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Buddy Williams (5 September 1918 – 12 December 1986)〔(Artist Biography ) — AllMusic Retrieved 1 January 2014.〕 born as Harry Taylor and also known as Harold Williams was an Australian country musician, singer and songwriter, known as "The Yodelling Jackaroo". Williams was the first Australian to record country music in Australia, three years after the New Zealander Tex Morton made his first recording in Australia. Buddy Williams recorded his own songs about life and times in the Australian bush. It was with Buddy Williams that the Bush Ballad was first born. ==Biography == Williams was born Harry Taylor〔 in the suburb of Newtown, Sydney and was soon placed in Glebe Point Orphanage. After many failed escape bids as a child, he was soon fostered out as a young boy to a dairy farming family at Dorrigo on the north coast of New South Wales. It soon became apparent that rather than looking for a new child to bring up, they were more interested in an unpaid labourer. This was not uncommon in the depression and post depression era where rural child slavery was a fact of life. Times were hard and life on the farm was tough for the young Williams, but it also allowed freedom he never had in the orphanage. He was soon listening to the recordings on an old Gramophone of his favourite singers such as Jimmie Rodgers and soon fell in love with this new music that was to become known as country music. At 15 he ran away from his foster home working for other families in the district. He worked at many jobs and started busking around the north coast of NSW, dodging the Police who frowned upon such activities. Buddy Williams made his first recordings in 1938, a private process disk. The two songs recorded at this historic session were " Where The Jacarandas Bloom", and "They Call Me The Clarence River Yodeller". The latter song was re worked and called "They Call Me The Ramblin' Yodeller" and recorded during his first EMI session on 7 September 1939. These two long lost recordings were later released on a Kingfisher Records collection in the early 1990s as part of an early Buddy Williams catalogue re release. This re release is no longer available. Buddy Williams first sang professionally in 1936 at the Grafton Jacaranda Festival in northern N.S.W. He also did a guest spot on Grafton's radio station 2GF at the time. He left the town of Grafton, NSW and busked his way down the N.S.W. coast before turning up on the doorstep of EMI records in Sydney asking for an audition. He eventually did get the audition and as they say, the rest is history. The Page family from Newcastle who had befriended the young Buddy Williams, bought him his famous black Gibson L-00 acoustic guitar which he used on all his recordings during the 1940s. This beautiful guitar was later accidentally destroyed whilst on tour in the late 1940s. Buddy Williams later recalled that he had spent his entire life trying to find a replacement guitar that had the same sound quality of his old Gibson, but he never found a guitar as good as his old original Gibson. Some of the guitars Buddy used during his career included Gibson Hummingbird, Gibson Country and Western, Gibson J-200, and Martin D 28 to list a few. On 7 September 1939 he recorded six songs for the Regal Zonophone label. More recording sessions followed during the war in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1945. In September 1939, Australia entered WW2 and Buddy Williams enlisted in the army, many of his recording sessions were done whilst on leave from active service. In the final days of WW2 he was seriously wounded during the battle of Balikpapan (1945) and was not expected to live. He was recommended for the Military Medal and carried the mass of scars from his injuries all his life. In 1948 he also starred in a short film titled "He Chased The Chicken" which featured live performances of two of his recordings, "The Overlander Trail" and "The Chicken Song". The studio versions of these 2 songs had been recorded in 1946. Another live song in the film titled "Dear Little Lady of Mine", was never recorded nor released on record. Buddy was also meant to appear in the 1946 Australian movie "The Overlanders" with Chips Rafferty, but was unable to obtain leave from the army at the time. After the war was over and he had recovered from his injuries, he set about forming one of the largest ever travelling rodeo tent shows Australia has ever seen. He toured the length and breadth of the country with this road show, being the first Australian entertainer to take a full road show on tour through the Northern Territory and far north Queensland. He blazed the trail for many artists to follow down through the years, visiting the isolated communities in the outback. He eventually wound back his rodeo and tent show after many years and then toured for 11 months of the year every year with the Buddy Williams Variety Show, visiting the isolated towns and communities of the bush preferring to steer clear of the large cities. For this he earned the respect of country Australians and was a special favourite amongst the Aboriginal