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Clip description
Buddy Williams sings a song urging sons to visit their fathers – including a monologue section and a yodelling finale. This excerpt is from the start of the song.
Curator’s notes
Singing with great simplicity and emotion, the 21-year-old Buddy Williams shows here that he was already an accomplished performer by 1939, when this was recorded. His guitar playing is crisp, he sings in his own accent, but his vocals are full of sophisticated accents and flourishes, like the way he ‘cracks’ the word ‘when’ at the end of the first verse. Williams was influenced by the recordings of the American Jimmie Rodgers and Canadian singer Wilf Carter, as well as the New Zealand-born Tex Morton, whose popularity was already high by 1939. Williams and Morton would remain friendly rivals for the next 45 years, with followers on both sides arguing over who was the undisputed king of Australian country music. With the arrival of Slim Dusty, who appears to have been heavily influenced by both, it would become a three-cornered contest.
