(Gordon Parsons)
Australia
#1 Sydney #1 Melbourne #10 Brisbane #2 Adelaide [5AD] #12 Perth #3 UK
78 rpm record on Regal Zonophone, B-side of Saddle Boy. Recorded April 1957, released September 1957, charted in Australia from January 1958 when it entered the Melbourne charts.
Followed by The Answer To A Pub With No Beer YouTube, Sequel To A Pub With No Beer and The Pub Rock.
Slim Dusty (1927-2003): revered country music legend, an enduring and extraordinarily prolific recording and touring artist, born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in Kempsey, NSW.
Other versions
This is a much-recorded song. Apart from those featured on this page, the APRA-AMCOS website notes versions by: Anne Kirkpatrick & Slim Dusty, Bluey Francis, Errol Gray, Foster & Allen, Gordon Parsons, The Irish Rovers, Johnny Greenwood, John Williamson, Nokturnl, Richard Clayderman, Rodney Vincent, The Singing Kettles, Stewart Peters and The Ten Tenors. Other sources mention versions by Johnny Ashcroft, The Pogues, Danny O’Flaherty, Patsy Watchorn, The Clancy Brothers, Merv Allen & The Jimmy Johnston Showband and Wilson Cole.
Slim Dusty and Gordon Parsons perform the song in duet on the 2002 album Side By Side: The Dusty Collaborations.
Johnny Cash performed a variation of the song on stage YouTube, and suggested it to Tom T. Hall (see below).
Further reading: 1. Notes on “Pub With No Beer” by Paul Byrnes at Australian Screen. 2. Dave’s Diary: stories about Slim Dusty, including Pub With No Beer. 3. SlimDustyMusic.com.au
(Gordon Parsons) Australia
Original version: live performance
Gordon Parsons wrote and performed A Pub With No Beer while on tour with The Slim Dusty Show in 1956.
Gordon Parsons (1926-1990), known as ‘The Yodelling Bushman’, was an experienced entertainer in his own right who first recorded for EMI in 1946. He was admitted to the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982.
Slim recalled Gordon Parsons finishing the song over a late night bottle of whisky with Chad Morgan, the comic country singer he was sharing a caravan with: Gordon was not recording at that time, and because I was going to record again early in the next year and was short of one song, I asked him if I could use it. Gordon didn’t mind, it was just another one of his ditties to him.
(Slim Dusty & Joy McKean, Slim Dusty: Another Day, Another Town, Pan Macmillan, 1996, pp114-115.)
The 1996 CD The Slim Dusty Show: Live in Townsville 1956 includes Gordon Parsons singing A Pub With No Beer, recorded at Townsville’s Theatre Royale by a member of the audience [available at slimdusty.com.au].
Further reading: Gordon Parsons timeline at Australian Country Music Hall of Fame.
(Dan Sheahan) Australia
Original source of lyrics
Poem written by Irish-born sugarcane farmer Dan Sheahan, published in a Queensland newspaper in 1943.
A Pub Without Beer was adapted for A Pub With No Beer by Gordon Parsons who apparently believed it was an anonymous work in the public domain. Dan Sheahan’s contribution was later acknowledged by Slim Dusty.
Further reading: 1. Text of Dan Sheahan’s A Pub Without Beer alongside the lyrics of the song A Pub With No Beer from thepubwithnobeer.com.au [archived page]. 2. Dan Sheahan biography at AustLit (log-in may be required).
(Stephen Foster)
USA
Original melody
Often cited as the melody of A Pub With No Beer. It is unclear whether this was a case of intentional or unconscious borrowing.
No-one noticed until many years later that the tune is almost identical to ‘Beautiful Dreamer’.
Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen)
Written in 1862 and published posthumously in 1864, Beautiful Dreamer is one of the best-known songs of Stephen Foster (1826-1864), a professional songwriter from Pittsburgh who also wrote such evergreens as Oh, Susannah, Old Folks At Home and Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair.
Further reading: Stephen Foster biography at the University of Pittsburgh’s Centre for American Music.
A version of Beautiful Dreamer by Roy Orbison charted in Australia in the summer of 1963-64 (double-sided hit with the A-side Pretty Paper, #6 Sydney #7 Melbourne #3 Adelaide).
