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5
The Post War Years
 On December 19, 1947 Sally's mother Sarah died at Kamandra in Parkes, New South Wales, where she is buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery.
By 1947 Sally was living with Frederick Cecil Sloane, at 18 Lemnos Street, in the coal-mining and manufacturing town of Lithgow, on the western side of the the Blue Mountains. Fred was a grinder by trade. Sally and Fred were still living there in 1955. It was at this address that John Meredith first recorded Sally Sloane as she called herself by then.
Sally and Fred Sloane never married.
To most who knew them, Fred Sloane was Sally's second husband. They were partners for over 35 years. Sally had even told John Meredith that a condition of her marriage to Fred was that she never again mentioned the name of her first partner.
Sally in her garden Lithgow 1955
photo by John Meredith
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"I was never able to get any information regarding him, or even his name," John Meredith said. "When I raised the topic, Sal would lay her forefinger to her lips and silently shake her head."
John Meredith met the Sloanes in 1954 during a performance given by The Bushwhackers at Lithgow The Bushwhackers was the name of the performing musical group formed by members of the Sydney Bush Music Club. He recalled that after they had made an appeal for traditional songs or music, Fred Sloane came to him and said, “If you want old songs you ought to see my missus -she'll sing them all night once she gets going.” John Meredith was invited to stay over the next weekend, with his tape recorder. The first song he ever recorded of Sally Sloane singing was her version of “Ben Hall”.
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During the following seven years John Meredith continued to visit the Sloanes regularly for weekend recording sessions, first at their cottage in Lithgow, then at Teralba, on Lake Macquărie and finally back at Lithgow again. In all, he made about sixty visits to Sally and collected over 150 songs and dance tunes and the stories behind them.
“She played button accordion, fiddle and mouth organ with equal facility, but was more at home on the accordion,” Meredith recalled. “It was one of those old 'Mezon Grand Organ' models, in the key of 'A' and with bronze reeds.”
On most visits she remembered another new tune, or maybe two, or half-a-dozen. He continued to visit Sally regularly until shortly before her death.
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Sally at Lithgow 1955
photo by John Meredith
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Folklorist Graham Seal has noted that Sally Sloane's repertoire seemed to have three distinct musical styles : -
- "Anglo-Celtic material (mostly Broadside - derived) like 'The Red Barn' and 'The Banks of Claudy';
- Australian material such as 'The Death of Ben Hall',
- and a third strand of nineteenth and early twentieth century popular music.”
 Her traditional music may have been of most interest to the collectors but her popular music was in just as much demand on the stage. She played at many events, both amateur and professional.
During World War Two she played at the Sydney Tivoli and was recorded there by ABC radio.
John Meredith said:
“Amazingly Sally Sloane had two singing voices, which might conveniently be termed 'folk' and 'stage'. The first was used for all those lovely old Irish ballads Sal had inherited from her grandmother, through the medium of her mother, and this was a hard, clear unemotional voice and style, very much in the Irish tradition. The other voice was reserved for those stage and art songs of probable music-hall origins. It was a rich mezzo-soprano with a little vibrato and she used it for such songs as 'The Deep Shades of Blue'”.
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