Musical Performances of Waltzing Matilda

Roger Clarke

Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 1995-2003

This document is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/Perf.html

It is a page within Roger Clarke's Waltzing Matilda site

This section keeps growing, and I've divided it into:

• catalogues; and
• Australian performers; and
• non-Australian performers.

Catalogues

Music catalogues offer many renditions of 'Waltzing Matilda', primarily the 'Victorian' or 'Marie Cowan' Version. For example, Amazon locates multiple versions under the 'popular music' category, plus Laura Leon's performance of Steven Rosenhaus' piano variations under the 'classical music' tag.

Australian Performers

Recently, John Williamson has been making a bit of a career out of singing the song at football matches. Here's a Sydney Morning Herald review of the pseudo-furore about him singing at the Rugby Union World Cup.

Brilliant jazz trumpeter James Morrison has done a version on an album. He may leave national songs alone for a while though, because at the Davis Cup (tennis) Final in November 2003, he chose the (very) wrong Spanish national anthem.

The Sydney Olympics Closing Ceremony on 1 October 2000 included a rendition of the popular or `Marie Cowan' version. It was sung by the great Australian country singer, 73-year-old Slim Dusty (he's a 'country' singer, not 'country and western' - that's American, not Australian). Here are:

• Slim's official bio
• a list of albums with Slim singing 'Waltzing Matilda', from 1962 (?!), 1976, 1978, 1985, 1988 and 1989. And you can bet there will be at least one more to come!! [Postscript of 3 Dec 2003: I think there was, but never again. The bunyip came and got 'im on 19 September 2003, or was it yowie. That resulted in a much-watched funeral]

I've seen reports that, in 1983, astronauts Bob Crippen and John Young played Slim Dusty singing Waltzing Matilda from the space shuttle 'Columbia' as it passed over Australia.

I see in the Australian National Library archives that one of our best playwrights of recent decades, David Williamson, did a screenplay in 1985; but I don't remember seeing the film.

Many other Australian performers have recorded it. Here are some:

• very popular baritone Peter Dawson recorded it in 1938. It appears that it may not have been all that well-known until that recording brought it to the forefront of public consciousness. It's still available on several recordings, including EMI CD MID 166187, and from The Matilda Centre in Real Audio format
• 'The Seekers Complete', from EMI Music Australia, 8146392, has three recordings of Waltzing Matilda. Two are the Queensland version. The third is the 1994 AFL Grand Final version (that's Australian footie). ( The Seekers are a very successful 1960s Australian folk-group - think Peter, Paul and Mary - who are doing a revival at the moment, presumably to set up their retirement funds). Thanks to a correspondent in North Carolina for drawing my attention to this one! I'm also told that Judith Durham and The Seekers released 'Waltzing Matilda' as a single in the mid-1960s
• Frank Ifield also sang it, pretty often
• Dennis O'Keeffe
• Lionel Long
• Tina Arena. She sang it at the Australian Open Tennis Championships in 1994, and the Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final in 1995 (but there don't appear to be any recordings of her singing it). Yes, that's the same Tina Arena who sang at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Games in September 2000
• Noel Watson
• The Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton offers several versions by Australian singers, in Real Audio format, including:
  • Peter Dawson (1938)
  • Slim Dusty
  • country band version
  • Lionel Long singing the original 'Queensland version'
• 'Waltzing Matilda: The Ballad of the Fair Go', a video, including a performance of the song
• you'll find many, many recordings on file-sharing services such as Napster, Gnutella and so forth

