Jolly Old Christmas

Featuring Steve White & the Protest Family on “No!!”. A prime slice of Leslie Sarony silliness from 1932.   Christmas only comes along to see us once a year So we’re feeling very gay and hearty Everyone is dressed up in their brand new Sunday gear And everybody has a …

They’re Beginning to Notice Me!

They’re Beginning to Notice Me is a Music Hall song written by Murray and Leigh in 1899 and sung by George “Prime Minister of Mirth” Robey.The banjo part is from the song as it appered in Sheards 7th Banjo Album which you can download here: http://www.classic-banjo.com/files/JOURNALS_AND_ALBUMS/Sheards_Banjo_Annual_No_07.pdf I think it’s interesting …

When the Old Dun Cow Caught Fire

When the Old Dun Cow Caught Fire is a music hall song written by Harry Wincott in 1893, and is most associated with Harry Champion. It’s also become a real folk club Standard.

I’ve arranged it for banjo playing in a two-finger thumb lead style. The banjo is my mid nineteen-thirties Clifford Essex Clipper, strung with nylon strings and tuned to fCFAC which is open G but tuned down by two frets.

Some pals and I in a public house
Was playing dominoes one night
When all of a sudden in the potman runs
With a face all chalky white
‘What’s up?’ said Jones ‘Why you silly old fool,
Or have you seen old Aunt Mariah?’
‘Me Aunt be buggered,’ then the potman cried
‘The bleeding pubs on fire.’

‘On fire!’ said Brown, ‘What a bit of luck!
Come along with me ‘ shouts he.
‘Down in the cellar, if the fire ain’t there,
We’ll have a fair old spree.’
So we all goes down ‘long with good old Brown
The booze we couldn’t miss,
And we hadn’t been there ten minutes or more
When we was just like this.

And there was Brown, upside down
Licking up the whiskey off the floor
‘Booze, Booze, ‘ then the firemen cried
As they came knocking at the door
‘Don’t let ’em in till it’s all mopped up’
Someone said to Mackintyre
So we all got blue blind, paralytic drunk
When the old Dun Cow caught fire.

Old Johnson flew to a port wine tub
And he gave it just a few hard knocks
He then starts taking off his pantaloons
Likewise his shoes and socks
‘Hold hard’ said Brown, ‘If you want to wash your feet
There’s a barrel full of four ale here
Don’t put your trotters in the port wine Jack
When there’s more old stale beer’

Just then there was such a dreadful crash
Half the bloody roof gave way
We were almost drowned with a fireman’s hose
But still we were all gay.
For we found some sacks, and some old tin tacks
Shoved ourselves inside
And we sat there getting bleary-eyed drunk
When the old Dun Cow caught fire
At last the fireman got inside
And found us all dead drunk
But like true heroes there they stood
They did not do a bunk
They saw the booze upon the floor
And gave a sudden yell
They took their helmets off and then
Upon their knees they fell.

‘At last! At last!’ the firemen cried
‘At last we know the news’
‘Come on! Come on! ‘ us lads all cried
‘Come on and have a booze.’

Chris Sands – Classic Ragtime Banjo

Wednesday October 22nd 2014 ~ Cecil Sharp House, London   The evening of October 22nd 2014 saw a really extraordinary concert of music at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, London. “Classic” Fingerstyle banjo was the sound of the Edwardian Britain. Played with an intricate and demanding technique similar to that …

When I Get My Bolshevik Blood Up

I came across the title of this song in Michael Kilgarriff’s book “Sing us some of the old songs, A guide to popular song 1860 – 1920” and had to dig it out at the British Library. Disappointingly, but not really surprisingly it turned out to be very anti Bolshevik, …

Billy Bennett – Napoleon

Billy Bennett is much loved on the folk scene because many of his surreal monologues stand up as floor spots today.

This is a lesser know number of his I found on a 78. It was recorded on August 23rd 1927.

Life in the East End of London

I found this song on a 78. It’s an old one, pre first world war I think. It was in bad condition and very hard to listen to, but I thought I could hear something quite interesting in it.

The references to “rich and poor side by side” for example. As well as that I liked the reference to Epping, a small town just outside of London that I know very well.

I dug the sheet music out of the British Library and was pleased to find an additional verse of social commentary that’s quite unusual in a music hall song. This song was written by Arthur West in 1891. It’s more Dickensian than anything too radical, decrying the injustice of the world but not suggesting there is very much to be done about it. But it’s still quite unusual in this sort of song I think.

