Collins, St., 5 pm, by John Brack, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. [Wikimedia Commons.]
Almanac Music: ‘Working for the man’ – Songs Involving Work
Hi, Almanackers! This week’s piece in my ongoing series about key popular song themes concerns songs that involve work. So, dear readers, please put your relevant songs in the ‘Comments’ section. Below, as usual, are some examples from me to get the ball rolling.
‘Joe Hill’, written by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, performed by Paul Robeson (1943)
‘From San Diego up to Maine, / in every mine and mill,/ Where workers strike and organize / it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill, / it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill!’
‘Get a Job’, written by Earl Beal, Raymond Edwards, Richard Lewis and William Horton, performed by The Silhouettes (1957)
‘Sha na na na…’
‘Chain Gang’, written and performed by Sam Cooke (1960)
‘That’s the sound of the men / Working on the chain gang’
‘Working For The Man’, written and performed by Roy Orbison (1962)
‘Cause I’m working for the man’
‘Paperback Writer’, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by the Beatles (1966)
‘I need a job and I want to to be a paperback writer’
‘Working Class Hero’, written and performed by John Lennon (1970)
‘A working class hero is something to be’
‘Part of the Union’, written by Richard Hudson and John Ford, performed by Strawbs (1973)
‘You don’t get me I’m part of the union’
‘Working On the Highway’, written and performed by Bruce Springsteen (1984)
‘Working on the highway, blasting through the bedrock’
‘Working Class Man’, written by Johnathan Cain, performed by Jimmy Barnes (1985)
‘steel town disciple’
‘The Way It Is’, written by Bruce Hornsby, performed by Bruce Hornsby and the Range (1986)
‘That’s just the way it is’
………………………………………………..
Now, dear readers / listeners – it’s over to you. Your responses to this topic are warmly welcomed. In the ‘Comments’ section, please add your own choice of a song (or songs) that involve work, along with any other relevant material you wish to include.
[Note: as usual, Wikipedia has been a good general reference for this piece, particularly in terms of checking dates and other details.]
Read more from Kevin Densley HERE
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His sixth book-length poetry collection, Isle Full of Noises, was published in early 2026 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
Some fab songs KD!
‘Joe Hill’ is a very special song with many incredible versions recorded, including Joan Baez’s version. Paul Robeson’s version is the best though – a man who had to overcome so many issues in his career, and did so with grace and humility puts his heart and soul into the song with a passion.
His appearance during the building of the Sydney Opera House is extremely moving and powerful, singing to the workers ‘Old Man River’ and ‘Joe Hill’. Watch this performance by clicking on the link below.
https://youtu.be/Eg7bPgrosAE?si=e941McYH_zHj_U25
Thanks, Col, for opening the batting – which is often your position in relation to these themed pieces. Thank you, also, for the additional Robeson material – the clip of Robeson singing to the Opera House workers is an excellent one, and important in a historical sense.
Good morning KD and thanks for the new theme.
A very left field song from me to start with:
ABBA – Money, Money, Money
I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain’t it sad?
Good morning, Karl! Yes, it’s new song theme day!
I like your initial song choice – very much on-theme, and interestingly left-field, not musically, but in terms of selection. It’s not one of the first I would have come up with, yet it fits so well.
Working in the coal mine
Going down, down, down
Working in the coal mine
Whoop, I wanna sit down.
Devo. Might wear my energy dome to work today.
Thanks, Mickey – I like the way you’re thinking! ( So Devo-esque!)
Thanks Kev
The Mountain – Steve Earle
Thanks for ‘The Mountain’, Peter C. Cheers!
Working Man Blues, Merle Haggard:
It’s a big job gettin’ by with nine kids and a wife
Even I’ve been workin’ man, dang near all my life but I’ll keep workin’
As long as my two hands are fit to use
I’ll drink my beer in a tavern
And sing a little bit of these working man blues
Tehachapi, Margo Cilker:
Wasn’t much of a warning
He disappeared one morning
Put his mattress up on the back of a pickup truck
I’d been workin’
My shoulders were hurtin’
I was learning how to turn my muscles into somethin’
Will you think of me
Will you think of me
Will you think of me on your way back to Tehachapi?
The Wish, Bruce Springsteen:
I remember in the morning, ma, hearing your alarm clock ring
I’d lie in bed and listen to you getting ready for work, the sound of your makeup case on the sink
And the ladies at the office, all lipstick, perfume and rustling skirts
And how proud and happy you always looked walking home from work
Stuff that Works, Guy Clark:
I got an old pair of boots and they fit just right
Well I can work all day and I can dance all night
I got an old used car and it runs just like a top
I get the feeling it ain’t ever gonna stop
Working on the Building – Elvis Presley
Got My Mojo Working – Elvis Presley
Banana Boat Song (Work all day on a drink of rum) – Harry Belafonte
Truly, Truly Fair (Some men plow the open plains. Some men sail the brine. But I’m in love with a pretty maid. For work I have no time) – Guy Mitchell
She Wears Red Feathers (I work in a London Bank) – Guy Mitchell
A Well Respected Man (‘Cause he gets up in the morning and he goes to work at nine) – The Kinks
Racing with the Clock (I can hardly wait to wake and get to work at eight) – Eddie Foy Junior (from the Pajama Game)
Seven and a Half Cents (But give it to me every hour, forty hours every week) – Doris Day and Jack Straw from the Pajama Game.
That’s My Job – Conway Twitty
Working Girl – Conway Twitty
It’s Gonna Work Out Fine – Manfred Mann
The Little Shoemaker (In the shoemaker’s shop this refrain will never stop as he tapped away, working all the day) – Petula Clark
We Can Work it Out – Petula Clark
Nice Work if You Can Get It – Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee
Working after School – Cliff Richard
Wired For Sound (In the car, go to work and I’m cruising) – Cliff Richard
Way out west: The Dingoes
Bluebird: Electric Light Orchestra
Birmingham Blues: Electric Light Orchestra
Evening (time to get away): Moody Blues
Blue Sky Mine: Midnight Oil
(Not so) happy song for problem children: Australian Crawl
A hard day’s night: The Beatles
Mercy mercy: The Rolling Stones (also covered by Jeff Lynne)
9 to 5: Dolly Parton
Working, Working, Working – Johnny Cash
Working Man Blues – Johnny Cash
A Hard Day’s Night (and I’ve been working like a dog) – the Beatles
Heigh Ho, Whistle While You Work – Perry Como
Sixteen Tons – Frankie Lane
Team Work – Bing Crosby
I’ve Got My Captain Working For Me Now – Bing Crosby.
SORRY LIAM, you beat me by a whisker with A HARD DAY’S NIGHT.
No worries Fisho.
Springsteen – The River (1980)
‘And for my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat….
I got a job working construction
For the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work
On account of the economy’
Work To Do – The Isley Brothers
Take This Job and Shove It – Johnny Paycheck
Car Wash (Workin’ at the car wash, girl) – Rose Royce
Hey Fisho, yer making some great calls on the work theme and damn, you got the Johnny Paycheck song in before me! Noice. However, I should note, your Johnny Cash song is a cover of Merle’s moving song to the working man, which I added earlier. And I suspect Karl D might have a Dylan song to compliment the Haggard tune. Cheers
You Need Feet (And when you get home from a hard day’s work, you can soak ’em) – Bernard Bresslaw
Great kick off, Rick, with your wonderful Merle, Cilker, Springsteen and Clark songs. (Especially love the simulated (?) clink on the anvil in the Haggard song, the brass in the Cilker one, the splendid atmospherics of the Bruce number, and poetry of the Clark song [written by Clark and Rodney Crowell].)
