Folk singing bus driver

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 05:26 PM

you cna push yer granny off a bus

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 10:31 AM

Would Busy Bee quality?


I'll get my coat.................

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: melodeonboy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:39 AM

"You're Crazy For Taking The Bus" (Jonathan Richman)

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: semi-submersible
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 06:22 AM

The rising accent on the a in Cuanto, and the squiggle on the n in senoritas, both looked fine in Preview. Believe me! Can some kind volunteer fix those two words (and delete this post) please?

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: semi-submersible
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 05:59 AM

With those windshield wipers slapping time,
And Bobby clapping hands,
We finally sang up every song that driver knew.
(from Me & Bobby McGee the way I heard it)

A favourite on our family trips when we were little was what Mom could remember of "Cuánto le Gusta" (posted here in a thread from 1997 to 2008 and also in a shorter 2002 thread). Once, during a heavy downpour with our wipers straining to keep up with the sheeting rain, Mom cracked us all up with a Freudian slip about "señoritas with dark and splashing eyes"!

The 37 Bus mentioned above by John Nolan is posted in its own thread, and on Req:Undocumented gems about Life in West Scotland (2006) as well as in the indispensable Glasgow thread Lyr Req: Cod Liver Oil (1997-2009). Thanks to Jim Dixon for links posted in 2006.

When Mom was a girl headed for camp, on the bus they sang Grieve My Lord No More with numerous verses like:
Oh you can't get to heaven on a trolley car
Cause the goldurned tracks aren't laid that far.

Then their bus driver improvised a verse. A teacher named Glen, with a couple of students left over after the bus filled, had started out following the bus in his own vehicle but had dropped behind at the last gas station. So their driver sang:

Oh, you might get to heaven in the Jeep with Glen.
You might get to heaven, but I can't say when.

The kids loved it.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:37 PM

Jack, Adam spells it 'Erchie Cathcairt'. I've got a set of lyrics but need to check them again, I think they're incomplete.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: GUEST,callingbird
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:38 AM

Hi Weasel

He not only sings it, he wrote it.

I concede your explanation was ingenious.

Best do as Suzanne says and skip over to the 'Tale of Ale' thread.

Far too intellectual for me to join ;o)

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Hamish
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:23 AM

On field trips many moons ago me and my mate Stuart would sing Tie a Yellow Ribbon in falsetto to annoy the "bad boys" at the back of the bus. Worked a treat. I don't think that's the sort of thing you were looking for, though!!

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 02:49 AM

In case anyone is now trying to google Jake - it's Thackray (no 'e')

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Little Robyn
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 02:24 AM

Yes WYSIWYG, our Sam was a peach and a character.
But I don't think he was a Maori - just another Pakeha like me.
Robyn

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 08:56 PM

Adam MacNaughtan, "Archie Cathcart" (not on Mudcat, or anywhere online that I can see - maybe Adam doesn't want it uploaded anywhere public).

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 07:31 PM

Weasel, callingbird and everybody else who helped - thanks for getting the (1 bus right at last! Your corrections will be incorporated.

Now, could you please go to the 'Tale of Ale' thread asap and apply your talents to the Excise Ballad?

No? Oh well -

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Gurney
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:47 PM

The Flanders & Swann song is called 'A Transport of Delight,' but it is about a commuter omnibus, not a coach.
A big six-wheeler,
scarlet painted,
London Transport,
Diesel engined,
ninety-seven horsepower,
omnibus!

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: weerover
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:36 PM

Jake Thackeray has one called "North Country Bus" on an album I have somewhere.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Weasel
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:26 PM

Hi,

Of course he sings that! I've just listened to it - Can I blame the wine for not spotting it straight away. (And can I claim something for my scholarly explanation of the meaning of the wrong words?)

Cheers,

Weasel

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: GUEST,callingbird
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:07 PM

Me again,Weasel

I emailed Mike Harding just to find out what he did actually write because the line in the third verse just did not sound right at all.

He wrote 'I'm right in the manure business, he said'.

He says the thought of writing in somebody's business is too much for a sensitive soul like him :o)

Cheers

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:09 PM

Riding On Top Of The Car
Chalk Farm To Camberwell Green

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: autoharper
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:03 PM

The Wheels on the Bus
Words and music by Aaron Fowler
Copyright 1997 Hope Street Productions (BMI)

http://www.roomdad.com/music.html

The wheels on the bus go round and round
Round and round, round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round.
All through the town.

All across this nation, the wheel on the bus go round.
Children loading buses, just listen to the sounds.
They get up every morning and step into the dawn.
Sleep still matted in their eyes and on their face a yawn.