people who's isolated communities he regularly performed at throughout the outback. Though Buddy performed mostly in country towns and Outback communities, having once commented that during his long touring career he had performed in just about every country town in Australia, he also performed a small number of shows through the years in major cities. During 1940 he played the Theatre Royal, Sydney alongside Roy Rene and Evie Hayes. He also did an 8-week stint at Brisbane's Theatre Royal. In 1973 he played Sydney's Hordern Pavilion for the UNICEF concert alongside American big name acts such as Tex Ritter and Wanda Jackson. Also in the early 1980s, Buddy did a small number of one off Sydney shows including shows at the "Auburn Baseball Club", the "Seven Hills RSL Club", and a show at the "Star Hotel" in the heart of China Town Sydney where a fan in the audience there to see Buddy perform was famous Australian 50's and 60's Rocker Col Joye. Buddy suffered the first of 2 massive heart attacks whilst on stage in the late 1970s. During one of these hospital stays, Buddy received a call from a lifelong fan called Bert Newton, who was an Australian Television icon. The pair became firm friends and Buddy would later appear on live Australian TV on the "Bert Newton" show singing his famous song from 1946 called "The Overlander Trail" with just guitar accompaniment. Despite the constant touring over the years he continued to record right up until he died in 1986. In fact his last recordings were made just months before his death, despite the fact at the time he was very sick with the cancer that would eventually take his life. He was one of the last Australian singers who only used a guitar as accompaniment. His recordings from 1942 through to 1945 are considered by many good judges to be the finest ever recordings of a vocalist and guitarist. During 1965 he moved over to RCA records where he became a Gold Record recording artist, and recorded a large number of albums, the last album he recorded in 1986 released after his death. In 1977 he was added to the Country Music Roll of Renown along with Tex Morton and Smokey Dawson and in 1980 won the first ever Heritage Award at the Tamworth Country Music Festival for his song "What A Dreary Old World It Would Be". In 1978, Buddy Williams was the subject of a documentary titled ''The Last of the Fair Dinkum Outback Entertainers'', narrated by his good mate John Singleton. It had a film crew travel with Buddy during one of his far North Queensland tours. At the time John Singleton was a famous radio station disk jockey and advertising executive. John Singleton would regularly feature Buddy's songs on his radio shows in the late 1970s and early 1980s. John would also become a regular face in the crowd at many of Buddy's shows. A number of artists have recorded Buddy Williams songs including, Rick and Thel Carey who recorded an album of his songs. The Le Garde Twins who toured with Buddy also recorded a number of his songs, Rex Dallas, Slim Dusty, Nev Nichols, Lindsay Butler and more recently Ashley Cook who recorded a complete album of Buddy's songs. During the 1970s US country Music superstar Wilf Carter also recorded a number of Buddy Williams songs on an album of Australian songs. A number of tribute songs have been recorded by many artists including John Williamson whose song "The Last of the Pioneers" is a fitting tribute to Buddy and his enormous contribution to Australian music. In the early 1970s he gave a young kid with a big guitar a start in his band. He would end up touring with Buddy for a number of years and was a regular session musician for Buddy down through the years. The young kid was none other than the great Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel. The Australian Music Industry owes a lot to Buddy Williams, though many modern artists may know little of him or have no idea of the impact he had on their careers by what he did during those early pioneering days of the Australian Recording and Entertainment Industry. Those early pioneering recording sessions at the EMI studios at Homebush in primitive conditions, produced some of the finest singer / guitarist music ever recorded anywhere, timeless recordings that will live on forever. From the hardships he endured through to the personal tragedies he and his family suffered on the road, he continued to take his music to the people no matter where and no matter how isolated the communities were. He opened up many of the touring circuits that are now regular touring routes for not only Country artists but also artists from other styles of music. Williams died in 1986 and is buried in Brisbane's Lutwyche Cemetery〔(Williams Harold (buddy) ) — Brisbane City Council Grave Location Search. Retrieved 1 January 2014.〕 along with his second wife Grace and their daughter Dorita who had died in 1948 after being accidentally run over by a truck driven by one of the rodeo riders in Williams’ show.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buddy Williams (country musician)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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