What an excellent array of songs you’ve put forward so far today, Fisho! To single out just one for comment – I thought ‘Banana Boat (Day-O)’ was an especially good choice, as you compelled me revisit and focus upon its lyrics, where I discovered that the song is entirely about work! (Previously its calypso feel dominated my attention.)
Thank you, Liam, for your foray into the work theme. Some great selections. Loved your inclusion of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – it made me think about how much the song centres upon the relationship between hard work and the attractions of home.
Thanks, Karl, for ‘The River’ and the accompanying quoted lyrics – Springsteen is an artist who has written and recorded many songs involving work, of course. I’ll enjoy seeing many of these find their way into our ‘work’ list.
Yes KD – I think this is a topic where Bruce might well become the top scorer.
Here’s early Bruce:
Mary Queen Of Arkansas (1973) – from his debut Greetings From Ashbury Park NJ album:
‘But I know a place
Where we can go, Mary
Where I can get a good job
And start out all over again clean’
The Easybeats – Friday On My Mind
‘Do the five day grind once more
I know of nothin’ else that bugs me
More than workin’ for the rich man
Hey! I’ll change that scene one day
Today I might be mad, tomorrow I’ll be glad
‘Cause I’ll have Friday on my mind’
Yes Karl, this is Bruce’s bread and butter. Case in point, Darkness. Six of the 10 songs reference work/working and in several work is the core theme (ex, Factory). Only Streets of Fire, Something in the Night, Candy’s Room and the title track don’t mention work, even if it is kinda implied. Here are the songs that reference work directly on Darkness:
Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Racing in the Streets
The Promised Land
Factory
Prove it all Night
Now I’m just referring to the album Darkness. A collection of songs he recorded around the time of Darkness was released as the album, The Promise in 2010 and I reckon there’s a few more goers on that, for example, starting with the title track, The Promise:
Johnny works in a factory and Billy works downtown
Terry works in a rock and roll band looking for that million-dollar sound
And I got a little job down in Darlington but some nights I don’t go
Some nights I go to the drive-in or some nights I stay home
I followed that dream just like those guys do way up on the screen
And I drove a Challenger down Route 9 through the dead ends and all the bad scenes
And when the promise was broken, I cashed in a few of my own dreams
When I’m Cleaning Windows – George Formby
Summertime Blues (The boss said, no dice son, you didn’t work a late) – Eddie Cochran.
Ballad of the Teen Aged Queen (but she loved the boy next door, who worked at the Candy Store) – Johnny Cash
Union Maid – Woody Guthrie This is the original song that the Strawbs rewrote three decades later as Part of the Union.
“This union maid was wise to the tricks of the company spies
She’d never be fooled by a company stool
She’d always organize the guys
She’d always get her way when she asked for better pay
She’d show her card to the company guard
And this is what she’d say
Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union
I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union
Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union
I’m sticking to the union till the day I die”
Which Side are You On – Pete Seeger (written by Florence Reece) a song from the miners strikes in Kentucky which was later adopted by the American Unions and also rewritten for the sixties civil rights struggle
“Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good ol’ union
Has come in here to dwell
[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?”
There is Power in a Union – Joe Hill
“Would you have freedom from wage slavery,
Then join in the grand Industrial band;
Would you from mis’ry and hunger be free,
Then come! Do your share, like a man.
(CHORUS:)
There is pow’r, there is pow’r
In a band of workingmen,
When they stand hand in hand,
That’s a pow’r, that’s a pow’r
That must rule in every land.
One Industrial Union Grand.”
Ballad of Accounting – Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger
“Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?
Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool?
Did the place where you were living
Enrich your life and then
Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men,
all your fellow men, all your fellow men?”
Links on the Chain – Phil Ochs
“Come you ranks of labor, come you union core
And see if you remember the struggles of before
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links
On the chain, on the chain
And you started building links
On the chain
When the police on the horses were waiting on demand
Riding through the strike with the pistols in their hands
Swinging at the skulls of many a union man
As you built one more link
On the chain, on the chain
As you built one more link
On the chain’
Solidarity Forever written by Utah Phillips and widely sung throughout the English speaking Union Movements. Sorry for taking up so much space by posting the entire lyrics but this is my favourite song of struggle.
“When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite?
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong
It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid
We stand outcast and starving, midst the wonders we have made
But the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong
All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone
We have laid the wide foundations, built it skyward stone by stone
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own
While the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold
We can bring to birth a new world, from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong”
Thank you, Karl, for the Dylan-eque Springsteen song ‘Mary, Queen of Arkansas’ and an especially good pickup, I believe, ‘Friday On My Mind’.
Thanks, Rick, for ‘running with the ball’ in terms of the ‘Springsteen and work’ sub-theme a few of us – including you, of course – have been gradually teasing out since the early stages of this work theme ‘songlist’.
Seems like Darkness on the Edge of Town could have been referred to as the ‘Work Album’! (a la the Beatles ‘White Album’.)
Thank you for your latest three, Fisho – what an interesting mix: Formby, Cochran and Cash.
Thanks so much, Dave N, for your initial foray into this work theme. Your highly interesting, encyclopedic entry indicates to me how much we’ve entered one of your areas of particular personal interest.
And I wasn’t aware of the background to the Strawbs song, either – the basic reason I included ‘Part of the Union’ in my initial list was that I remember it from my early days, as a part of my family’s singles collection.
A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done – Sonny and Cher
The Factory (I can’t say that he loved his work, but he fed a family of nine) – Kenny Rogers
A Full Time Job – Johnnie Ray and Doris Day.
With a Little Bit of Luck – Stanley Holloway
The Lord above gave man an arm of iron
So he could do his job and never shirk
The Lord above gave man an arm of iron, but
With a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
Someone else will do the blinkin’ work
My previous post was about Labour struggles. This songs in this post are actual songs about work.
Millworker – Emmylou Harris (written by James Taylor)
“Millwork ain’t easy, millwork ain’t hard, millwork it ain’t nothing but an awful boring job.
I’m waiting for a daydream to take me through the morning
and put me in my coffee break where I can have a sandwich and remember.
Then it’s me and my machine for the rest of the morning,
for the rest of the afternoon and the rest of my life.”
Swan Necked Valve – Mat McGinn (written by Alex Russell)
“When Strathclyde was in Brigton [When I was in the factory] and my time was nearly oot
What happened in the monkey shed I’ll tell ye a’ aboot.
Chorus.
Rickie doo dum da, doo dum da,
Rickie, tickie doo dum day.
A sneezer o’ a job came in and I was left to solve
The problem of the makin’ o’ the swan-necked valve.”
Shoals of Herring – Ewan McColl
“O it was a fine and a pleasant day
Out of Yarmouth harbor I was faring
As a cabinboy on a sailing lugger
For to go and hunt the shoals of herring
O the work was hard and the hours long
And the treatment, sure it took some bearing
There was little kindness and the kicks were many
As we hunted for the shoals of herring”
Champion at Keeping Them Rolling – Ewan MacColl A trucking song that isn’t a Country song although I might post of few those later.
“I am an old-timer, I travel the road
I sit in me wagon and lumber me load
Me hotel is the jungle, the caff me abode
And I’m well known to Blondie and Mary
Me liquor is diesel oil laced with strong tea
And the old Highway Code was me first ABC
And I cut me eye-teeth on an old AEC
And I’m champion at keeping them rolling
I’ve sat in the cabin and broiled in the sun
Been snowed up on Shap on the Manchester run
I’ve crawled through the fog with me twentytwo ton
Of fish that was stinking like blazes”
Taxi – Harry Chapin.