(Gordon Parsons)
UK
Later version
Rolf Harris: Australian singer, songwriter, artist and TV entertainer, long resident in the UK, whose Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport (1960) was a hit in Australia, Britain and the USA. See also Sun Arise and Two Little Boys.
Album track produced by George Martin YouTube.
(Gordon Parsons)
Ireland
Later version
On the 1967 album More Of The Hard Stuff by popular Irish band YouTube.
Also on singles from Belgian & NZ.
(Gordon Parsons, trans. Louis Baret)
Belgium
Later version
#3 Belgium
Single on Sony, a Flemish translation of A Pub With No Beer by Bobbejaan Schoepen (1925-2010), known as The Belgian John Wayne, a popular singer and entertainer in Belgium and neighbouring countries. The artist’s name on the single is simply Bobbejaan.
Bobbejaan’s Flemish Dutch and German versions of A Pub With No Beer made the song hugely popular in Belgium, Austria and Germany, where it is still a well-remembered classic oldie.
Further reading: 1. Official site BobbejaanSchoepen.com 2. Wikipedia’s Bobbejaan entry.
Thanks to Tom Schoepen, Bobbejaan’s son and biographer, for additional details and links.
Single on Ariola-Palette, a German-language version of A Pub With No Beer, a Top 10 hit in Germany, also released in Austria.
The title means “I stand at the bar without any money”.
Also released:
• on Ex Libris, Switzerland, by Blacky White & Orchester Benny Greif (1960);
• on Polydor, Germany, by Gus Backus (1960) YouTube.
(Gordon Parsons) USA
Later version
Single on Houston label Hall-Way by Texan country singer Benny Barnes (1934-1985) whose biggest hit was his co-composition Poor Man’s Riches (1956, #2 Country). He also released Bar With No Beer in 1967 on Kapp.
Disambiguation:
1. This is not the Bar With No Beer later recorded by Tom T. Hall. Benny’s bar is closer to Slim’s pub.
2: There was another country rock singer called Benny Barnes (1945-2015), from Sioux City, Iowa.
Further reading: 1. Benny Barnes bio & discography at Discographie Rock ‘N’ Country. 2. Notes and partial discography at Rockin’ Country Style. 3. Bio at AllMusic.
Thanks to Tom K. White for the version alert.
(Gordon Parsons) UK
Later version
On live LP Cutler of the West, on Columbia.
The lyrics have been reworked, Wurzels style: Adge’s 1968 version gives the song a happy ending – who needs beer if the pub still has cider! (Wurzelmania).
(Gordon Parsons - Nan Frederics) USA
Later version
On 1985 album Song In A Sea Shell, also released as a single on Mercury (1985). The song was suggested to Tom T. Hall by Johnny Cash who performed a variation of it on stage.
The lyrics have been rewritten in an American context, initially credited to Hall but rectified on later pressings. Here, where the wild dingoes call becomes where the buffalo roam. See full lyrics at Lyrics On Demand.
Further reading: Pub with no beer wars with Tom T Hall at Dave’s Diary.
(Gordon Parsons) UK
Later version
On the album More & Merrier by influential, politically conscious Scottish folk singer Hamish Imlach (1940-1996) with Muriel Graves (vocals) and Kate Kramer (fiddle, viola, keyboards).
Hamish Imlach was born in India to Scottish parents. He completed some of his schooling in Brisbane, Australia where his family lived for a few years from 1948 before returning to Scotland.
The opening track on the album is The Castlereagh, from the Australian poem by Banjo Paterson, A Bushman’s Song (1892, originally Travelling Down The Castlereagh). ♫ Listen at YouTube
… a raconteur who taught Billy Connolly, a singer who taught Christie Moore, a blues guitarist who taught John Martyn
Ewan McVicar on Hamish Imlach, widely quoted e.g. here
Further reading: Hamish Imlach at Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame.
(Gordon Parsons) Australia
Later version
Aussie rock band with a social conscience dips the lid to Slim on the 1998 various artists album Not So Dusty: A Tribute To Slim Dusty. YouTube
(Gordon Parsons, trans. Louis Baret) Belgium
Later version
On 2001 album Marginal EP.
Remake of Cafe Zonder Bier, Bobbejaan Schoeper’s 1959 Flemish Dutch language version of Pub With No Beer (see above).
This was also heard in Dead Man Ray’s 1999 updated soundtrack to the film De ordonnans (1962, Belgian Flemish title Café zonder bier).
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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…