yarnold at 02 6562 6533 or slimdustycentre@midcoast.com.au or our website www.slimdustycentre.com.au
Further information:
The Slim Dusty Foundation  

Kathryn Yarnold
General Manager
18 Kemp Street, West Kempsey.
PO Box 70, Kempsey NSW 2440
Phone: 02 6562 6533
Fax: 02 6562 1849
Email: slimdustycentre@midcoast.com.au
Website: www.slimdustycentre.com.au

 
< print this page > < refresh / reload > < close this window >