“It was raining hard in ‘Frisco
I needed one more fare to make my night
A lady up ahead waved to flag me down
She got in at the lights”
Peter the Cabby – Redgum
“Peter’s a cabby on Adelaide roads
And in five o’clock traffic that’s a hard road to hoe
Hunts for his family in a Holden with a two-way and meter”
On the union theme, Neil Young’s ‘Union Man’ from his 1980 ‘Hawks & Dove’ album is well worth a listen:
I’m proud to a union man
I make those meetings when I can, yeah
I pay my dues ahead of time
When the benefits come I’m last in line, yeah.
I’m proud to be a union man.
Every fourth Friday at 10 am
There’s a local meeting of the A F of M, yeah!
This meeting will now come to order
Is there any new business?
Yeah, I think ‘Live music are better’
Bumper stickers should be issued.
…and I’ll chuck in the most obvious ‘work’ Dylan lyric:
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
All in a Night’s Work – Dean Martin
Workin’ Day and Night -Michael Jackson
Thanks, Fisho, for your latest song choices – all in all, you’ve done a wonderful day’s work (if you’ll pardon the pun) on our theme!
Thank you, Dave for your latest comments and song selections – specifically about actual work this time, compared to labour struggles previously – all choices, of course, under the broad ‘songs involving work’ umbrella. Fine input concerning a multifaceted theme!
Thanks. Karl, for your latest couple.
And with ‘Maggie’s Farm’, Bob Dylan has now entered the building (so to speak)!
Yes, KD, Bob has arrived & settled in….
How about the old faithful ‘Tangled Up In Blue’? – with multiple work references:
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I lucky was to be employed
Working for a while on a fishing boat
Right outside of Delacroix
She was working in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept looking at the side of her face
In the spotlight, so clear
Thanks, Karl, for ‘Tangled Up In Blue’; as well as being a song with multiple work references, it’s one that, from memory, has fitted multiple past song themes, too. Some songs are like that.
When I was in primary school in the fifties our school drum and fife band often played
WORK, FOR THE NIGHT IS COMING
Early this morning I began to hum it in my head so I googled it to see if there was any info about it. As expected there were heaps of lyrics for it and the original artist for it was ANNA L COGHILL
“There’s a law for the rich, there’s a law for the poor, I’m just a working man” chortles Angry Anderson in the chorus of Rose Tattoos’, Assault & Battery.
I’m sure there’s far more out there not coming readily to mind Kevin but when/if the fog in my old brain clears I’m happy adding to the conversation.
Glen!
Of course Kevin it would be remiss not to mention Lobby Loyde & the Coloured Balls had, ‘Workingmans’ Boogie’.
Gee old Lobby was a fine guitarist, I was lucky enough to see him just before he left us. His WORK retains an important place in Australian rock’n’roll history. But that’s another story for another posting, as I focus here on remembering songs paying homage to work/working.
Glen!
Thought I’d throw in a few examples that stretch the concept of work.
Work It, Missy Elliot, not for the faint hearted, lryics below are some of the song’s tamest, and I include this song as an example that work is a many headed concept, by the way this song has stayed on our NYE party playlist for 20+ years:
Girls, girls, get that cash
If it’s nine to five or shaking your ass (Aha)
Ain’t no shame, ladies do your thing (C’mon)
Just make sure you ahead of the game
Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Chuck Berry, in one of the great opening lyrics of a song, Berry masterfully synchs racism with societal expectations of work (in the 50s!), and then if that aint enough, he turns the racist trope inside out to deliver the punchline, another exhibit in the pop culture argument re Berry’s standing as one of pop’s finest songwriters:
Arrested on charges of unemployment
He was sittin’ in the witness stand
The judge’s wife called up the district attorney
She said “Free that brown-eyed man
If you want your job you’d better free that brown eyed man”
Lumberjack Song, Monty Python probably needs little explanation and yes I remembered this song after reading Karl’s Dylan contribution, Tangled Up:
Oh sod it, I didn’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna be a weather forecaster
I don’t wanna rabbit on all day about sunny periods
And patches of rain spreading from the west
I wanted to be a lumberjack!
I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay
I sleep all night and I work all day
He’s a lumberjack, and he’s okay
He sleeps all night and he works all day
Let’s Work Together, Wilbert Harrison, using the same tune and melody he used several years before to create the song Let’s Stick Together, Wilbert takes the idea of unity a little further to consider civil rights, engaging the metaphor of work as the efforts of many to bring on change:
Together we will stand,
Divided well fall,
Come on now people lets get on the ball,
And work together,
Come on, come on lets work together
Welcome to the Working Week, little Elvis, song kicks off with a lurid flourish, which is all fantasy before reality crashes through, this song considers work a drudge and workers almost automans, which was a way the labour market and workforce was examined back in the 70s through sci-fi and pop culture, also, mid 70s UK was a time when relations between labour and management were strained to breaking point and Elvis’ observation in this bitter song is working sucks:
Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired
And you can have anyone that you have ever desired
All you gotta tell me now is why, why, why, why?
Welcome to the working week
Oh, I know it don’t thrill you, I hope it don’t kill you
Welcome to the working week
You gotta do it till you’re through, so you better get to it
Blackhawk – Emmylou Harris (written by Daniel Lanois)
“Well I work the double shift
In a bookstore on St. Clair
While he pushed the burning ingots
In Dofasco stinking air
Where the truth bites and stings
I remember just what we were
As the noon bell rings for
Blackhawk and the white winged dove”
Six Days on the Road – Dave Dudley
“Well, I pulled outta Pittsburgh
A-rollin’ down that eastern seaboard
I got my diesel wound up, and she’s a-runnin’ like a-never before
There’s a speed zone ahead, well, alright
I don’t see a cop in sight
Six days on the road and I’m a-gonna make it home tonight
I got me ten forward gears and a Georgia overdrive
I’m takin’ little white pills, and my eyes are open wide
I just passed a Jimmy and a White
I been a-passin’ everything in sight
Six days on the road and I’m a-gonna make it home tonight”
Willin’ – Little Feat (written by Lowell George)
“I’ve been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I’m drunk and dirty, don’t you know
And I’m still willin’
[Verse 2]
And I was out on the road, late at night
I seen my pretty Alice in every headlight
Alice, Dallas Alice
[Chorus]
And I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonopah
Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed
And if you give me; weed, whites, and wine
And you show me a sign
I’ll be willin’ to be movin'”
There are hundreds of American Country Trucking songs but the two I have just posted are my favourites and that will be enough.
Money for Nothing – Dire Straits
“Now look at them yo-yos, that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs”
Why Aye Man – Mark Knopfler
“We had no way of staying afloat
We had to leave on the ferry boat
Economic refugees
On the run to Germany
We had the back of Maggie’s hand
Times were tough in geordieland
We got wor tools and working gear
And humped it all from Newcastle to here
Why aye man, why aye, why aye man
Why aye man, why aye, why aye man
We’re the nomad tribes, traveling boys
In the dust and dirt and the racket and the noise
Drills and hammers, diggers and picks
Mixing concrete, laying bricks
There’s English, Irish, Scots, the lot
United nation’s what we’ve got
Brickies, chippies, every trade
German building, British-made
This is a song written for the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Thanks, Fisho, for ‘Work, For The Night Is Coming’ – I like the story behind its selection, too. I’ll have to check it out – the song’s title sounds like what follows will be a warning, as much as anything else!
Thanks so much, Glen, for your Angry and Lobby material – I always enjoy such entries, which I’ll place under the ‘ball tearing Australian rock’ umbrella.
