I have just got hold again of ' Songs for Swinging Landlords To ' the Topic EP by Stan Kelly & Leon Rossselson in 1961.

It has 4 tracks, of which uncannily the first is 'Greedy Landlord' by Karl Dallas, as quoted above, but without verses 3 and 7.


'The Man That Waters the Workers' Beer' is described in the liner notes as " Words by Paddy Ryan to a traditional tune. A classic from the Unity Theatre stable in 1939. "

'Pity The Downtrodden Landlord' has " Words by B. Woolf and music by Arnold Clayton. Another Unity classic which mother used to sing to us."


This helps to confirm that the song was written by our Dad , probably during the war, for Unity Theatre, and was published after the war in 1946 by the Workers Music Association.


There are only 3 verses - The one starting "You are able to work for your living .. is not included. We still need to track down the original sheet music to see whether, as we suspect, that verse just somehow got lost as the song went on its travels.


[ By the way the other track is the Oakey Evictions, about colliery evictions in County Durham in 1885 by Tommy Armstrong, the celebrated collier balladeer of that time. It's a pretty good song too. ]

Yours aye
The Lyricist's Son