Australian country star dies

[netsat]

Australian country music singer Slim Dusty has died today aged 76.

The singer/songwriter, who performed with just a guitar and his trademark cowboy hat, signed his first recording contract in 1946.

But it wasn't until 1958 that his career really took off when he recorded A Pub With No Beer, about a stockman who travels hundreds of miles to an Outback bar only to find it has run out of beer. It because a surprise international hit.

Dusty died at his home after a protracted battle with cancer, said EMI Australia marketing manager Chris O'Hearne.

Dusty was born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in 1927 in the north eastern coastal town of Kempsey, and grew up on a dairy farm at the nearby village of Nulla Nulla Creek.

At the age of 10 he wrote his first song, The Way The Cowboy Dies, and a year later renamed himself Slim Dusty.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Dusty had created a distinctive Australian brand of country music.

"We'll always remember that special style, epitomised really by A Pub With No Beer. He was a one-off, a great bloke in the proper sense of that expression and a great Australian figure and icon," he said.

Dusty went on to be one of the most prolific and biggest selling recording artists in Australia, with more than 100 albums and a total of five million in sales. He performed dozens of concerts across the nation each year, often playing with his family.

In 2000, Dusty performed for his largest ever audience, singing Waltzing Matilda at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.