Horrie Dargie Concert by The Horrie Dargie Quintet

Australia’s first gold record selling album was the Horrie Dargie Concert (1952), a live concert recording by the Horrie Dargie Harlequintet (more commonly known as the Horrie Dargie Quintet), led by harmonicist Horrie Dargie. ‘The Three Bears’ was the opening number.

The Town Hall concert was recorded on Pyrox Wire Recorder, on a wire that was 1.5 miles long (one 1000 of an inch diameter) and ran for one hour. At the time Australian recordings were still being pressed on 78s in shellac, but microgroove LPs had just arrived. According to pioneer music producer Bill Armstrong, in order to cut the new microgroove LP for the Concert recording, an AWA lathe had to be repurposed. The lathe had been geared for 120 grooves per inch for 78s and 16 inch radio transcription discs; however, for the Concert microgroove LP a special lead screw and half nut was made to cut 200 grooves per inch, with a sapphire cutting stylus ground to a tip radius of one millimetre, the grooves on 78 discs are 3 millimetres.

The 10″ LP record of the farewell concert sold exceptionally well, soon reaching 75,000 copies sold – becoming Australia's first Gold Record!