Graham Reid | | 1 min read
As I write this, it is highly likely that the great Australian singer-songwriter Chad Morgan -- aka the Sheik of Scrubby Creek, named after one of his most popular songs -- is probably out on the road somewhere.
As Tex Perkins said last year of Morgan, a doco about whom he narrated, “Chad's never really been embraced by the country scene but it doesn't do him justice to call him a comedy act, even though most of his songs are comedy-based and he does play up his freakishness.
“He's a true outsider because at 79 he still puts his wife in station wagon with the caravan on the back and drives thousands of kilometers to do these shitty little gigs all over the country."
Morgan made a virtue of his deficit, his protruding teeth and his album covers are never framable. But he wrote droll Ocker songs (much like Peter Cape did in New Zealand) and endeared himself to audiences for his dry wit and delivery, sometimes rather obvious punchlines and simple songs.
He was true pioneer of Australian songs and real good joker narratives, but the cliches ring true and often the jokers are the butt of the joke.
This song, as Peter Sainthill -- liner writer for The Chad Morgan Song Book album which it is taken from -- explains for the benefit of "the cosmopolitan reader" is that Kingaroy is where peanuts come from.
Puts a new spin it on it, maybe?
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