Cheers, Rick – I particularly enjoyed your song choices that stretched the concept of work, as well as the accompanying commentary. Yes, the concept of work, as we’ve indicated in various parts of this discussion, is malleable, ductile, capable of attenuation…
A side note to the ‘songs involving work’ discussion is the title of a TISM album – Great Truckin’ Songs of the Renaissance.
Thanks, Dave for your latest extensive entry. I liked everything about it, but especially enjoyed your mention of some trucking songs.
And you reminded me of a number that I’ll sneak under the present ‘work’ umbrella – it’s a stretch, I know, but I’m choosing Duane Eddy, His ‘Twangy’ Guitar, & The Rebels’ instrumental called ‘Forty Miles of Bad Road’. This tune has a distinct driving / trucking / on the road feel to it, I believe.
Regarding the instrumental’s background, Wikipedia notes:
‘Duane [|Eddy] told Oldies Radio DJ “Wild” Wayne that the title came about when he and his producer Lee Hazlewood were waiting in line to buy tickets at a movie theatre. They overheard two guys in front of them discussing a blind date that one of them just had. One asked the other as to how the blind date went. His friend replied that it was ok but the girl had a face that looked like “forty miles of bad road”. Duane and Lee looked at each other and said we have the title of our next record.’
Interestingly, Wikipedia also notes, re ‘Forty Miles of Bad Road’:
‘It is also referenced in Bob Dylan’s 2000 Academy Award winning song “Things Have Changed”: “I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road/If the Bible is right, the world will explode.” ‘
Kevin, would you include tunes like ‘Click go the shears’ and “Travelling down the Castlereagh’?
The Eddie Cochran classics ‘Summertime Blues’ and ‘Somethin’ Else’, both acknowledge work as a way of getting an income to spend on enjoying life.
Glen!
Here’s very very early Dylan – 1962, from his debut album – most likely talkin’ about his first job as a harmonica player on Harry Belafonte’s ‘Midnight Special’…
Talkin’ New York
‘Well, I got a harmonica job, begun to play
Blowing my lungs out for a dollar a day’
Thanks, Karl, for Dylan’s ‘Talkin’ New York’. I’m sure Bob has a lot to say, song-wise, in terms of our ‘songs involving work’ topic.
Oh dear, has no one remembered the ‘Red Flag’, or ‘The Internationale’?
I’m old enough to remember the Early 90’s when the Punters Club used to have “Rock against Work”. on Tuesday afternoons. I was working at Peter Mac those days so hit the Punters Club around 4-30, 5-00, for some good Indie rock music. One of favourite memories of that time was seeing/hearing Hell To Pay perform. For a three piece band they could rock.
Glen!
The Working Man – Creeedence Clearwater Revival
Work For Me – Ike and Tina Turner
It’s Gonna Work Out Fine – Ike and Tina Turner
Great, Fisho – thank you for this trio – all with work in the title. Good stuff!
Hey KD
Surprisingly (maybe), Dylan doesn’t have that much to say about ‘work’ but I have a few that I’ll add in the coming days. Bruce S seems to be the main songwriter to turn to, as Rick as shown in an earlier comment.
Here’s another Bruce song – off his Born To Run album:
Night
You get up every morning at the sound of the bell
You get to work late and the boss man’s giving you hell
Here’s 4 from Roy Rogers
Work Hard For the Money
When Payday Rolls Around
Sing as You Work
When the Work’s All Done this Fall
PS Kevin, how did you go with listening to Work for the Night is Coming? My wife tells me it was a hymn she sang in church a long time ago.
Some songs from Paul Kelly, these four songs look at injustice experienced by Indigenous people both in a historical and contemporary context, with two of the songs, cowrites.
Rally Round the Drum (cowrite with Archie Roach):
Like my brother before me
I’m a tent boxing man
Like our daddy before us
Travelling all around Gippsland
I woke up one cold morning
Many miles from Fitzroy
And slowly it came dawning
By Billy Leach I was employed
From Small Things (cowrite with Kev Carmody):
Vestey man said, “I’ll double your wages
Eighteen quid a week you’ll have in your hand”
Vincent said, “Uh-huh we’re not talking about wages
We’re sitting right here ’til we get our land?”
Special Treatment:
My father worked a twelve-hour day
As a stockman on the station
The very same work but not the same pay
As his white companions
He got special treatment
Special treatment
Very special treatment
Other People’s Houses:
In the first house they always went straight to the refrigerator. There were things in there he couldn’t imagine anyone ever eating – strange looking pastes in jars and horrible concoctions in plastic. His mother would sit him down with a jam sandwich and a glass of milk, then set to work cleaning other people’s houses.
She’s Not Just a Pretty Face – Shania Twain
She hosts a TV show
She plays the bass in a band
She’s an astronaut, a valet in a parking lot
A farmer working the land
She’s a champion, she gets the gold
She’s a ballerina, the star of the show
Three songs about the perils of working. (more to come later.)
He Fades Away _Alistair Hulett
“There’s a man in my bed, he’s on a pension
Although he’s only fifty years of age
The lawyer says we might get compensation
In the course of due procedure
But he couldn’t say for certain at this stage
And he’s not the only one
Who made that trip so many years ago
To work the Wittenoom mines
So many young men old before their time
And dying slow
He fades away
A wheezing bag of bones his
Lungs half clogged and full of clay
He fades away
There’s a man in my bed they never told him
The cost of bringing home his weekly pay
And when the courts decide how much they owe him
How will he spend his money
When he lies in bed and coughs his life away?
(This is a song about asbestos mining. The same tragedy written about by Midnight Oil in Blue Sky Mining mentioned by Liam earlier)
Two Songs about the Westgate Bridge (which I may have mentioned in an earlier thread)
Westgate – Mark Seymour (written about 35 years after the event)
“My name is Eddie, I am a worn man now
But I know where I was that day
Hiding from the foreman at the base of the tower
When I saw the mighty bridge give way
Bolts started snapping on the western span
They sounded like machine gun fire
You should have heard when she came down
The wind blew me over the wire
And the cold wind blows
Down by the river where nobody goes
Hell broke free when the bridge came down
When the bridge came down”
The Westgate Bridge Disaster – Ken Mansell (written a few weeks after the event)
“There are men with more time than they know what to do with;
Who decided one day that a bridge we would build.
We rushed the job through to save costs on its finance;
The structure it split and cost thirty five killed.
It’s safe in the boardroom when wind a bridge seizes.
When you hear the bolts snapping you can’t strike for more pay.
They can hire more and fire more, start again when it pleases,
But the man who builds bridges, he is crushed in the clay.”
Good mornin’ KD
Here’s a couple of early Dylan (both from the 1964 Times They Are A Changin’ album) to add to the collection:
Ballad Of Hollis Brown
You looked for work and money
And you walked a ragged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don’t know how to smile
North Country Blues
They say that your ore ain’t worth a-diggin’
That it’s much cheaper down
In the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothin’
Thanks, Glen, for your latest input – spot on selections and commentary. And ‘Click Go the Shears’ and ‘Travelling Down the Castlereagh’ are certainly ‘songs involving work’. (As, indeed, is another old favourite of mine in a similar vein, ‘Flash Jack from Gundagai’.)
Thank you, Karl, for your latest choices – i.e. Springsteen and Dylan material.
And i’m just thinking the perhaps obvious thought that one would do well to go into Bill Bragg territory in connection with our present work theme. (Just putting it out there.)
Thanks, Fisho, for your latest material, as in the Roy Rogers and Shania Twain numbers.
