Peter Smith Dawson

ATTENDED PULTENEY STREET SCHOOL 1895 - 1898

Peter Dawson was born 31 January 1882, the youngest son of nine children.

While at Pulteney he was awarded prizes for swimming, drawing, shorthand and writing. After leaving school he began an apprenticeship as a plumber and ironworker. After winning a prize for best bass solo in a singing competition he travelled to England to improve his singing and make a career of it. After undertaking specialist training, his voice extended from E-flat in the bass to a high A or A-flat. He is widely considered Australia’s greatest baritone.

During 1909-1910 Peter made a successful 6-month tour of Australia. With the outbreak of war during a second tour, he enlisted in Australia and is known to have entertained troops in Australia and England. After the war he returned to England and continued to tour throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

During his 1931 tour of Australia Peter visited his old school. Headmaster WP Nicholls and Drill Sergeant Thomas served as his guide around the new school buildings. He reminisced about his days at the school - the long forms that gave a fair issue of splinters, the ceiling littered with pen darts, the cane that he’d tried to smash by putting a horsehair inside it.

Peter was a prolific broadcaster and recording artist. His early recordings (1904) were on wax cylinders. By 1920 he is said to have achieved total record sales of five million discs. By 1939 his sales had topped 12 million. He recorded under several assumed names including Hector Grant for Scottish songs. He kept his own name for operatic, choral music and ballads. He made his first broadcast in 1931, and took part in regular BBC broadcasts. In 1947 at age 65, he made 11 recordings, 27 BBC broadcasts and nearly 100 concert appearances.

Best known and remembered for his ballads he was noted for the clarity of his diction. Many songs became personally identified with him including On the Road to Mandalay and Roses of Picardy. He also often included Australian songs in his repertoire such as Waltzing Matilda, Song of Australia, and Clancy of the Overflow, which he recorded in 1955. Peter Dawson died in Sydney on 27 September 1961.

In 1984 Peter was chosen by the Guinness Book of Recorded Sound as one of the top 10 singers on disc of all time, along with Elvis Presley and Enrico Caruso. The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987. Dawson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991. In 2007 his 1931 recording of Along the Road to Gundagai was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry.