2008 Additions

This piano roll was issued by the Duo-Art Company in May 1919 shortly after the music was published by Schott, London. For Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Country Gardens was both the blight of his life - he loathed the work for its coarseness and huge public appeal - and his biggest hit, bringing in a considerable proportion of his income for the rest of his life. Grainger's double-edged bounty was based on an English Morris dance-tune or 'Handkerchief Dance' collected by Cecil J.Sharp and given to Percy sometime around 1908. This became the basis of a notated "improvisation for solo piano", composed on 18 July 1918 as a birthday present for his mother Rose Grainger, but lovingly dedicated to the memory of Edvard Grieg. These 'Aeolian' Duo-Art rolls (Aeolian catalogue number 6149) were made in real time by a perforator punching holes as Grainger played the piano. Dynamics were added simultaneously by a producer using two rotary controls. Grainger was one of the 'Aeolian' Company of New York's most popular artists: between 1920 and 1933, he cut 12 piano rolls for the company

(NFSA Title No. 510950 (piano roll))

Over 600 entries for Waltzing Matilda appear in the NFSA's catalogues, making this Australia's most recorded song. This is its first known recording, probably recorded by the Queensland-born tenor John Collinson in London in 1927. It was released on the Broadcast Deluxe Series label (W573) with My Old Home Town (Mildura) on the other side but sold very few copies. At the time, the recording industry barely existed in Australia and the few releases by Australian artists were recorded and manufactured overseas. The same recording was released on the UK label Vocalion (X 10021) in 1927 with The Maori Flute on the flip side.

(NFSA Title No. 283469 (1926), 322708 (1927), 283470 (mp3)

This recording contains the voices of Don Bradman, Bill Woodfull, Clarrie Grimmett, Alan Kippax, Stan McCabe and Tom Wall. If they sound a mite cocky, they can be forgiven: they were recorded in London just before their triumphant return to Australia following Australia's draw with England in the 33rd cricket Test series in June-August 1930. The 21-year-old Bradman returned home a hero, having notched up record batting scores at Lord's and in Leeds. Recording the voices of famous people, such as the touring Kangaroos cricket team and the transoceanic pilots of the day such as (Sir) Charles Kingsford-Smith and Bert Hinkler was quite common at this time. The recording is introduced by an anonymous 'Australian girl' working in London at the time.

(HMV EB52)

(NFSA Title No. 266765 (mp3))

The words of the Aeroplane Jelly jingle were written by Albert Francis Lenertz (aka 'Frank Leonard of Marrickville', 1891-1943), a wholesale grocery and wines-and-spirits merchant in Sydney, who was co-partner in a company which manufactured and marketed the 'Aeroplane' brand of jellies and other products. Initially, Leonard/Lenertz's tune was a tribute to War-time Prime Minister 'Billy' Hughes - try singing lines like "Folk in the city and folk on the plain/ Billy's great deeds for our land can acclaim" to the famous tune! - but the song failed to stir the patriotism of the populace, so its author put it to the service of advertising, re-working its lyrics in 1930.

That same year, it was first recorded by Amy Rochelle, a music hall entertainer who did child imitations, but the best known recording was made in 1938 by the seven-year-old Joy King (later Joy Wigglesworth). She was chosen as the result of a state-wide competition and her version was broadcast for many years as part of a very effective advertising campaign for the jelly crystals, a song which has remained one of Australia's most endearing 'sing-along' favourites over the decades.

(NFSA Title No. 402848 & 281850)

There are few pieces of music in Australia as instantly recognisable as Ronald Hamner's Pastorale - the theme music to ABC radio's serial Blue Hills, by Gwen Meredith, which ran for 5,795 episodes from 1949 to 1976. Best known for his light orchestral and brass band compositions, Ronald Hamner (1917-1996) was an English composer who emigrated to Australia in 1975. The original recording of his Pastorale was made by the New Century Orchestra, conducted by Sidney Torch, and was released on a 10" 78rpm disc (FDH023) by the mood-music company Francis Day and Hunter. The ABC subsequently processed recordings of the theme dubbed from the original. More recently, it has been appearing in a modified arrangement in 'popular classics' concerts by the Australian symphony orchestras.

(NFSA Title No. 503205)

This is perhaps Slim Dusty's best known song and one that created several milestones in Australian recordings. It was the fledgling music industry's first Gold Record awarded to an Australian performer and the biggest selling Australian record to that time. Released on a single 78rpm side at a time when that format was rapidly disappearing, this recording effectively marks the end of the 78rpm era in the Australian music industry. The song was written by Slim's mate Gordon Parsons, and probably based on a poem written in North Queensland by Dan Sheahan in 1943. Sheahan was an Irish cane-cutter who visited the Day Dawn Hotel in Ingham for a beer, only to be told the place had been drunk dry the previous night by a group of American servicemen. Sheahan's poem was published in the NQ Register the following year as 'A Pub Without Beer' and Parsons found it a short while later.

(NFSA Title No. 190647)

(Regal Zonophone G25498)

Courtesy of EMI Music Australia

Irkanda IV is the first major work by Australia's leading composer Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) to be commercially recorded and to reach a national and international audience. The fourth in a series of works sharing the title Irkanda (which the composer explains as "a remote and lonely place"), it is scored for solo violin, string orchestra and percussion. It was written as a memorial to the composer's father, Joshua Sculthorpe, who died in 1961 while the composer was studying at Oxford. It is the first work to present to a wide audience Sculthorpe's views on the deployment of Indigenous materials as a means of endowing Australian music with a recognizable Australian identity. It has been recorded at least seven times and is the subject of a forthcoming book by Fiona Richard, to be published in the UK in 2009, marking the composer's 80th birthday.

(NFSA Title No. 332275)

Courtesy of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Harold J Pollock was a well known film maker and nature photographer in Australia during the 50s and 60s. The NFSA holds numerous Pollock films of Australia fauna as well as this 7” EP which came in a 24 page book with detailed information and photographs of each bird and animal. This recording is just part of the NFSA's extensive holdings of Australian nature sounds, but one of only a few to be commercially released.

(NFSA Title No. 255276)

Billy Thorpe (29 March 1946 - 28 February 2008) was a major pop star in the mid 60s, but reinvented himself a few years later by embracing a more hard-edged British blues/rock style. Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy) became what Thorpe called his 'personal anthem', reaching no. 2 on the national charts. This recording of Thorpie's live performance at the 1972 Sunbury Festival in Victoria captures one of the most powerful moments in Australian music.

(Havoc H1012)

(NFSA Title No. 322350)

Aboriginal rock-reggae band No Fixed Address came together at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CASM) in Adelaide in 1978. Composed by Bart Willoughby, 'We Have Survived' appeared initially on the sound track album for the award winning film 'Wrong Side of the Road'. In 1982 the track appeared on the EP 'From My Eyes'. This composition is viewed by many as an anthem of the Aboriginal land rights movement in the 1980s and since that time it has grown in significance as an iconic Aboriginal protest song. Bart went on to become the first Aboriginal musician to score a feature film and the first to sign a record deal. He was also leader of the first overseas tour by an Aboriginal rock band. Currently the anthem features in the Murundak performance and recording by The Black Arm Band, a 'super-band' of Indigenous and politically attuned Australian musicians.

(Rough Diamond Records RDS 3511)

(NFSA Title No. 210397)