Almanac Music: ‘Joe Harper Saturday Morning’ and on other occasions

 

Joe Harper – an erroneous assumption

 

The 45 rpm single of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ with ‘Gloria’ on the flipside is one of the great ‘double side’ rock and roll hit records. Released in 1965 by the Irish group Them fronted by Van Morrison, the A side brings the old blues refrain featured in Big Joe Williams’ earlier recording into the modern era with an up-tempo beat, driving bass and lead guitar and Morrison’s pleading vocals. And on the other side, the Morrison composition Gloria is an epic, a remarkable rhythm and blues composition from the man from Belfast. As Roddy Doyle put it in The Commitments, “The Irish are the blacks of Europe”.

 

 

 

 

On the label of the Decca 45 displays the name of  producer Bert Berns, an American song writer/record producer with an impressive catalogue of hits. After hearing what The Beatles had done with his composition ‘Twist And Shout’, a hit for the Isley Brothers in America, Berns had hot-footed to England in search of more talented young British R&B artists.

 

After the demise of Them, Morrison travelled to America and in the midst of his Mystic Eyes to Into The Mystic phase, recorded a number of songs for the Bert Berns Bang label. The pair fell out when Berns released some of these tracks on the album Blowin’ My Mind without Morrison’s permission. This could well be one of the lingering reasons for Morrison’s renowned taciturn nature.

 

More recently, all the tracks from these sessions were released on a three-album compilation, The Authorised Bang Collection. One of the tracks is titled ‘Joe Harper Saturday Morning’. At the time, the only Joe Harper that came to mind was a Scottish footballer whose notoriety had been drawn to my attention by an Australian friend with a Scottish connection, his wife hails from Aberdeen.

 

OK, so why was an Irish rocker singing about a Scottish footballer?
Answer: He wasn’t.

 

I should have known that it would be improbable that a hard-nosed rock singer from Belfast would write and record a song about a hard-nosed footballer from Scotland.

 

Morrison’s song harks back to his early years in Belfast. I have read somewhere that his Joe Harper was the caretaker of the Maritime Club in Belfast where Van sang in his early days. The song sprawls along with some stirring guitar, great drum rolls, maybe a tinge of melancholy and we are left to ponder the actual reason to “go see Joe Harper Saturday morning”.

 

 

 

 

The song has all the swagger that Joe Harper the Scottish footballer brought to the football pitch. Harper played for a number of clubs (Morton, Huddersfield Town, Everton, Aberdeen (twice) and Hibernian) but was best known as a star at Aberdeen – King Joey of the Beach End. He scored 205 goals over two career stints with the Club.

 

Harper was talented and fearless and brought chaos to the penalty box. Playing for Hibernian against Celtic in the 1974 Scottish League Cup Final he scored a hat-trick, only to see Dixi Deans also score a hat-trick. Hibs lost 6-3.

 

Harper represented Scotland on four occasions. Perhaps the most memorable of these came when Harper was substitute in a match against Denmark. When the call came for him to warm up in preparation for going onto the field he said that he needed to visit the men’s room first. Unfortunately, he became disoriented in the corridors, opened a door in front of him and found himself outside in the street. The door shut and locked behind him. Eventually he made his way back into stadium thence to the pitch where he scored a goal.

 

At times, his rather ‘chunky’, sturdy appearance saw opposing supporters break into a spontaneous rendition of ‘Roll out the barrel, roll out the barrel, Harper’s a barrel of ……’.

 

No shrinking violet, Harper had a major difference of opinion with Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson during his second time at the club. This led to the eventual demise of Harper’s career. In his autobiography, Ferguson said Harper was an ‘artful dodger’.

 

In 2026, Joe Harper has eventually been recognised as a Legend of the Aberdeen Club.

 

I am not sure if Van Morrison has ever recorded a version of ‘Roll Out The Barrel’.

 

 

To read more by Peter Crossing click here.

 

 

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