G'day McGrath,

Well, the Irish(-Australians) can claim some of the credit for A Pub With No Beer: the words Slim sang were a reworking, by Gordon Parsons, of a poem written by Paddy Sheahan and published in a (? Townsville, Queensland newspaper ... I need to check my old Singabout magazines, at home for the full story) 1 January 1944.

Paddy's poem was about a pub drunk dry by celebration of the Allied victory in the Coral Sea Battle ... that's why:

"... the publican's waiting for the quota to come ...".

Parsons came across the words in the '50s and added a few references to his own local pub at Taylors Arm, New South Wales ... and pinched the first part of Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamer for a tune!

I recently sent Mudcat's Burl a CD that EMI had remastered from Slim's and Parsons' rather worn copies of a home-produced "pirate LP" cut by a bloke who recorded Slim's travelling concert show in 1956 ... in Townsville, as it happened ... on a wire-recorder! In that concert, A Pub With No Beer is sung by Parsons, but it was Slim that made it a hit.

Regards,

Bob Bolton