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Lyr Add: Songs about firemen

17 Oct 01 - 07:51 AM (#574077)
Subject: Songs about firemen
From: McGrath of Harlow

In the aftermath of September 11th, firefighters are in all our minds surely, and some powerful songs have come out of it about them.

There's been our Larry (InOBU) Otway's Remember their passing; and there's Who are your heroes? by Les Barker; and there's Tom Paxton's The Bravest (and if you click here you can hear Garrison Keillor singing it off his show (and all the more moving because he isn't singing it that well).

I was watching the news last night, and they had shots of that Red Cross building that got bombed in Kabul. And what struck me was the image of the firemen standing there in the rubble in their helmets, their firehoses in thgeir hands, tired faces and dust-covered uniforms. Looking so like their brother firemen in New York and every other city.

We don't think about firefighters enough, and we don't siong about them, as much as they deserve. and they wouldn't want us to anyway.

Anyway here's a song about some other firemen who died in a whisky warehouse fire in Glasgow forty years ago. It was written by a lad called Steve O'Donaghue soon after, and he sang it at Oxford University Heritage Folk Club, and we put it in our little broadsheet. I hadn't thought of it for yesars, still less sung it, and I rumaged it out in my attic just now. The tune is that of the Glasgow children's song Coulter's Candy. As Vin Garbutt would say, it's a good 'un.

There was a fire in Anderston
And like Hell it fiercely burned.
Smoke and flames rose to te sky,
In the ruins our comrades lie.

(chorus)Nineteen brave men, dead and gone,
Doing their duty sure and strong.
In the fire a wall did fall
Crumbling down upon them all.

These were the me n who lioved to save,
But nineteen men lie in the grave,
How can we the debt repay? Whit will the mithers to their bairnies say?

I sing this song to make it clear
Life is cheap though whiskey's dear,
But by Christ the price is high
When nineteen firemen have to die.

17 Oct 01 - 02:56 PM (#574319)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: McGrath of Harlow

Hunting around today, I found this site - Firenet, the site of the British Fire Service - with an online donation for the NYC firefighters set up on the home page. And with lots of fascinating other stuff inside.

Anyway looking round it I came across thisabout a fire in Smithfield Meat Market in 1958 where a couple of firefighters were killed, and I remember there was a good song about that one at the time. I think it was printed in Sing or Spin. And I think John Foreman put it out as a broadsheet.

Can anyone come up with the words? The tune was a version of Dives and Lazarus.

17 Oct 01 - 10:57 PM (#574604)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: Mark Cohen

There's a song I heard on WKSU's online folk music show a while ago, from the point of view of a smokejumper (one who fights forest fires) who survived when the rest of his crew didn't. For the life of me I can't remember the name of the singer or the song, but it was incredibly powerful. I'm sure someone out there will know it. I'll bet there is also a ballad or two about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. Good idea, Kevin.

Aloha,
Mark

18 Oct 01 - 05:19 AM (#574724)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: McGrath of Harlow

By definition fire crews have to be ready to go into action at times when there isn't any action. That strikes me should be the sort of environment in which songs get written. I wonder if there are any firefighting Cyril Tawneys around? Writing songs about firefighting, and about other things too?

18 Oct 01 - 05:31 AM (#574730)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: Wolfgang

Just to link them together. Here's a link to an earlier thread about a firemen song and in that thread are more links to similar songs.

Wolfgang

18 Oct 01 - 10:28 AM (#574854)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: Jeri

Following Wolfgang's link, here's Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan, which is probably the song Mark's referring to.

19 Oct 01 - 06:38 AM (#575405)
Subject: Lyr Add: CHICAGO FIRE TRAGEDY (Alex Campbell)
From: McGrath of Harlow

Here is a song by Alex Campbell not about firemen, but about a terrible fire that happened in Chicago in 1958. He wrote it in Paris a couple of years after - "When I first sung it in Britain one of the folkies dismissed it as 'like something by Woody Guthrie'. Unwittingly he paid me my least deserved compliment:

Won't you gather round me people and listen to me
I'll tell you the story of Chicago's tragedy
Took place in a Catholic school, the hour was not late,
And the time of the year was December, fifty-eight.
Chorus:
Flames in the corridors, smoke filled the rooms
Nowhere to turn and fly
Poor little children coughing in the fumes
Ninety-two of them will die.

Sobbing parents lined the pavements in winter's wind and sleet,
Some found their little children in the ashes at their feet,
What a Christmas it was in all those stricken homes
Fathers and mothers who could only weep and moan.

Come all you gentle people and join your voice to me
Say a prayer for the victim of this cruel tragedy
And parents you must try hard to guard your children well,
For if you lose them your life will be a hell.

(That is taken from Alex's little book Frae Glesga Toon, published in 1964, long out of print.)

20 Oct 01 - 06:18 AM (#576202)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: McGrath of Harlow

And then of course there's the Trumpton Fire Brigade.

I remember once I was at a Community Centre Open Day and there was a Fire Engine there. And someone said how like the Trumpton Fire Engine it was. And this huge fireman standing there solemnly intoned "Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub." I wonder how many firemen owe their first impulse to become firemen to Trumpton.

21 Oct 01 - 07:24 PM (#577021)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Songs about firemen
From: McGrath of Harlow

Has any one heard those songs by David Bowie and Paul McCartney in that big concert "in tribute" to the firefighters of NYC? Didn't they make you cringe?

In spite of things like that, I still believe that the songs that survive out of this will be some of the good songs that have been written out of it.