Non-Australian Performers

• 'Matilda Variations' is an 8-minute set of piano variations, by American composer Steven Rosenhaus. It was commissioned and premiered by Laura Leon on 22 March 2001 at the Australian Consulate in New York, and has also been performed in Eight Mile Creek, an Australian restaurant in NY. It's available on a single CD, MGP1121, from Music for a G'day Productions, P.O. Box 234193, Great Neck NY, USA 11021-4193, for $US8 plus delivery costs; or from amazon
• the Brodsky (String) Quartet performs an 8 minute 38 second set of variations, which was arranged by lead violinist Michael Thomas (an Englishman) on board a QANTAS flight to Sydney in the summer of 1993, and was first performed in Melbourne in 1994. The disc is called 'Lament', on Silva Classics - D31203 (SILKD 6001), at fax +44 273 670 527. (No, I don't know the company; and no, I don't have a web-address for them. But I see that they're a Koch Distributed Label)
• a correspondent tells me that The Irish Rovers have done something interesting with it. That's fair enough: although the song itself owes nothing at all to Ireland, a huge amount of our folk music and humour does
• Canadian Stompin' Tom Connors recorded a version in 1999
• a correspondent assures me that Harry Belafonte sang it "(the tune is similar to Dennis O'Keefe's "Queensland Version" (cut #5 on his CD), but the words are very close to the Cowan 'Jolly Swagman' version).  The album it was on is 'Streets I Have Walked' (1963)"
• American tenor balladeer Richard Dyer-Bennet recorded a version of the Marie Cowan tune/words in 1957 on his own label ("Richard Dyer Bennet Records 4"). He wrote that he learnt it from a girl in San Jose in 1936, and accompanied himself on the "classic Spanish guitar, setting the chorus in waltz time!? It appears to be available via a site maintained by his nephew
• as for film scores, Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach' (a big success, with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, produced in 1959) used 'Waltzing Matilda' as a recurring theme. I'm embarrassed to have to admit that, as famous as it was, and as old as I am, I've never seen the film. But several film-devotees have told me a lot about it, and it's still available. From a Toronto correspondent: "Ernest Gold wrote the musical score, which uses Waltzing Matilda very effectively as a slow-tempo theme throughout the entire length of the movie.  There is also a very interesting scene in the middle of the film involving a male quartet on a fishing expedition (where Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner have gone for a weekend) singing the song in a very drunken fashion.  The scene segues to a romantic scene in their hotel room with (presumably) the same male quartet in the background performing it beautifully.  It is extremely effective. The movie, it should be stated, is from the novel by Nevil Shute and is actually about the world ending due to a nuclear war (very timely stuff in the late '50s) and the last survivors on the planet are in Australia.  (Don't expect a lot of laughs.  In fact it's kind of beautifully depressing, if that's possible. Other than Peck, all the major stars from it are now dead -- Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire in a rare non-dancing role).  Unfortunately, I believe the recording of the film score is no longer available". A two-part mini-series was filmed in 2000 in Australia; but alas no 'Waltzing Matilda'
• a correspondent-with-credentials tells me that Burl Ives recorded a version when he did his Australian Bush Songs album in the (early?) 1950's, available on CD from c. 1990 on "The Best of Burl Ives" MCA, "Burl Ives - Some of the Best", "Burl Ives - More of the Best" and "A Little Bitty Tear". The same correspondent advised that that 'Waltzing Matilda' was included in a sheet music album "Nine Australian Folk Songs" published by Allan's in 1952, showed Burl Ives on the cover (timed to coincide with his visit here in 1952). WM is included. He continued "It seems ironic that Ives had to bring our own back to our city dwellers. I remember that our folk songs were considered as quaint back them (I'm 56). No-one knew too many of them in the cities. In the bush, in the 50's, our folk songs were heard at dances and at pub singalongs. The radio played only overseas-composed songs, recorded overseas or covered by our artists of the time. Well, what's changed?"
• and, from the same source, Jimmie Rodgers (not the Singing Brakeman Jimmy Rogers) recorded WM on a mono vinyl 12" LP on the Forum Circle label (FCS-9098) for the Connoisseur Record Corp, New Jersey in the late 1950's with the Hugo Peretti Orchestra. My correspondent added that this verson features the famous "Billibog" pronunciation which appalled Australians when it was released here as a single here on the Roulette label and on the mono LP "15 Million Sellers" - Jimmie Rodgers (RL 017). Both listed the credits as "Cowan-Peterson, Allans"
• Webster's Waltzing Matilda - a multimedia CD-ROM. Personally, I don't recommend it, because it's only available for Wintel machines, and I'm a Mac user ...;
• and now for something completely different. A correspondent badly needed a recording of WM played on the bagpipes. A MetaCrawl turned up a site in Denmark offers scripts for a program that can simulate a bagpipe, and, would you believe that one of the scripts available is Waltzing Matilda. The same correspondent advised me of a version being on a now out-of-print CD that was at some stage available from Celtic Corner, called 'Live int he Rockies', by the Victoria Police Pipe Band (presumably Victoria British Columbia rather than the State of Australia). Another correspondent tells me of an Australian called Campbell who's a cameraman for Formula One, and who's often played Waltzing Matilda trackside at Formula One meets around the globe (which is a good place to practise, because no-one can hear him), and at Twickenham (the headquarters of Rugby Union in England)
• you'll find many, many recordings on file-sharing services such as Napster (if it still exists), Gnutella, iMesh, and so forth

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Original Version: 11 February 1995

Last Amended: 3 December 2003

These community service pages are a joint offering of the Australian National University (which provides the infrastructure), and Roger Clarke (who provides the content).