Chorus:
From early in the morning till late at night
The wheels go round and round.
Children huddle, beneath street lights.
While the wheels go round and round

The old folks say that they remember when,
Schools were down the street.
They could walk to school and helped out,
And the cycle was complete.
But the ones that held the power,
They didn't want to share.
So they made a plan to integrate,
So all "would be fair."

Now the wheels on the bus go round and round
Round and round, round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round.
All through the town.

Education for profit
It's the new game in our town.
So you close up school to save a buck,
Now the stock market wears the crown.
When decisions are made without a thought
To the ones who have no voice.
Don't tell us that we're lazy
And say we had a choice.

Chorus:

The answers to these questions are difficult I know.
Opinions come from every side, how easily they flow.
But when the final bell has rung and the answers have been told.
Who's left with the goodies and who's out in the cold.

The wheels on the bus go round and round
Round and round, round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round.
All through the town.

From early in the morning till late at night
The wheels go round and round...

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: wysiwyg
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 11:21 AM

The late Catter Billy the Bus did this-- sing/drive a bus. What a character-- pls excuse if I offend with ignorant language. Maori Man living in touristy areas, if I recall right. Hard juxtaposition to live. He was a peach, was Sam.

~S~

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Weasel
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 09:21 AM

I suspect that it's a euphemism for "right in the business" which is, in its turn, a euphemism for "right in the sh*t"

Cheers,

Weasel

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: GUEST,calllingbird
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 08:02 AM

The last line of the third verse I have always believed to be;

' and I'm right in the manure business he said'

'writing them in your business' just doesn't make sense to me.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Weasel
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 07:18 AM

Sorry Joe, the spaces between the verses haven't carried through - can you change it or should I re-post?

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Weasel
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 07:17 AM

Right, I think I've got it:

NUMBER 81 BUS

One night I was stood by the town hall bogs
Snoggin' with me financée
When all of a sudden up a bus conductor rushed
And he coughed - I say
Have you seen a bus, a big red bus
With faces peerin' out
There is no conductor 'cause it should be me
'Cause me bus I am witho-o-o-out
Without, I said, Have you gone stone mad
Have you lost your bloody 'ead
No, I've lost the 81 to Crumpsall Green
And I'm writing them in your business, he sa-a-a-a-aid
Ten minutes ago I rang the bell
And I shouted to me mate
Ee, I'm gone a minute, lad, I'm goin' for a slash
He said, Right but don't be la-a-a-a-ate
Well, in the loo there was such a queue
I just 'ung on in anguish
When I came out, well, the bus 'ad gone
The bloody lot had va-a-a-anished
So we fetched a cop but 'e couldn't 'elp
For t' bus were nowhere in sight
And the polis and the sanitary cleansing department
Was searchin' all that ni-i-i-ight
Now it's seven long years since bus disappeared
The 81 to Crumpsall Green
And on moonlit nights down Cheetham Hill Road
Its ghostly shape can be se-e-e-een
It's red outside and lit up inside
The driver 'as a long grey beard
And the faces all peerin' out can be seen
And their plaintive voices may be he-e-e-eard
It's seven long years since 'e went for a pee
Since then 'e's never been seen
Does any bugger know where's conductor Joe
Of the 81 to Crumpsall Green

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: catspaw49
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 05:37 AM

Ah yes.....Traveling the highways and byways. Singing along to those wonderful tunes like.................

THREE WOODEN CROSSES.....Randy Travis

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,
Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.
One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,
An' two of them were searchin' for lost souls.
That driver never ever saw the stop sign.
An' eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,
The faith an' love for growin' things in his young son's heart.
An' that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:
Did her best to give 'em all a better start.
An' that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"
As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker's hand.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.
As he held that blood-stained bible up,
For all of us to see.
He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, an' the preacher;
"Who gave this Bible to my mamma,
"Who read it to me."

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, now I guess we know.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway.


OR how about one from Porter and Dolly.................


CARROLL COUNTY ACCIDENT

Carroll County's pointed out as kind of square
The biggest thing that happens is the county fair
And I guess that's why it seemed like such a big event
What we all call the Carroll County accident
The wreck was on the highway just inside the line
Walter Browning lost his life and for a time
It seemed that Mary Ellen Jones would surely die
But she lived long enough for her to testify

Now Walter Browning was a happy married man
And he wore a golden wedding ring upon his hand
But it was gone nobody knew just where it went
He'd lost it in the Carroll County accident

Mary Ellen testified he flagged her down
Said he was sick and could she drive him into town
And no one even doubted what she said was true
Cause she was well respected in the county too

Now I went down to see the wreck like all the rest
The bloody seats, the broken glass, the tangled mess
But I found something no one else had even seen
Behind the dash in Mary's crumpled up machine

A little matchbox circled by a rubberband
And inside the ring from Walter Browning's hand
And it took a while to figure out just what it meant
The truth about the Carroll County accident

By dark of night I dropped the ring into a well
And I took a sacred oath that I would never tell
The secret of the Carroll County accident
Cause the county ordered dad a marble monument

I lost him in the Carroll County accident



Those are both nice don'tcha' think?

