G'day Hrothgar,

Henry Lawson certainly was not a musician, in the playing sense, since he had a serious hearing defect, but he often referred to his poems as songs (as Paterson does in the case of one of his poems that does sing well - the one that we call Travelling Down the Castlereagh ... and he called The Bushman's Song). I think Lawson had something closer to "Bush Songs" in mnd, while Paterson mostly had Kiplingesque ballads as his model.

Anyway, he discussion of Slim Dusty's version of The Man from Snowy River sent me off to listen to it once more. I have all 7 minutes and 30 seconds of it on a 1982 2-CD set from EMI: #8146732, Australia, Our Land Our Music ... still available ... but I have only seen it recently as two separate CDs. Warren Fahey's 1997 compilation, on their 2-CD set: #7243 8 14852 2 4, Australia, Our Land Our Music, Volume 2 is a much better constructed, thematic look at a wider range of Australian music (I mean - do you really want 5½ versions of Waltzing Matilda in one compilation!) - but I have not been able to find that one lately. (A pity; it's one of the few compilations I would not be embarrassed to give as a gift to an overseas friend.)

Anyway, Slim's version does work - even if it veers a bit towards recitative, with guitar backing - relieved by tune modulations and backing changes. I think it shows up a definite point about Country Music - the listeners are prepared to listen ... to the whole story... in a way that Pop Music abandoned decades back. Folk style falls in an ill-defined ground somewhere between, depending on age, national alliance and venue. I think that Australians share with Americans this underlying respect for 'news' presented in song. Our common ancestors came from traditions which elaborated on style, because the content was already well known to the listeners: family, friends and near neighbours.

When these same people found themselves in then open spaces of one 'new world' or another, they acquired a mobility, both geographic and social, that was unimaginable at home. Every new contact was a bearer of possibly vital news of conditions, advantages or perils on the road ahead - and song shouldered its share of this burden, along with 'yarns' and verse. This endured, indeed endures still in country regions of Australia, but the great mass of the population has gravitated to the big cities ... and 7½ minutes is two drinks, a mobile 'phone call and a quick check of the SMS message bank.

Regards,

Bob Bolton