(Published to Youtube on Jan 17, 2018)
A song from 1920s about Australian outback which my father set to one of his own melodies for his small dance band – the OKAYS – which played around the North of England in the 1930s. More often than not, it was the band’s final slow waltz to bring dance evenings to an end.
The song, written by Bayliss and James and published in 1922, was a (romantic?) celebration of the stockriders and cowboys who had opened up the new territories. I recently came across a dog-eared copy of this in a sheaf of music – a relic from my father’s dance band, but the published score bore no relation to the song my father taught me.
He used to write many melodies for the band and many jigs and reels for the violin – most of which are no longer extant. However, when I was young, he often played this on his violin, having commandeered me to sing the lyrics. I think it is worth preserving and I have tried to present it as it would have sounded in the 1930s.