She was the first Australian music star to achieve international success and sold 7 million albums in a career spanning five decades.
And twenty years after Slim Dusty’s death, the empire built by the music icon is said to be worth an estimated $5 million.
The boy from Kempsey on the New South Wales Central Coast, who died aged 76 in 2003, set up a company called The Slim Dusty Group in 1973.
Controls the assets of the country music legend and has been renamed Slim Dusty Enterprises, it reported. Confidential on Friday.
According to the publication, the new company was created on May 2, while the Slim Dusty Group entered voluntary liquidation on July 1.
“It’s just a reorganization of all the business interests and it doesn’t affect the overall operation which continues,” Slim’s daughter Anne Arneman said in the report.
Anne is a director of Slim Dusty Enterprises with her brother David Kirkpatrick.
The company controls and manages Slim’s surviving assets, including his intellectual property, finances and the Slim Dusty Centre, which is located in his former hometown of Kempsey, 428 kilometres from Sydney.
Twenty years after the death of Slim Dusty (pictured), the empire built by the music icon is said to be worth an estimated $5 million.
Slim’s widow, Joy McKean, who found her own recognition as an award-winning songwriter, died of cancer at age 93 in May 2023.
“Joy passed away peacefully last night with her family by her side after a long battle with cancer,” her record company EMI announced in a statement at the time.
‘She will be remembered as a pioneer in Australian music.’
Joy was a talented singer and songwriter who wrote many of her husband’s most famous songs, including Lights on the Hill and The Biggest Disappointment.
She won the first Golden Guitar awarded at the inaugural Tamworth Country Music Festival, which she founded, in 1973 for Lights on the Hill.
The Kempsey lad, who died aged 76 in 2003, set up a company called The Slim Dusty Group in 1973. It controls the country music legend’s assets and has changed its name to Slim Dusty Enterprises. Pictured: Slim and his wife Joy, who died last year aged 93
McKean’s musical partnership with Dusty produced more than 100 albums, 45 Golden Guitars and total sales of more than 8 million.
She is survived by her children Anne Kirkpatrick and David Kirkpatrick, both accomplished singer-songwriters, as well as four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Slim Dusty, whose real name was David Gordon Kirkpatrick, died in 2003 at the age of 76.
McKean was born in Singleton, in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, and raised on a dairy farm. Her parents introduced her to the music of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.
When Joy was 18, she and Heather began performing as the McKean Sisters and had their own half-hour radio show.
The McKean sisters had recorded the hits Gymkhana Yodel and Yodel Down The Valley when Joy met Dusty.
Dusty achieved international success with his 1957 song Pub With No Beer and was the biggest name in Australian country music until his death. Pictured: Performing in Tamworth in 2022
They married in 1951, while Heather married country star Reg Lindsay.
Dusty achieved international success with his 1957 song Pub With No Beer and was the biggest name in Australian country music until his death.
McKean wrote Walk A Country Mile, Indian Pacific, Kelly’s Offsider and The Angel of Goulburn Hill for her husband and remained his manager for over 50 years.
She helped found the Country Music Association of Australia and was chair of the Slim Dusty Foundation, which built the Slim Dusty Centre in the singer’s hometown of Kempsey.
In 2021, McKean won the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music at the APRA Awards.
The McKean sisters were inducted into the Australian Chart of Renown Country Artists in 1983 and Joy received the same honour as a solo artist in 2020.
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