Slim Dusty’s incredible music milestone with 1000 weeks on the Australian ARIA charts

EVEN a pub with no beer would be moved to cheer national treasure Slim Dusty on being the first artist to reach a new music feat, as his music continues to be played across Australia.

EVEN a pub with no beer would be moved to cheer national treasure Slim Dusty on being the first artist to notch up 1000 weeks on the Australian charts.

The Very Best Of Slim Dusty has held strong in the ARIA country charts for two decades since its release in 1998, adding considerably to his haul of more than seven million album sales.

His wife, musical partner and manager Joy McKean has a clue why the King of Country is still in the charts 15 years after his death.

“You would think everyone in Australia would already have it, wouldn’t you?” McKean said with a chuckle.

“People buy it and if they like it they buy it as presents for other people.

“Everyone wants one for their car.”

There is something to that theory considering Slim and his family country band spent six decades touring every nook and cranny of Australia.

His music is the travelling kind.

And it appears it is also the enduring kind, his songs being passed down the generations.

McKean said her four-year-old great grandson Hugo has to play Indian Pacific, one of several songs she wrote for her husband, every night before he goes to bed.

“It’s not just the kids out in the country, kids in the city are finding it through their parents,” McKean said.

Country singer Slim Dusty with his guitar.. Picture: David Caird.

“I know a city accountant who has two boys aged nine and 12 and they play Slim’s songs every night before they go to bed too.

“They have their own CDs, they don’t want to play their dad’s.

“Who knows when they are teenagers, they might have heavy metal for half an hour and Slim for the next.”

McKean’s anecdotal evidence of a younger generation finding the songbook of Slim Dusty is backed up by his streaming figures.

His version of Waltzing Matilda, which closed the Sydney Olympics in 2000, has almost 1.2 million streams.

Slim’s entry into the musical space age is unsurprising if you consider he was the first singer to have their voice beamed from space to earth when astronauts played Waltzing Matilda as the space shuttle

Columbia passed over Australia in 1983.

“I was quite surprising by the streaming,” McKean said.

“Slim used to say ‘I have recorded on every technology except the cylinder.’ He wasn’t around for the steaming era but he would have found it mind-boggling.”

His canon of country classics include A Pub With No Beer, the first ever international hit for Australian artist, Duncan, The Lights On The Hill and Cunnamulla Fella.

Slim Dusty has been a constant in the ARIA charts. Picture: Nathan Edwards

McKean said Slim was a “straight forward singer” who resonated with his audience with the spirit he brought to the songs.

She felt the force of that spirit herself while watching him at a concert in Chillagoe at the base of Cape York in North Queensland.

“For the first half of the show, I wasn’t on stage so I snuck around the side to see how they were enjoying it,” she said.

“You could see Slim on stage was really enjoying it and in his element. I stood there watching, and honest to god, it hit me like a blinking bullet, his power.

“I had never really felt the force of him before but I did now. I was absolutely shocked, I had absolutely no idea this was what he was projecting out there while I’ve been standing beside him playing bass.”

Slim's wife Joy McKean pictured with their 1972 Ford Fairlane Old Purple and touring caravan. Picture: Nathan Edwards

Dusty’s recording career built the foundation for EMI Music in Australia, signing his first deal in 1946 and recording 106 albums.

“Slim is a national hero and the rock upon which we built EMI Australia,” said EMI managing director John O’Donnell.

“We will forever be indebted to Slim for his music, his mateship, and the way he took his music and his storytelling to every corner of this nation.”

His phenomenal ARIA chart feat of 1000 weeks for his greatest hits set compares to 479 weeks for The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac, 424 weeks for Greatest Hits, Guns N’ Roses, 339 weeks for Essential Michael Jackson, 338 weeks for Adele’s 21 and 318 weeks for Ed Sheeran’s +.

McKean is deeply proud her husband is “still doing amazing things.”

And his legacy lives on in his musical family.

His country star daughter Anne Kirkpatrick often shares her tours with son James Arneman and his wife Flora Smith, known as Small Town Romance.

Son David Kirkpatrick is also an accomplished singer and songwriter.

Originally published as Slim Dusty’s incredible music milestone with 1000 weeks on the Australian ARIA charts