I did listen to ‘Work, for the Night is Coming’, too, and found it interesting as a hymn, in that the subject matter is – to me, anyway – most usually associated with secular songs.
Thank you for the PK numbers, Rick. I’m finding it highly interesting and stimulating how so many responders to this ‘work’ theme, including yourself, are thinking about the various ways that ‘work’ can be viewed, and then with their song choices showing how this can manifest itself in different categories of ‘songs involving work’.
Thank you, Dave, for the songs about the perils of working – another of the interesting facets of our multifaceted work theme. Your extensive use of quotation, as usual, is illuminating.
Hey KD, it’s like you read me mind.
Billy Bragg has always represented the workers in his songs and his actions, as an articulate, passionate and committed citizen. Being only a few years younger than him, I have followed him since the early 80s, enjoying his wit and wisdom. Here are three right on the money songs/observations about how the worker is treated by government and the business class. The last song is a bit of a laugh at his own expense and I identify with all four songs.
To Have and to Have Not:
The factories are closing and the army’s full
I don’t know what I’m going to do
But I’ve come to see in the Land of the Free
There’s only a future for the chosen few
Between the Wars:
I was a miner
I was a docker
I was a railway man
Between the wars
I raised a family
In times of austerity
With sweat at the foundry
Between the wars
There is Power in a Union:
Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers’ blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses’ way, sir
Handyman Blues:
I’m never gonna be the handyman around the house my father was
So don’t be asking me to hang a curtain rail for you, because
Screwdriver business just gets me confused
It takes me half an hour to change a fuse
And when I flicked the switch the lights all blew
Thanks for these Billy Bragg additions, Rick. Great that we were thinking along the same lines – that songs from Bragg would be a fine – and essential – part of our ‘work’ songlist.
Thanks for highlighting Between the Wars, Rick. It is still the definitive Billy Bragg song and the first one I heard and saw, performed on Rock Arena on the ABC in the 80s.
Mining Disasters are a common song theme.
In Pop
Big John – Jimmy Dean
New York Mining Disaster, 1941 – The Bee Gees
And Folk
The Ballad of Springhill – Ewan MacColl (I have posted this song and some of its lyrics in the “Fire and Blood’ thread.
The Donibristle Moss Moran Disaster – Matt McGinn
“On the twenty-sixth of August, our fatal moss gave way.
Although we did our level best, its course we couldn’t stay.
Ten precious lives there were at stake, “Who’ll save them?” was the cry;
“We’ll bring them to the surface, or along with them we’ll die.”
There was Rattray and McDonald, Hynd and Paterson,
Too well they knew the danger and the risk they had to run.
They never stopped to count the cost; “We’ll save them,” was the cry;
“We’ll bring them to the surface or along with them we’ll die.”
This song describes the mostly successful rescue of miners trapped after an explosion in Fife, Scotland in 1901. It commemorates four men who died during the rescue.
The Trimdon Grange Explosion – Tommy Armstrong
“Let’s not think about tomorrow
Lest we disappointed be,
For all our joys they may quickly turn to sorrow
As we all may daily see.
Today we’re strong and healthy,
Tomorrow there comes the change,
As we may see from the explosion
That has been at Trimdon Grange.
Men and boys set out that morning
For to earn their daily bread,
Never thinking that by the evening
They’d be numbered with the dead.
Let’s think of Mrs Burnett
Once had sons but now has none;
In the Trimdon Grange disaster
Joseph George and James are gone.”
This song was written by Tommy Armstrong (1848-1919), a Durham coal miner who wrote both comic songs about life (which he sold and performed for beer money) and songs about strikes and evictions which he wrote as fundraisers. The Trimdon Grange explosion killed 74 miners and Armstrong’s song was performed to raise money for their widows and orphans. There was an album of Tommy Armstrong’s songs released in the 1960s.
Jackson Browne – The Pretender
(perhaps reflecting on the relentless pointlessness of ‘working’ for a living)
I’m gonna rent myself a house/In the shade of the freeway
Gonna pack my lunch in the morning/And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around/I’ll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in/I’ll get up and do it again
Amen/Say it again/Amen
Thanks for the songs related to mining disasters, Dave – fine quotations and commentary as usual. I was trying to come up with where I first heard Billy Bragg’s music. It may well have been ABC’s Rock Arena in the 80s, like you – another contender in this context is Lee Simon’s Night Moves around the same time.
Thanks, Karl, for Browne’s ‘The Pretender’ – what a fine, melancholy and elegiac song it is, to my way of thinking.
Three hours of pushin’ broom
Thanks, JTH. Roger Miller’s ‘King of the Road’, is a beauty – a great song and right ‘on point’ theme-wise.
Yes KD – The Pretender has been a song I return to often.
Now for a quatrain of James Taylor….
Sweet Baby James (1970)
There is a young cowboy, he lives on the range
His horse and his cattle are his only companions
He works in the saddle and sleeps in the canyons
Waiting for summer, his pastures to change
Bartender Blues (1978)
Now I’m just a bartender, and I don’t like my work
But I don’t mind the money at all
I’ve seen lots of sad faces and lots of bad cases
Of folks with their backs to the wall
Millworker (1979)
Millwork ain’t easy, millwork ain’t hard
Millwork it ain’t nothing but an awful boring job
Hour That The Morning Comes (1981)
And papa’s kacked out with his head in his lap
Mama likes to think that he’s taking a nap
Because he’s working so hard, working all night long
He’ll be halfway to hell in the hour that the morning comes
Everybody wants to work — Uncanny X men!
The load out— Jackson Browne tribute to Roadiies “working for that minimum wage”
Work Song – Bobby Darin
Working on a Groovy Thing _ The Paltridge family
We Gotta Get Out of This Place (He’s been a workin and slavin his life away) – The Paltridge family
I Am a Cider Drinker (When those combine wheels stop turnin’. And the hard day’s work is done) – The Wurzels
Creeque Alley (Zal and Denny workin’ for a penny. Tryin’ to get a fish on the line) The Mamas and the Papas
Now, a bit of fun mixed with missteps, sure-steps, death, and a hint of redemption:
The Road Goes on Forever, Robert Earl Keen, and covered by The Highwaymen and Joe Ely:
Sonny’s playing eight-ball at the joint where Sherry works
When some drunken out-of-towner put his hand up Sherry’s skirt
Sonny took his pool cue, laid the drunk out on the floor
Stuffed a dollar in her tip jar, walked on out the door
She’s runnin’ right behind him, reaching for his hand
The road goes on forever and the party never ends.
From Small Things, by Bruce and covered by Dave Edmunds and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band:
At sixteen she quit high school to make her fortune in the promised land
She got a job behind the counter in an all night hamburger stand
She wrote faithfully home to mama “Now mama don’t you worry none”
From small things, mama big things one day come
The Week of Living Dangerously, Steve Earle:
Now my wife, she called my boss and cried so I got my job back
And the boys down at the plant, they whisper and stare at me
Yea well my wife can find a lot of little jobs to keep me on the right track
Well, but that’s a small price to pay for a week of living dangerously
Grandpa was a Carpenter, John Prine and covered by, well, John Prine and The Nitty Gritty Dird Band on Will the Circle be Unbroken Vol 2:
Grandpa was a carpenter, he built houses, stores and banks
Chain smoked camel cigarettes and hammered nails in planks
He was level on the level and shaved even every door
Voted for Eisenhower ’cause Lincoln won the war.
Work, what is it good for? Without tumbling down into a philosophical rabbit warren, we can agree that in simplistic terms, the value of work stretches from self worth to being connected to something bigger, more valuable even than oneself and all points in-between. Here are a few odds and sods in relation to how work is valued.
