Watch Slim Dusty perform ‘On The Road Again’ with Willie Nelson
Expansive, rusted landscapes; scorching heat; dusty roads of impossible length: it’s easy to see why Australia has given birth to some seriously good country music. The best of it, many would argue, was written or performed by one Slim Dusty. Here, the Australian country legend performs a brilliant rendition of ‘On The Road Again’ alongside America’s own Willie Nelson.
Widely regarded as Australia’s King of Country, Slim Dusty wrote, recorded and performed for something like 70 years. He not only helped introduce country music to Australia but continued to sustain it over the subsequent decades, blending elements of blues and rocks with his hillbilly and folk roots.
Slim was born David Gordon Kirkpatrick at Nulla Nulla Creek in 1927. His early days were spent on the family dairy farm, where he learned to love music through his father, a fiddle player. Around the age of ten, he heard an aborigine song called ‘The Drunkard’s Child’ and became fascinated by music and songwriting. Within a year, he’d written his first song, ‘The Way The Cowboy Dies’, and legally changed his name to Slim Dusty.
By 15, Slim was a seasoned performer and taking his first steps into recording. After talking his way into a couple of local studios and radio stations, he began recording songs at his own expense. In 1945, he wrote ‘When The Rain Tumbles Down In July’, a bush ballad that became his first commercial hit. By November 1946, he’d moved to Sydney and bagged an opportunity to record six songs in a professional studio. These were released as three 78rp singles beginning with ‘When The Rain’. With that, his career was made.
By the 1980s, Slim had been adopted by American country fans. He was, in their eyes, everything American country music had lost. He was authentic, fascinated by landscapes and the people who lived on them, and rooted in a culture of hard graft. The only American singer who could rival him was Willie Nelson, who, in 1980, released his classic album, Honeysuckle Rose.
The album’s standout track, ‘On The Road Again’, was an instant country classic. Written in a flash of creative energy, the song came while Nelson was dealing with a bout of airsickness during a flight with Jerry Schatzberg, the director of the Honeysuckle Rose movie, and its producer Sydney Pollack. Remembering how the song came together, Nelson told Uncut: “They were looking for songs for the movie and they asked me if I had any idea. I said, ‘What do you want the song to say?’ and Sydney said, ‘Can it be something about being on the road?’ It just started to click. I said ‘You mean like, On the road again, I can’t wait to get on the road again?; They said, ‘That’s great. What’s the melody?’ I said, ‘I don’t know yet.'”
See the performance below.