Spaw (channeling Gargoyle)

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Weasel
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:13 AM

Never one to let the age of a thread put me off, a correction to the words of on verse 7:

And on moonlit nights down Cheetermill(?) Road - should read "Cheetham Hill Road" (not far from where I live!)

If i can find a copy somewhere I'll have a look at the other queried lyrics.

Cheers

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 12 Jun 99 - 10:16 PM

Wellll...instead of addressing to you,Jeri, I typed your name in the "from" box..sorry!Interesting, though, how I can now see things from your point of View! Hmmm....

LEJ

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Jun 99 - 09:44 PM

LEJ - how did you manage to become me?

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Jun 99 - 09:39 PM

I've never heard that story before. Thanks!

Jeri

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Jun 99 - 09:16 PM

"Willin"" was one of the great tunes written by the one and only Lowell George. It was a song Lowell wrote while a member of The Mothers of Invention. The story was that he nagged Frank Zappa about including it on a Mothers album, until Frank finally agreed to listen to Lowell play it for him. When it was done, Frank fired him on the spot, saying "you're wasting your time in my band. That's a great song. Now take it and go start your own band." Lowell started Little Feat, and you'll find "Willin'" on the first album.

LEJ

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 12 Jun 99 - 12:53 AM

Hi!! I've got one, how 'bout"The wheels on the buses go round and round":)

Giz

Subject: Lyr Add: NUMBER 81 BUS (Mike Harding)
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 11 Jun 99 - 07:52 PM

Managed to transcribe the gruesome story:

NUMBER 81 BUS

One night I was stood by the town hall box(?)
Snoggin' with me financée
When all of a sudden up a bus conductor rushed
And he coughed - I say

Have you seen a bus, a big red bus
With faces peerin' out
There is no conductor 'cause it should be me
'Cause me bus I am witho-o-o-out

Without, I said, Have you gone stone mad
Have you lost your bloody 'ead
No, I've lost the 81 to Crumpsall Green
And I'm writing them in your business, he sa-a-a-a-aid (?)

Ten minutes ago I rang the bell
And I shouted to me mate
Ee, I'm gone a minute, lad, I'm goin' for a sludge(?)
He said, Right but don't be la-a-a-a-ate

Well, in the loo there was such a queue
I just 'ung on in anguish
When I came out, well, the bus 'ad gone
The bloody lot had va-a-a-anished

So we fetched a cop but 'e couldn't 'elp
For t' bus were nowhere in sight
And the polis and the sanitary cleansing department
Was searchin' all that ni-i-i-ight

Now it's seven long years since bus disappeared
The 81 to Crumpsall Green
And on moonlit nights down Cheetermill(?) Road
Its ghostly shape can be se-e-e-een

It's red outside and lit up inside
The driver 'as a long grey beard
And the faces all peerin' out can be seen
And their plaintive voices may be he-e-e-eard

It's seven long years since 'e went for a pee
Since then 'e's never been seen
Does any bugger know where's conductor Joe
Of the 81 to Crumpsall Green

(Written by Mike Harding, recorded on 'A Lancashire Lad', 1972)

The tune is 'The Old Dun Cow'. 'Financée' is NOT a misprint. The line before the second question mark I can't make out at all, with the other three it's only the words immediately preceding them that are in doubt. Has anyone got the album and could help out? Or perhaps - Mike, are you lurking in the Mudcat Café? (Too busy doing his BBC2 show, I bet!)

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 07:05 PM

Mike Harding wrote a hilarious song about a bus conductor missing his bus. Both turn into ghosts. I'll dig it out next week. The tune is 'The Old Dun Cow', if I remember correctly. - Susanne

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: ADeane
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 03:51 PM

Many thanks for all the ideas, keep them coming, we will pass them on-who'd have thought there would be so much interest! ADeane

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 10:29 AM

Wow, it took me long enough to learn what a mondegreen was and now it has been verbed! Not quite relevant but Jim and Jesse's Cash on the Barrelhead has a bus in the third verse. Woody G's Hard Travelin"? Pete

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 09:02 AM

I went on a bus tour of Europe once. The tour was done by an English company and originated in England. Guess how many English people were on it - 0.

