Diana Trask

Australian singer Diana Trask enjoyed widespread popularity across the United States throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Warburton, a modest logging community outside Melbourne, she grew up in a household filled with musical talent. At sixteen she captured national notice in Australia by winning a countrywide talent competition, after which she began appearing regularly on television. She later joined a pop ensemble that supported visiting American acts including Sammy Davis, Jr.; impressed by her voice, he urged her to try her luck in America. Trask arrived stateside in 1959, yet steady recognition remained elusive until a week-long guest stint on Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club secured her a Columbia recording contract and a recurring role on the television program Sing Along with Mitch. Her first two albums leaned heavily toward pop.

Following her marriage in the early 1960s, Trask moved back to Australia, but by 1966 she and her family had settled in New York, where she persisted in pursuing pop opportunities. A visit to the CMA DJ Convention in Nashville prompted a decisive shift toward country music. She first appeared on the country charts in 1968 with the modestly placed “Lock, Stock and Teardrops,” then reached the Top 60 later that year with “Hold What You’ve Got.” In 1969 she issued her debut album, Miss Country Soul, and joined Hank Williams, Jr. on tour. Although subsequent singles achieved only limited success, her profile rose sharply in 1972 with the Top 30 entry “We’ve Got to Work It Out Between Us.” Two more Top 20 hits followed in 1973—“Say When” and “It’s a Man’s World (If You Had a Man Like Mine)”—and in 1974 she scored a Top 15 crossover success with “Lean on Me.” During the mid-1970s she relocated once again to Australia, where several releases earned gold status. Trask briefly returned to the United States in 1981 to cut two singles before stepping away from music for the rest of the decade; in the 1990s she resumed live performances.