Country and Western singer Brian Young was born in 1935 at Ayr QLD. Winning the World Champion Bull Riding title at age 18 at Home Hill, Brian Young appeared to have all the ingredients for a career in rodeo, but an injury put paid to any longevity in that arena. He turned his hand to his other love, writing country music story-songs of Australia and its inhabitants. Young toured with the All Star Western Show in the late 1950s, with fellow performers including Rick and Thel Carey, Nev Nicholls, Kevin King and Chad Morgan, among others. The touring life appealed to him and he continued hooking up with other performers, travelling the country, taking his music to the masses.
Young’s recording career began in 1962 with the release of an EP on the W&G label which featured three of his compositions. He was later signed to Ross Murphy’s Opal Records label in about 1975, with ‘Young Country’ his first album. His other Opal album releases were: ‘Gotta Wander Gotta Travel (1978), I’m Gonna Make It After All’ (1979), ‘Pull Up A Stump’ (1983) and ‘Tribute To Coster The Man’ (1985). After leaving Opal, Young recorded on the LBS label releasing ‘Tjilpi’ (1990), ‘Voice Of The Outback’ (1992) and 2007’s ‘The Last of the Travelling Showmen’, his final recording.
In 1977 he started his own touring show, the Brian Young Show. Each year he would take expeditions out to far-flung regions of Australia, often chartering an airplane to reach the most remote places, and in the process taught a legion of youngsters about showmanship and about life in general. It’s been reported the longest tour went for 13 weeks and covered 22,000km of the remotest parts of Australia. As well as taking fresh-faced young kids and turning them into fair dinkum musicians, his tours also took leading artists like Col Hardy, Auriel Andrew, Roger Knox and Jimmy Little to people starved for entertainment – giving them just what they needed.
Awards came his way over the years – not that he ever sought reward for doing what he loved. One of the first major accolades to come his way was his induction into the Country Music Hands of Fame in 1978. In 1999, he was elevated to the Australasian Country Music Roll of Renown. That same year, the gifted wordsmith was also recognised by the Tamworth Songwriters’ Association as its Songmaker of the Year. He followed these at Tamworth in 2000 with the TSA’s Tex Morton Award and the Outback Trailblazer Award. In the Queen’s birthday honours list in 2001, he was the worthy recipient of the Order of Australia medal.
In recent years his health had declined and was a resident at Moonby House Nursing Home in Tamworth. Several of those youngsters who got a start with Young voiced their grief on Facebook in 2016 after the news broke of his passing. Troy Cassar-Daley was moved to write the following about the man he was so inspired by. ”Another loss for the year, a hero and good mate, Brian Young passed away … You may not know a lot about Youngy (as he was known by his friends), but he had a hand in getting so many of us started in this industry and was someone I looked up to as a true gentleman. My time out on the road with him taught me so much musically and really helped me mature as a bloke”.“I want to send my condolences to all his family and to the many, many friends he has across this country that he loved and travelled so much. He will be missed from Weipa FNQ, Napperby SA, Derby WA, Cloncurry QLD, Timber Creek NT and by me. RIP Youngy. I guess this is where the cowboy rides away, old mate. We love ya.Troy xxx”
References
A ‘good mate’ has passed on | The Northern Daily Leader | Tamworth, NSW
