They Call It Cut a Rug by Dougie Young SC

This six-track EP was the first recording of an Indigenous Australian singing his own compositions in a country music style. Dougie Young was born of mixed parentage in Cunnamulla in the early 1930s, and worked as a stockman in Southern Queensland while learning guitar and developing his songwriting. The recording was made in Wilcannia in 1964, where Young was living in the Aboriginal community on the edge of town, by anthropologist Dr Jeremy Beckett and released by Wattle Records in 1965.

Wattle B5. EP cover features Dougie Young second from the right. Courtesy National Library of Australia.