#14: Waltzing Matilda by David Carroll & Orchestra

City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: January-February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #112
YouTube: “Waltzing Matilda”
Lyrics: “Waltzing Matilda”

David Carroll (given the birth name Rodell Walter Schreier) was born in Taylorville (IL) in October 1913. There is very little to find in a search online about his background. By the time he was an adult, David Carroll was becoming an accomplished musician, able to arrange, direct and conduct music. In 1952, by the age of 28, Carroll conducted the orchestra backing Vic Damone on his #13 hit “Sugar”. Carroll was back in the recording studio the following year with Damone to craft the #10 hit “April In Portugal”. As well, he conducted two Top Ten hits in ’53 for Rusty Draper: “No Help Wanted” and “Gambler’s Guitar”. In 1954, he conducted the number-one hit, “Sh-Boom”, for the Crew Cuts. (The song was a ‘white cover’ of the original by the R&B group The Chords. Carroll was in the studio for the Crew Cuts subsequent mid-50s hits: “Earth Angel”, “Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)”, “Gum Drop”, “Angels in the Sky”, “A Story Untold”, “Don’t Be Angry” and “Young Love”.

In 1955, David Carroll’s “Melody Of Love” climbed to #8 on the Billboard pop chart, and number-one for eight weeks on the Cashbox Best Selling Singles chart. He also conducted Rusty Draper’s biggest hit record, “Shifting, Whispering Sands”. In addition, he also conducted two Top 20 hits for Draper in 1955: “Seventeen” and “Are You Satisfied?” In the winter of 1955-56, Carroll’s “It’s Almost Tomorrow” peaked at #20 on the Billboard pop chart. In 1956, Carroll conducted the Diamonds’ Top 20 hits “Ka-Ding-Dong”, “The Church Bells May Ring”, and cover of the Frankie Lemon & the Teenagers hit “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”.

David Carroll’s subsequent single releases all failed to crack the Top 40 on the national pop charts in the USA. Both “The Ship That Never Sailed” and his cover of the Jane Morgan hit, “Fascination”, languished in the bottom half of the Top 100 in 1957. Meanwhile, David Carroll was in the recording studio providing orchestration for The Diamonds’ Top 5 hit “Little Darling”.

In 1960, David Carroll and His Orchestra released a single of the Australian tune “Waltzing Matilda”. Carroll’s band was accompanied by a male vocal chorus that sang the lyrics.

“Waltzing Matilda” is credited to Marie Cowan and A.B. “Banjo” Paterson. Marie Cowan was the wife of one of the managers of Billy Tea, an Australian company that win 1903 wanted to use the unpublished bush song, “Waltzing Matilda” for an advertising jingle for their tea. She changed the lyrics slightly from the 1895 song by Banjo Paterson. In the original by Patterson, the swagman is confronted not by troopers, but several policemen. He decides to drown himself in a water-hole by a coolibah (coolabah) tree. In Cowan’s revision, she has the swagman instead declare to the troopers, “‘You’ll never catch me alive,’ says he.” Eucalyptus coolabah is a tree that typically grows to a height of 20 m (66 ft) and has hard, fibrous to flaky grey bark with whitish patches on part or all of the trunk and sometimes on the larger branches.

The song is about a swagman, which in Australia means an itinerant worker. The swagman sets up camp near a billabong, which is a small lake formed by a river. He starts to boil water in his billy, which is a tin pot for boiling water and basic cooking, one waits for it to boil. A stray jumpbuck (sheep) comes down to the billabong for a drink. The swagman grabs it and throws it in his tucker bag, slang for food bag, to eat later. The “swag” belonging to the swagman is the collection of items a swagman carries in his travels, typically in a pack of some kind. The swagman nicknames his swag “Matilda.” “Waltzing” means walking, so “Waltzing Matilda” means the swagman is walking with his stuff.

The squatter (land owner) sees him and the troopers come to question him. He evades them by jumping in the billabong, but his plan is flawed: he can’t swim. So, perhaps the swagman had planned to evade the troopers, only to remember he couldn’t swim and died by accident. (Or on purpose). In any case, the swagman drowns, and now his ghost inhabits the billabong.

Paterson was not a Swagman, but was traveling with fiancee in Queensland. When they stopped in Dagworth Station for a stay, Paterson heard the term “Waltzing Matilda.” When he came across a water hole on the grounds, he made up the verses for his unpublished song.

Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson

The background to Patterson’s lyrics lie in events of the Great Shearers’ Strike of 1891 and following. In July and August 1894, as the shearing season approached, a strike broke out again in protest at a wage and contract agreement proposed by the ‘squatters’. During July and August, seven shearing sheds in central Queensland were burned by striking union shearers before shearing could begin with ‘scab’ labour.’ Early on the morning of 2 September, a group of striking union shearers, firing rifles and pistols, set fire to the shearing shed at Dagworth. The fire killed over a hundred sheep. The shed was defended by Constable Michael Daly, Bob Macpherson and his brothers and employees. In the early afternoon of the same day, Senior Constable Austin Cafferty, in Kynuna, was informed that a man had shot himself at a striking shearers’ camp in a billabong 4 miles from Kynuna and about 15 miles from Dagworth. When he arrived at the camp, S/C Cafferty found the body of Samuel Hoffmeister, also known as “Frenchy”, with a bullet wound through the mouth, in an apparent suicide. Hoffmeister was a known leader of the striking unionists and suspected of being involved in the arson attack at Dagworth on the night before.

As well, Banjo Patterson while on horseback as part of a small group in the Dagworth area, “came to a waterhole (or billabong) & found the skin of a sheep which had been recently killed—all that had been left by a swagman”. This incident may have inspired the second verse.

Troopers at Dagworth Station, near the outback town
of Winton, Queensland, during the shearer’s strike in 1894.

April 6 is celebrated in Winton, Queensland, Australia, as ‘Waltzing Matilda Day’. Though some think “Waltzing Matilda” is the Australian national anthem, that honour belongs to “Advance Australia Fair”. The first recording of “Waltzing Matilda” was cut in 1927 by Queensland tenor John Collinson. And in 1938, baritone Peter Dawson ended up with a brisk seller. Over 500 recording artists have gone to the studio to put their own stamp on the Australian bush tale. This includes Kenny Ball and His Orchestra, Harry Belafonte, Chubby Checker, Four Aces, Bill Haley and His Comets, Earl Hines, Frank Ifield, Burl Ives, Liberace, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, The Seekers, and Rod Stewart.

“Waltzing Matilda” climbed to #1 in Hull (QC), #2 in Schenectady (NY), and #6 in Milwaukee (WI).

Jimmie Rodgers also released a single recording in the winter of 1958. His “Waltzing Matilda” was a hit in Australia in the winter of 1958-59. It later peaked at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1960. Rodgers’ best chart performance locally were #3 in Hollywood (CA), and #6 in San Diego. Rodgers’ cover was from his 1958 album Jimmie Rodgers Sings Folk Songs. The Seekers version offered a unique treatment varing from the traditional tune. It climbed to #74 on the Australian pop chart in 1963. A link is provided in the reference section below.

In 1960, David Carroll conducted the orchestra backing The Platters on their #8 pop hit recording “Harbor Lights”. He also directed the Johnny Preston’s number-one 1960 hit single “Running Bear”.

David Carroll’s last charting single was a riff off of The Four Seasons’ “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock”. Carroll mixed things up to record “Big Girls Don’t Cry Limbo”.

David Carroll, in his later years with Mercury, worked with the Smothers Brothers. He eventually left Mercury and toured with them, leading their road show band. Throughout his career, Carroll released nearly thirty easy listening studio albums. Recording artists he conducted, arranged of produced also include Dinah Washington, Sophie Tucker, Sarah Vaughan, and Quincy Jones. David Carroll died in 2008 at the age of 94.

October 23, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
“David Carroll,” spaceagepop.com.
“David Carroll: Credits, Discography,” rateyourmusic.com.
“Jimmie Rodgers, “Waltzing Matilda“, Roulette Records, 1958.
Greg Pemberton, “Waltzing Matilda’s origins and chain of ownership murky,” Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, AU, August 14, 2015.
Chrissy Arthur, “Outback town holds first Waltzing Matilda Day,” ABC, Sydney, Australia, April 6, 2012.
Clement, Semmler, “Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, April 19, 2024.
“The Shearing Dispute,” Brisbane Courier, August 28, 1894.
“Origin of Waltzing Matilda,” Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Queensland, August 24, 1944.
“Banjo’s bush’s tale still waltzing its way into the charts and hearts,”  The Canberra Times, January 27, 1995.
The Seekers, “Waltzing Matilda,” W&G Records, 1963.

CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top Ten | February 6, 1960