by Slim Newton Death, Obituary – In 1954, he traveled throughout Western Australia, and the following year, he traveled throughout Northern Australia all by himself. By the time 1957 rolled around, he was residing in Sydney, where he gave performances on the Reg Lindsay Show, both on the radio and at other local venues. Additionally in that same year, country music musicians Rick and Thel Carey recorded “You Can Say That Again,” which was co-written by Newton and also performed by them. In 1959, he made his way back to Perth. In the middle of the 1960s, he joined forces with Mick Kodra to form a band called The Mavericks.
Newton had continued to write songs, and in 1971, following a conversation with Eric Scott of Hadley Records, he moved his family to Tamworth so that he could begin recording his own compositions at the studios owned by that record label. [4] The Redback on the Toilet Seat, an extended play consisting of four tracks that was released by him for the first time in June 1972 and was produced by Scott, was his debut release. The extended play reached its highest position on the Go-Set National Top 40 Singles Chart at No. 3, where it remained for a total of 15 weeks.
According to the information provided by David Kent in his book titled “Australian Chart Book 1970–1992,” the extended play (EP) was included in the Kent Music Report Singles Chart on June 19, 1972. It reached its highest position of No. 5 for two consecutive weeks, and it remained in the top 100 for a total of 28 weeks. Slim Dusty, a fellow country music performer, recalled the experience in his autobiography, Another Day, Another Town (1996), where he discussed how he was frequently misidentified as the song’s writer. In August of 1972, Newton related the following story to Nan Musgrove of The Australian Women’s Weekly about an incident in which a friend of his was in town and used his outside toilet in Perth,
despite the fact that the light globe had broken. The friend said that he couldn’t believe his good fortune when he saw that there were no redback spiders on the toilet seat. The phrase inspired Newton to write the track, “The Redback on the Toilet Seat,” which he indicated was “easy to write, that most songs come fairly easy except when you have to write one on demand, then and there.” Newton’s follow up EP, How Did the Redback Die?, appeared in October and continued the theme to explain what happened to the spider. The track “The Redback on the Toilet Seat” was released in November.
In 1973, Newton was presented with a Golden Guitar Trophy as recognition for having the Top Selling Record at the very first Country Music Awards of Australia.
