Death
Dusty died at his home in St Ives, New South Wales, on 19 September 2003 at the age of 76 after a protracted battle with cancer.
Thousands gathered at St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, on 26 September 2003 at a state funeral attended by the prime minister and the opposition leader. Anglican Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen's tribute included leading the congregation of family, statesmen, fans, and musicians in the singing of "A Pub With No Beer". The funeral featured tributes from Slim's children as well as words from other national music stars (Peter Garrett and John Williamson) and music from Graeme Connors, Kasey Chambers, and Troy Cassar-Daley. Thousands of fans travelled from around Australia to stand outside the cathedral.
At the time of his death, Dusty had been working on his 106th album for EMI. The album Columbia Lane - the Last Sessions debuted at number five in the Australian album charts and number one on the country charts on 8 March 2004. It went gold after being on sale for less than two weeks.
Columbia Lane is a tribute to the laneway juxtaposed to Parramatta Road in Strathfield (near the railway bridge link), where the EMI studios once stood (now Kennards Hire), and it is where he traversed to begin his music career.
In 2004, Tamworth hosted the "Concert for Slim" as a memorial tribute featuring more than 30 Australian musical artists including Paul Kelly, Keith Urban, Lee Kernaghan and Kasey Chambers
In 2005, a statue of the "Cunumulla Fella" was unveiled in Cunnamulla, Queensland, in tribute to Dusty and Stan Coster and to the iconic song of that name performed by Dusty with lyrics by Coster. The song recalls Coster's days working as a sheep-shearing "ringer" around Cunnamulla in the 1950s. Dusty recorded the song and it became an enduring country music hit, later covered by Lee Kernaghan. The statue was unveiled by country music personalities Anne Kirkpatrick (Dusty's daughter), Jayne Kelly, and Tracy and Russell Coster.
EMI Records' Australian sales of Slim Dusty records surpassed 7 million in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Slim Dusty
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