Sources of Australian Pop Records from the 50s, 60s and 70s plus some Aussie originals and some New Zealanders
Originals / Covers / Remakes / Songwriters / Chart Positions
The British origins of Sherbet’s first hit single
The Rhode Island band that first recorded an Aussie classic by Melbourne band Cam-pact
The Liv Maessen song that was originally recorded as La Pioggia by Gigliola Cinquetti
‘Froggy’, the British singer-songwriter who wrote Russell Morris’s ‘Rachel’
Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston became known in 1974 for his laid-back, guitar-strumming update of Cole Porter's I Get A Kick Out Of You, recorded in London ( #7 UK #19 Australia).
Nine years earlier, he had emerged from Sydney's folk scene and onto the radio with Sydney Town (1965), a topical song full of droll comments on Australian culture and politics. It charted modestly, in Sydney and Brisbane only, but I heard it often enough on Melbourne radio for it to have become familiar.
The writers of Sydney Town are Shearston with Frank Hardy, the Australian writer, activist, cartoonist and yarn-spinner whose major work is his novel Power Without Glory (1950). The sheet music credits words by Frank Hardy; additional words and music by Gary Shearston, as in the US copyright.
Hardy wrote the lyrics first then shared them with Shearston who worked them up further with whimsical references like Rinso: keep Australia white, linking White Australia immigration policies with a laundry detergent. That particular quip helped to get the song banned from Brisbane radio station 4BH.
Shearston must have been performing the song live before its release, because at least one verse on the recording was suggested by an audience member. Hardy, apparently unimpressed, published his lyrics in the folk magazine Australian Tradition as a song by Frank Hardy © Frank Hardy 1964, with the note This is the original version of Sydney Town as written by me. Folk singers and others who add new verses and variations do so at their own risk.
According to the liner notes to Shearston's 1965 album Australian Broadside, a friend of Hardy had given him a recording by a "calypso singer" of a song about the slums of Kingston town, the capital of Jamaica, and Hardy rewrote those lyrics for Sydney Town.
As an origin story for a song, this is unsatisfying. The liner notes, by academic and Shearston mentor Dr Edgar Waters, tell us nothing about the "calypso singer" or the original song, or its composer.
Nothing is clear. The word "recording" is ambiguous, as it could mean a released record or a private tape recording, and the song could have been an obscurity, orally transmitted with no known composer.
The trails have no doubt run cold, but I have been unable to find anything more about a calypso song, on or off record, that may or may not have been called Kingston Town. All in all, I'm inclined to treat the evidence for it as anecdotal.
And I can't help thinking about Frank Hardy, winner of Australia's 1967 Yarn Spinning Championship with 22 tall stories. Could he have been pulling someone's leg about a calypso singer and a song about Kingston, Jamaica?
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Website by Lyn Nuttall. © Lyn Nuttall 2004-2026. Chart positions courtesy of Gavin Ryan’s Australian Chart Books and Dean Scapolo’s Complete NZ Music Charts. Special thanks to Terry Stacey for information, corrections and suggestions. Thanks also to Tony Watson, Philippe Edouard, Dave Overett.., More…