We sang an awful lot of WWII era songs, since most folks were from that age group. The Italian bus driver, South Arfican tour guide, and tourists from the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand knew the songs. I knew them because my mother had sung them.

It ain't folk, but Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again"
The theme from "Rawhide"
Lots of cattle drive songs
The Greatful Dead's song "Willin'," if you don't mind the drug references. I heard someone once sing the chorus as"
"Don't give me no weed, whites or wine, just show me a sign"
Of course he then proceded to mondegreenize the place names to smithereens.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 03:53 AM

In the long hot summer of '68 I was with a party on a student study tour of parts of US and Canada. We travelled in two National Trailways buses, one of which was dubbed "the singing 'bus" on which I and my friends made continuous hideous music and the other for the people who wanted to sleep, the accompanying tutors and those of a nervous disposition! On the day we "did" Toronto and environs we had a French Canadian 'bus driver who entered into the spirit and insisted we sang "Alouette" which he led. Our US 'bus drivers merely restricted themselves to telling us as we passed state lines what the rules for smoking and drinking were in the state we were entering! My only US visit apart from transit lounge at LAX!

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 12:09 AM

I've always thought a bus would make a perfect school--and singing would definitely be a huge part of the curriculum, songs tied to the geography and history of sites visited, or just as a socializing and time filling activity... --seed

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Susan A-R
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 10:54 PM

Love it. Some day I want to write a song about my favorite bus incident (I have had a lot of em, some not so nifty, as I don't drive.) However, I was riding home from a concert in southern VErmont on the Bayley Hazen/Village Harmony Bus, which belongs to Larry Gordon, and is a psychadelic affair. The concert had been Wonderful!! We'd patched together three or four choruses and sung Balkan, South African, Shape Note and Spiritualls, and a bit of early music as well, and the energy level was astronomicall. We sang much of the way home on the bus, and stopped in White River Junction (pronounced hoyt rivuh junshin by natives, including me) at about 2 a.m. (this bus doesn't move real fast) We came into the gas station singing, and left that way, and you should have seen the guys gettin' gas and picking up their six packs. You'd have thought we were a UFO or a USO or some such thing. So there's a song in that somewhere. I'll work on it.

Susan

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 10:20 PM

By The Way

Bill Steele is the author of Garbage as sung by Pete Seeger (more or less)

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 10:11 PM

Bill Steele of San Francisco and Ithaca NY used to sing a song I think he wrote called the Gasoline Gypsies. Travel by live in bus.

Don

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: John Nolan
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 08:35 PM

See "The 37 Bus" thread of 7/31/97 - the best bus song ever written.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 07:11 PM

SO MUCH FOR THE COPY AND PASTE.. Maybe you can figure out how the lines are supposed to go..

CAP'T BOB

Subject: Lyr Add: THE AKADEMY BUS
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 07:07 PM

Golly, I didn't know that there were two of us doing the same thing. At the Posey Lake Akademy of Musicology (PLAM for short), we have an old l952 sixteen passenger school bus. The bus has sort of been renovated so I can only guess at the actual number of seats that it originally contained. We went on basically two tours and one World Tour, which ended after around 450 miles due to tire problems. Anyway, I don't have a song about bus travel however I did write a poem about our little bus.

"THE AKADEMY BUS"

The Akademy Bus is like one of us.
She has been many miles down the road.
Though she squeaks and grunts and she's loose
In the front, she carries one hell of a load.

As she lumbers along, we embed her with song
Till the music leaks out of her vents.
People look our way and some of them say,
"That bus must be Heaven sent."

From Ralph to Reed City, it seemed a pity
That more folks can't travel this way.
They stop and stare. Some of them swear
Or simply look on in dismay.

We think it a shame. Hell, we're not to blame
How some people fall into a rut.
They should get off their can, go join a band,
And perhaps buy themselves an old truck.

What's wrong with this? Well it just doesn't fit
Into the way our society is run,
For we are technician pawns, trained consumers
Of song, who don't know what it is to have fun.

There are those full of greed, of want, and of need
And I may be one of the bunch,
But when I'm out there, with the wind in my hair,
I get this weird sort of feeling...

Cap't Bob ~~~~Who says eccentrics don't have fun!

HTML line breaks added. --JoeClone, 1-Oct-02.

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Susan of DT
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 06:42 PM

A search for bus gets 29 hits

Subject: RE: Folk singing bus driver
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 05:52 PM

Cliff Richard - Summer holiday!

The day we went to Bangor

A Flanders and Swan song (I think) - 97 horsepower omnibus

Subject: Folk singing bus driver, songs?
From: ADeane
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 01:32 PM

A friend of ours does bus tours in a 1948 bus and sings folk songs. He would like some more songs about buses and travelling! Any ideas? ADeane