It’s a pictorial journey around the East End of London. I don’t know how much of it is authentic to the authors experience or was just taken from the news of the day, but I thought it was quite unusual to have a song of this type point up the injustice and poverty of the city.

The resonances with the present day East End were so striking I wrote an additional verse to bring it up to date.

“Donah” is old fashioned slang for “girlfriend”.

Thanks to Natasha Munoz for her help in making the video, which we made in the same streets referred to in the song.

You can download the score here.

 

“Life in the East of London”

By Arthur West, 1891. Additional verse by Russ Chandler 2017.

If you want to see the bustle of our East-end London life
Tis a matter very easy, soon you’re in the busy strife.
“Here you are, sir, Mile End Road sir, Jump up here along with me”
O’er the bridge and through the city off you rattle speedily

Hear the busman’s merry banter with the cabmen on the way,
“Now then old-un, Come pull up there, Ain’t you had a fare all day?”
Up through Fenchurch Street he takes you, and before long you get down,
Amid the scenes you’ve come to visit in the wild, wild East of Town.

There you see the busy throng,
How they push each other along,
Some with a jovial laugh and song,
Some with woe quite undone.
Who shall ever stay that tide?
To the end it will abide,
Riches and poverty side by side.
That is life in the East-end of London.

See the coster with his barrow, loudly shouting “Buy, buy buy!”
“Fine and large, who’ll buy a marrow?” sells his lot feels bloomin’ dry.
Goes into a pub, close handy, but he knows the one to choose,
Stops until he’s chucked out singing rorty songs and full of booze.

Then on Sundays he and others take their donahs for a drive,
And to seat behind one gee-gee they can manage twenty five!
Off to Epping, good old Epping, late at night come home again,
No one knows which is his donah, each one shouts a different strain…

“When the Bloom is on the Rye”,
“Hi-tiddley-hi-ti-tiddley-hi-ti-ti”,
“Drink up boys and never say die!”
Never is the fun done.
“Gipsy Maid” must harmonise,
with “Two lovely fine black eyes”,
“Happy go lucky the coster boys!”,
That is life in the East-end of London.

Mark the Jew there, old clothes selling, swears the coat’s a perfect love.
“Fits you where it touches, does it? So help me fits you like a glove”.
See the loafing drunken ruffian, children clinging to his knee,
“Come home father, we’re so hungry, do come home to mother please”.

See the chickaleary joker, does the dipping, knows his game,
See the outcast on the pavement, once so pure now lost to shame.
See the heartless wealthy sweater, fat and sleek and knows his book,
The upon his toil-worn victim let us cast a pitying look…

Stitch, Stitch, Stitch, in poverty,
Every night and day is she,
For her starving children three,
Harder work by none done.
Stitch, Stitch, Stitch, while bread they crave,
Doomed to die the sweaters slave,
Her only rest is the paupers grave,
Such is life in the East-end of London.

Walk up Brick Lane to Shoreditch High Street, squint your eyes and try to see,
The barista in the coffee outlet, can I get a chai latte?
Commutes for hours from distant suburbs or drowning in the flood of wealth,
A tide of glass and steel and concrete that blazes light but eats itself.

See the cleaner from the hotel, dreams of home across the sea.
See the broker in his Merc can sell you authenticity.
See the coster’s pub still standing, but lunch is a week of the living wage,
And the endless stream of data mongers, “reach out” and “scrum” and quietly rage.

Still you see the busy throng,
Still do the work but no place to belong,
Still the market, the bus, the lost ones,
Still the sweater strutting.
Who shall ever stay that tide?
To the end it will abide,
Riches and poverty side by side.
That is life in the East-end of London.

I’ve Never Wronged An Onion

I found this incredibly silly song in a book of comic songs on a stall at the Redbridge Green Fair.

It made me laugh out load so I thought I’d better work it up.

It was written By Robert Hargreaves & S. J. Damerel.

The final gag is courtesy of Mr Kevin Sheils who knows a bad pun when he hears one!

I Didn’t Orta A Ett It!

This is a monologue by Jack “Blue Pencil” Warner, who later went on to play Dixon of Dock Green.

I learned this from Gerry Sheils, although this version has an additional topical wartime verse.

With Bobby Alderson at the piano.