Work to Make Money, Chi Coltrane:
I know a poor man who lives like a king
He’s hired by a rich man to guard all his things
He swims in his pool and he lives in his home
The rich man’s always gone because he
Works to make money so that he can live
Work to Do, The Isley Brothers:
Keep your love lights burning and a little food, hot in my plate
You might as well get used to me coming home a little late
Oh, I-I, I got work to do
I got a job, baby (I got work to do)
I got work to do (I got work to do)
I got work to do (I got work to do)
I got work to do (I got work to do)
Take a Letter, Maria, R.B. Greaves:
You’ve been many things, but most of all a good secretary to me
And it’s time like this I feel you’ve always been close to me
Was I wrong to work nights to try to build a good life?
All work and no play has just cost me a wife
Bankrobber, The Clash:
So we came to jazz it up – we never loved a shovel
Break your back to earn our pay an’ don’t forget to grovel
The old man spoke up in a bar said “I never been in prison
A lifetime serving one machine is ten times worse than prison”
Imagine if all the boys in jail could get out now together
Whadd’ya think they’d want to say to us while we was bein’ clever
Someday you’ll meet your rockin’ chair ’cause that’s where we’re spinnin’
There’s no point to wanna comb your hair when it’s grey and thinning
Hey Rick, Check out my post on the 18th where I referenced Emmylou Harris’ version of Millworker acknowledging James Taylor as the writer. Taylor is a terrific songwriter but the song works better if sung by a woman, especially if that woman is Emmylou.
Canadian Railway Trilogy – Gordon Lightfoot
“We are the navvies who work upon the railway
Swingin’ our hammers in the bright blazin’ sun
Livin’ on stew and drinkin’ bad whiskey
Bendin’ our backs ’til the long days are done
We are the navvies who work upon the railway
Swingin’ our hammers in the bright blazin’ sun
Layin’ down track and buildin’ the bridges
Bendin’ our backs ’til the railroad is done”
The Blackleg Miners
“It’s in the evening after dark
When the blackleg miner creeps to work,
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt,
There goes the blackleg miner.
Well, he grabs his duds and down he goes,
To hew the coal that lies below,
There’s not a woman in this town row
Will look at the blackleg miner.”
(final verse)
“So join the union while you may,
Don’t wait ’til your dying day
For that may not be far away,
You dirty blackleg miner.”
In Australia we would call blacklegs, scabs.
Sunshine Disaster – collected from the singing of Bill Leonard
“He was driving a Bendigo engine
The train was running all right.
It was going along as usual
Till Sunshine came in sight
He put on his brakes and he whistled
For the signal was against the train
He applied his brakes for emergency
But alas ’twas all in vain.
CHORUS:
If those trains had only run
As they should, their proper time
There wouldn’t have been a disaster
At a place they call Sunshine
If those brakes had only held
As they did a few hours before
There wouldn’t have been a disaster
And a death toll of forty-four”
Chronicles the crash between trains from Bendigo and Ballarat at Sunshine Station in 1908.
City of New Orleans – Arlo Guthrie (written by Steve Goodman)
“Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
15 cars and 15 restless riders
Three conductors and 25 sacks of mail”
(five verses later)
“And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel”
Casey Jones – traditional , arranged and sung by Johnny Cash.
“Come all you rounders if you wanna hear
The story about a brave engineer
Casey Jones was the roller’s name
On a 68 wheeler course he rolled to fame
Caller called Casey bout half past four
He kissed his wife at the station door
He climbed in the cabin with his orders in his hand
Said, “This is the trip to the promised land”
climbed in the cabin
(Casey Jones) orders in his hand
(Casey Jones) leanin’ out the window
Taking a trip to the promised land”
This in Joe Hill’s hands became
Casey Jones (The Union Scab)
“[Verse 1]
The workers on the S.P. Line for strike sent out a call
But Casey Jones, the engineer, he wouldn’t strike at all
His boiler it was leakin’ and the drivers on the bum
And the engines and the bearin’ they were all outta plumb
[Chorus 1]
Casey Jones kept his junk-pile runnin’
Casey Jones was workin’ double time
Casey Jones got a wooden medal
For bein’ good and faithful on the S.P. Line”
About 60 years later, on their “Working Man’s Dead album, The Grateful Dead found another incarnation for Casey Jones
“Driving that train
High on cocaine
Casey Jones you better
Watch your speed
Trouble ahead
Trouble behind
And you know that notion
Just crossed my mind”
A couple from Dylan:
Hurricane (1976)
‘Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
“It’s my work” he’d say, “and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way”‘
Union Sundown (1983)
‘Well, you know lots of people are complaining that there is no work
I say, “Why you say that for
When nothing you got is US made?”
They don’t make nothing here no more……’
Well, the job that you used to have
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador’
Thanks, Karl, for the James Taylor ‘quatrain’ – excellently quoted, too.
Thank you, Tony, for your two choices. You beat me to the punch, so to speak, with your Uncanny X-Men song – I intended to drop it into the mix at some stage.
Thanks, Fisho, for your latest choices – I can’t recall The Partridge Family appearing on any of our themed songlists before, and of course they are welcome!
Thanks so much, Rick and Dave (I’ll place you together in this instance), for your extensive most recent comments and choices in connection with our current theme – you’ve certainly enriched our overall thematic enterprise in the process.
And Dave, I’m a bit of a train aficionado, and particularly enjoyed your railway songs; in this context, you’ve reminded me of another one, REM’s ‘Driver 8’, which I like a great deal:
‘And the train conductor says
Take a break, Driver 8
Driver 8, take a break
We’ve been on this shift too long
And the train conductor says
Take a break, driver 8
Driver 8, take a break
We can reach our destination
But we’re still a ways away, but it’s still a ways away…’
Thanks so much for your latest (Dylan) choices, Karl. I especially liked your selection of ‘Hurricane’, mainly because it revealed a ‘sport (boxing) as work’ idea that I don’t think anyone had previously explored in this current thread.
Barbara Dane – a folk, blues & jazz singer – who released her first album ‘Trouble In Mind’ in 1957.
Barbara died 3 days ago (20.10.24) at the age of 97.
On her 1973 ‘I Hate The Capitalist System’ she does a stirring version of ‘Working Class Woman’.
Went to work in a factory, and it’s rough in this world
My kids are in high school, but the boss calls me “girl.”
But the woman beside me, as we sweat out the line
Says “Tomorrow is payday, and the next day is mine!
I’m a working class woman, and the future is mine”
Thanks, Karl, for Barbara Dane’s ‘Working Class Woman’ – it’s highly fitting that she gets a guernsey in our present discussion.
Mary Danced with Strangers, Emmylou (hey Dave, a nod to your call re Millworker, but sadder even still)
Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn, a finer song about worker’s dignity you’d be hard to find:
Well, I was born the coal miner’s daughter
In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler
We were poor, but we had love
That’s the one thing that Daddy made sure of
He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar
Waitress in the Sky, The Replacements, on first listen it might appear a tad harsh but bear in mind it’s a loving little tongue in cheek tribute to his sister:
She don’t wear no pants and she don’t wear no tie
Always on the ball, she’s always on strike
Struttin’ up the aisle, big deal, you get to fly
You ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky
Streets of Baltimore, Gram Parsons, close to my fave Gram song and he didn’t even write it, but he sure can sing:
Then I got myself a factory job, I ran an old machine
And I bought a little cottage in a neighborhood serene
And every night when I’d come home with every muscle sore
She’d drag me through the streets of Baltimore
I think Barbara Dane deserves another mention – btw the cause of her death at age 97 was ‘assisted suicide’. I think that is the first time I’ve seen that written as a cause of death.
