WALTZING MATILDA

Created on 08/09/2004
Latest update on 01/06/2023

Artist: John Collinson & Russell Callow
Author: Christina MacPherson/Banjo Paterson
Label: Vocalion
Year: 1926

Australia's national song, by proxy their National Anthem (outvoted in 1977 in favor of Advance Australia Fair), knows no older recorded version than this treasure from the vaults of the National Film & Sound Archive (Sounds of Australia), shiped to England for release. The tune had been waltzing for a while though. The melody is strikingly similar to the one in The Bold Fuselier, a march from the days of Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough. Just read those 18th century lyrics out loud and hear Waltzing Matilda's melody underneath. When during the Boer War (1899-1902) Australian soldiers sang Waltzing Matilda, British troops answered with The Bold Fusilier. Waltzing Matilda's words were written in 1895, by Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson, a lawyer and publicist from Sydney on tour throught the outback, at Dagworth Station, a sheepshearing farm near Winton in central Queensland. The melody had been handled to him by the lady of the house Christina MacPherson on autoharp. It was a marsh she remembered hearing at the local racetrack, Craigielee by Thomas Bulch who'd adapted Scottish Robert Tannahill ballad Thou Bonnie Wood O' Craigielea. Paterson's lyrics were crammed with outback lingo: beginning with a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled... It was that stacking-up that made it, inflaming local pride, spreading like a bush fire. The hotel in Winton where Waltzing Matilda was first played in public not only got a plaque on the wall to commemorate, now the whole city has it's own Waltzing Matilda Center to canalize busloads of bush-tripping Japanese. Banjo Paterson who kept regarding his creation as 'just a little ditty', sold his copyright in 1903 for nearly nothing.

Covers:

1938:

Peter Dawson [another famous Aussie]

1940:

Lulu Ziegler [Danish version as Dans Nu, Matilda]

1956:

Burl Ives

1956:

Willem Tainth [as Goodbye Olympians during closing ceremony Melbourne Olympics]

1957:

Richard Dyer-Bennet

1958:

Bill Haley [as Rock Matilda]

1959:

Jimmie Rodgers [hit AUS]

1962:

Slim Dusty [and also during closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in '00]

1963:

Harry Belafonte

1964:

Seekers [more Aussies]

1971:

A.L. Lloyd [himself a jolly swagman shering sheeps in the outback for a year]

1976:

Tom Waits [in Tom Traubert's Blues]

1982:

Rolf Harris [during opening ceremony Commonwealth Games in Brisbane]

1993:

Rod Stewart [in Tom Traubert's Blues]

1994:

Brodsky Quartet [8 minute version]

2000:

Kylie Minogue [during opening ceremony Sydney Paralympics]

2005:

Billy Childish [as The Bold Fusilier on lp Phoning It In 06/15/05]

2006:

Angela Little [in film Australia]

In 1903, the very year Banjo Paterson sold his copyright, an arrangement by Marie Cowan was published, with on the backside of the sheetmusic a commercial for Billy Tea, named after the jolly swagman's brew near his billabong.

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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