Inducted January 1980
After a long battle with Parkinsons Disease and
a heart condition, "Australia's Yodelling Sweetheart"
Shirley Thoms-Bystrynski died on Thursday, July 1, 1999, at Summerland
Point, Lake Macquarie, NSW, aged 74.
Born January 12, 1925, at Toowoomba in
Queensland, Shirley, was raised in a family of seven children.
Shirley held the distinctions of being
the first female solo act to record country music in Australia,
the first Queenslander to be featured on disc and the first female
to be elevated to the Country Music Roll of Renown.
She started her career singing and yodelling
Tex Morton and Harry Torrani songs and entered a Bundaberg talent
quest, which she won, with Torrani's Mockingbird Yodel.
Businessman Bill Cook saw Shirley performing
and approached her parents to see if he could take the young
girl under his wing and help her build a professional singing
career. He was to encourage Shirley to write her own songs and
to learn how to play guitar.
At the age of 16 (in 1941), Shirley went
to Sydney and recorded for the now famous red and green label
Regal Zonophone under the guidance of then A&R (artist and
repertoire) man Arch Kerr. One of her most famous songs, Faithful
Old Dog, emerged from her first batch of recordings.
She toured with George Sorlie's variety
shows and, during the war, entertained armed forces throughout
Australia and New Zealand. During this period, she kept on writing
songs and recording and later toured with Sole Bros Circus where
she met her first husband John Sole.
After recording several "sides"
for the Rodeo label, Shirley gave up show business for home and
family, but tragedy struck with the premature death of her husband
John. The couple had only one child, a son, Peter.
In 1970, Shirley was encouraged by Tamworth
radio station 2TM to come out of retirement and appear on the
Captain Cook Bicentenary Show in the historic Tamworth Town Hall.
This was to spur a brief re-emergence of Shirley's career as
Eric Scott of Hadley Records signed her to a recording contract.
She recorded two albums with Hadley, the first released in 1970,
the second in 1972.
Some of the most memorable songs Shirley
is remembered for include Where The Golden Wattle Blooms
and Yodelling In The Moonlight.
In her later years, while battling Parkinson's
Disease and a heart condition, Shirley spent a lot of time writing
philosophical poems which, one day, may be released in print.