I Hate The Capitalist System
Well they call this the land of plenty
And for them I guess its true
For the rich and mighty capitalists
Not for workers like me and you
Hey Karl, thanks for the heads up on Barbara Dane, another artist to seek out. Lovely (if that’s the right word) story re her age and cause of death.
More Bruce. If we thought Darkness was his “work” album, we may need to rethink that. On Nebraska at least seven of the ten songs have a work focus or engage work into the core tale. I umed and ahed about whether the title track should be included, as serial killer was his “job”. I chose to leave it out. However, there’s still plenty of blood and death in a number of the songs that do fit under the theme, work.
Atlantic City: I got a job and tried to put my money away/But I got debts that no honest man can pay (psst, it don’t end well)
Mansion on the Hill: Tonight down here in Linden Town/I watch the cars rushin’ by home from the mill/There’s a beautiful full moon risin’/Above the mansion on the hill (core Bruce theme, the haves vs the have nots)
Johnny 99: Well they closed down the auto plant/In Mahwah late that month/Ralph went out lookin’ for a job/But he couldn’t find none (so, he ah, took matters into his own hands)
Highway Patrolman: Well Franky went in the army, back in 1965/I got a farm deferment/Settled down, took Maria for my wife/But them wheat prices kept on droppin’/’Til it was like we were gettin’ robbed/Franky came home in ’68/And me, I took this job (family, it’s complicated)
Used Cars: My dad he sweats the same job from mornin’ to mornin’/Me I walk home on the same dirty streets where I was born (this is the light hearted song)
Open All Night: I met Wanda when she was employed/Behind the counter at Route 60 Bob’s Big Boy Fried Chicken (and the boss don’t like him so put him on the night shift – what’s interesting about characters/situations on Nebraska songs, is there’s a thin line between how they have been put down and disenfranchised but some struggle on while other cross that blue line, so finely observed by Bruce)
Reason to Believe: Now Mary Lou loved Johnny/With a love mean and true/She said baby I’ll work for you everyday/Bring my money home to you/One day he up and left her/And ever since that/She waits down at the end of that dirt road/For young Johnny to come back (or as The Junes, a great Melbourne country band sing it, there’s still hope in hopeless).
Your latest entries to this thread, Rick, constitute some fine ‘morning reading’ for me and others – they are long, highly interesting responses to the theme at hand. Especially liked your Bruce material in relation to Nebraska – maybe it’s his ‘Work Album 2’, though really, as you’ve indicated, work is so important to his oeuvre in an overall sense.
Thank you for the additional Barbara Dane material, Karl.
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine (Well we worked very hard, both me and my wife, working hand in hand to have a good life) – Jimmie Rogers.
Thanks, Fisho, for ‘Kisses Sweeter Than Wine’ – it’s a neat, well-crafted little number from an era when songs almost never outstayed their welcome (in terms of length). In short, a very good song with which to achieve our century. Congrats to everyone involved.
Hi Kevin, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of Kisses Sweeter Than Wine earlier as I have it on vinyl in my treasured collection of fifties and sixties songs.
This theme covers a lot a ground and I’m here to take it even further, introducing actual Almanacers into the mix. What’s that you say? Yep, my latest contribution features Almanacers with a few ripper songs. So, get comfy with a cuppa and enjoy other people working.
1. Matty Q, The Laundry Man – you can find this ripper tune on David Bridie’s 2023 album, It’s Been A While Since Our Last Correspondence.
2. My Friend the Chocolate Cake, Home Improvements – one of David Bridie’s many bands and projects, looks at how consumerism devours our homes and maybe our hearts (It’s no good to the point of most resistance/It feels like we’ve been here once before/And therein lies the rub/We can’t stop working/We’ve gone out and we’ve bought stuff (We’ve gone out and we’ve bought stuff)/We’ve gone out and we’ve bought this stuff and now we’ve got to pay it back)
3. Dave Warner, The Aus Rock Industry – a timely reminder,, following the 4 Corners expose on Live Nation cruelling local acts chances of rocknroll success, of Warner’s astute observation from 1979, check it out via bandcamp (We’re part of the same thing good and bad you and me/We are part of the Aus rock and roll industry/We’re the struggling musician who can’t pay his rent/The part of the weekend where the week’s wages went/We’re the shedders of tears the scourge of our ears/We are part of the Aus rock and roll industry)
Fisho, it’s funny how some songs are like that – favourites – but not the first to spring to mind in connection to a specific theme.
Thanks for these thematically fitting songs involving Almanackers, Rick. I’ll listen to them for sure.
Karl D – any of the songs on your album involve work?
Well KD, I’ve checked all the lyrics and it looks like I was ‘work averse’ on the album. I guess with an album title of ‘Life & Love’, actual ‘work’ was furthest from my mind.
The closest I can get to a ‘work’ lyrics without using the word is:
‘Went outside to cut some wood
Ma said “it’s raining, it’ll do you no good”
Went out anyways with an axe in my hand
Sometimes, I’ll make a stand’
BTW, I see the 100 is well & truly up on the scoreboard & no-one noticed, no-one cheered!
Going country, across a few decades:
Starting with a late 40s classic, Dark as a Dungeon by Merle Travis. This song comes from his album Folk Songs of the Hills which is a concepty album that considers life and work in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. He wrote four of the songs, of which this one and 16 Tons have become country classics, with a spice of protest neatly slipped in between observations about work and life in difficult times and terms. I don’t know a lot about Merle Travis but considering he’s even more famous for the guitar playing style he added to country and other forms of music, I really need to get more acquainted with his contribution to music and culture. Here’s the first verse:
Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It’ll form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal
Where it’s dark as a dungeon damp as the dew danger is double pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls the sun never shines
It’s a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
Couple that with the John Prine classic, Paradise which refers to the same County, and coalmines but with another 25 years perspective:
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.
Now, a gentler song, Love Waits for Me, by Charlie Rich from the late 60s. I absolutely love this song. All it is about is a busdriver daydreaming of a regular passenger who he has a crush on and maybe they like each other. Check it out on a streaming service. It aint one of his big songs but it effectively highlights the wonder of Charlie Rich:
Driving a bus for the city don’t pay much
and each day begins with loud noises of traffic
and people who got out of bed on the wrong side
frowning and shouting and honking their horns to get by
But the low wage and worry is always worth it at five
Love waits for me at the corner of Seventh and Broadway
Nice juxtaposition Rick, Merle Travis’ Dark as a Dungeon with John Prine’s Paradise.
Made me think of another Kentucky Coal Mining song
Coal Tattoo – written by Billy Edd Wheeler
“I’m goin’ down that coal road leavin’ this town
Hear the rubber tires whine
Good bye buckeye and white sycamore
I’m leavin’ you behind
Cause I’ve been a miner all of my days, layin’ down track in the hole
Got a back like iron wood bent with the wind
And blood veins blue as the coal, boys, blood veins blue as the coal
Somebody said that’s a strange tattoo
That you have on the side of your head
I said that’s the mark of number 9 coal
Any closer I’d have been dead
Still I love the rumble and I love the dark
I love the cool of the slate
But I’m goin’ down a new road lookin’ for a job
It’s this travel and lookin’ I hate, boys, this travel and lookin’ I hate
I stood for the unions and I stood on the line
Worked against the companies
I stood for the UMWA
Now who’s gonna’ stand for me
‘cause I got no money and I got no pay
All I got me is a troubled soul
And this blue tattoo on the side of my head
Made by number 9 coal boys, made by number 9 coal”
I have heard several folk singers sing this song over the years but never knew who wrote it until I looked it up this afternoon. Turns out it was written by Billy Edd Wheeler who wrote Jackson for Johnny Cash and June Carter and Coward of the County for Kenny Rogers. “Coward” is a sexist piece of shit like so many of Rogers’ songs but Coal Tattoo and Jackson are great songs.
I might add a couple more mining songs later tonight.
A final contribution from Dylan – off his 2006 Modern Times album:
Workingman’s Blues #2
I got a brand new suit and a brand new wife
I can live on rice and beans
Some people never worked a day in their life
Don’t know what work even means
…..Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues
Looking forward to them Dave!
Hey Karl, I’ve been waiting for this one, as it’s Bob acknowledging the other Merle. Which I threw in early I this theme’s run.
By the way, I thought Hattie Carroll would have been included in this theme as well.
Cheers
The Ballad of Norman Brown – written by Dorothy Hewett
“There was a very simple man,
Honest and quiet, yet he became
The mate of every working man,
And every miner knows his name.
Chorus
Oh Norman Brown, oh Norman Brown
The murderin’ coppers they shot him down,
They shot him down in Rothbury town,
A working man called Norman Brown.”
In December 1929 during The Rothbury Colliery in the Hunter Valley tried to reduced miners wages. They locked the miners out and brought in scabs. During a demonstration against the scabs the police fired on the crowd and killed a miner named Norman Brown.
Miner’s Lifeguard/ A miner’s life – American miners song possibly from the 1890s
“Miner’s life is like a sailor’s
’Board a ship to cross the waves.
Ev’ry day his life’s in danger,
Still he ventures being brave.
Watch the rocks, they’re falling daily,
Careless miners always fail.
Keep your hand upon the dollar
And your eye upon the scale.
Chorus (after each verse):
Union miners stand together,
Heed no operator’s tale,
Keep your hand upon the dollar,
And your eye upon the scale.”
With Me Pit Boots On – A. L. Lloyd – traditional Durham Miner’s song
“A-diggin’ and a-pickin’ as I was one day,
The thought of my true love had led me astray.
Well, the shift being over and the night coming on,
And away I ran with me pit boots on.
I tapped at my love’s window, crying, “Are you in bed?”
The minute that she heard me she lifted up her head,
She lifted up her head, crying, “Oh is that John?”
“Indeed it’s me with me pit boots on.”
She come to the door and invited me in,
“Draw off to the fire and warm your skin.”
The bedroom door it opened and the blanket it turned down
And I rolled into bed with me pit boots on.”
Look Out Below – Danny Spooner (written by Charles Thatcher, the bard of the Victorian Goldfields
“A young man left his native shore
The work was bad at home
And to Australia’s sunny land
He crossed the briny foam
And when he came to Ballarat
It put him in a glow
To hear the sound of the windlass and
The cry, ‘Look out below’
Where’er he turned his wondering eye
Strange wealth he did behold
And peace and plenty hand in hand
By the magic power of gold
Says he, “And I am young and strong
To the diggings I will go
For I love the sound of windlass and
The cry, ‘Look out below’ ”
Pink Floyd – Money
‘Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and you’re okay’
Thanks for the ‘some kind of work’ (chopping wood) song from your own album, Karl!
And I did acknowledge our century (i.e. ‘…a very good song with which to achieve our century. Congrats to all involved.’) in a response to Fisho on October 24 at 9.19am.
Thanks, Rick, for your foray in the the Kentucky coal mines – wonderful specificity, and so fitting, too – as well as your choice of a song involving a daydreaming busdriver.
Our ‘songs involving work theme’ is certainly mining a rich vein in its own terms!
Thank you, Dave, for your extensive comments including mining songs and background detail. Your inclusion of Danny Spooner and the accompanying mention of Ballarat reminded me that a gold mining Densley relative of mine was killed in the area in the late 1850s in a mine cave-in.
Thanks for Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’, Karl.
And another British band, Slade, in the same year, 1973, released a fine work-related song – ‘My Friend Stan’, written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea, which begins:
‘My friend Stan’s got a funny old man
Oh yeah, oh yeah
He makes him work all night
Till he can’t do it right
Oh yeah – ah ha…’
Hey KD – I now acknowledge your acknowledgement of the theme’s century yesterday morning – very subtle, like quiet applause.
No worries, Karl. Thanks.
A song that has been referred to in previous themes (& a favourite of mine) is:
Richard Thompson – Beeswing
‘I took a job in the steamie/Down on Cauldrum Street
I fell in love with a laundry girl/Was working next to me
She was a rare thing/Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away’
Thank you, Karl, for ‘Beeswing’ – a fine, poetic folk-infused song.
I reckon this Dylan tune fits in this theme.
Clean Cut Kid, from Empire Burlesque, one of Bob’s better post BotT albums before he hit gold with TooM and the next 3 or 4 albums. And this song, wow, who knew Dylan would come up with one of the best Vietnam War songs:
They took a clean cut kid (ooh)
And they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
He could’ve sold insurance, owned a restaurant or bar
He could’ve been an accountant or a tennis star
He was wearing boxing gloves, he took a dive one day
Off the Golden Gate Bridge into China Bay
Thank you, Rick, for the latest Bob inclusion, which mentions various kinds of work.
And here’s another, quite different ‘song involving work’ – Sheena Easton’s 1980 release, ‘9 to 5’ (or ‘Morning Train’), an entirely different number to the well-known Dolly Parton ‘9 to 5’.
Another Day – Paul McCartney
“Every day, she takes a morning bath, she wets her hair
Wraps a towel around her as she’s heading for the bedroom chair
It’s just another day
Slipping into stockings, stepping into shoes
Dipping in the pocket of her raincoat
It’s just another day
[Verse 2]
At the office where the papers grow, she takes a break
Drinks another coffee, and she finds it hard to stay awake (another)
It’s just another day”
Girls in Our Town – Margret RoadKnight (written by Bob Hudson)
“Girls in our town they leave school at fifteen
Work at the counter or behind the machine
And spend all their money on making a scene
Yet plan on going to England”
Richard Cory – Simon and Garfunkel
“They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town
With political connections to spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker’s only child
He had everything a man could want, power, grace and style
But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I’m living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory”
Pykey Boy – Ralph McTell
“Easter time is a-coming, move to Mitcham right away
And I get a job on the Easter fair
Where you get paid by the day
I’ve got a good juk he cost me thirty og
From a mush that I ken for a while
I will make my way to Mitcham, boys
I will live the showman style
I will live the showman style”
Thanks, Dave, for this interesting bunch of songs involving work. I thought ‘Another Day’ was an especially good pick up – I’m a major McCartney fan, especially of his earlier work, but this one hadn’t come into my head.
Another song – by that fine UK outfit, Squeeze…
‘Up the Junction’ (1979) – here’s a couple of verses:
‘I got a job with Stanley
He said I’d come in handy
And started me on Monday
So I had a bath on Sunday
I worked eleven hours
And bought the girl some flowers
She said she’d seen a doctor
And nothing now could stop her
I worked all through the winter
The weather brass and bitter
I put away a tenner
Each week to make her better
And when the time was ready
We had to sell the telly
Late evenings by the fire
With little kicks inside her’
Bumped into this song today:
Kirsty MacColl – off her debut 1981 ‘Desperate Character’ album
There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis
Thanks, Karl. That song rings a bell. I’ll give it a listen. Cheers.