Songs about rag sorters

Subject: any songs about rag sorters
From: mg
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 03:42 AM

story in apartment therapy seems to lend itself to a song..they have the names of women who were rag sorters in SF I think.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/rag-sorters-textile-recycling-187082

Subject: Lyr Add: RAMBLING CANDYMAN ('Rich' Johnny Connors)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 04:26 AM

A song we recorded from a Co. Waterford Traveller stopping in Swindon in the 1970s.
He can be heard singing it on the double CD 'From Puck to Appleby'
Jim Carroll

10 - Rambling Candyman (Roud 2163)
Made and sung by 'Rich' Johnny Connors

But the day that I left Ireland,
Sure things were very slack;
I rambled over to Glasgow
And I'm wishing to get back.
I was gathering old pot metal
And more times bones and rags;
Sure, all the little different things
I put into different bags,
To see all the little kiddies
With their bones stuck in their hands
And enquiring for Johnny Connors,
He is a rambling candy man.

An old man come to me one day,
Thought I was rather green,
Down in the comer of his sack
There were bricks you could plainly see.
Sure I said, 'Old man, take up your sack,
Sure I'm not in the game,
You can't handle bricks or mortar
To any rambling candy man'.

Spoken: Oh, I could keep going and going with that, you know what I mean. It's all... Ah, sure, 'tis only bits of that, that's not an old... well, it did happen really, yeah. That's when we come over first, we pulled in; things were going bad like. We pulled in this bit of waste ground and this old man, he come up to us and he thought we were real, you know, like, that we would buy anything. But I suppose this man wanted a drink or summat like, you know, probably he had his own problems as well as us; yeah.

Note.
It is still quite common to hear Travelers singing snatches of songs, usually just one or two verses, that deal with other Travellers, often in a mocking manner. They have either been made by the singer or by somebody within living memory and are usually remakes of other songs. 'Rich' Johnny Connors made this one up about himself, describing an event that took place some twenty-odd years earlier when he first crossed over from Ireland to Scotland. He appears to have adapted it from an existing song, 'Travelling Candyman', a version of which was recorded by Seamus Ennis for the BBC in 1954 from Co. Antrim woman Jennie Davison.

Subject: RE: any songs about rag sorters
From: Leadfingers
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 04:33 AM

mg's link

Subject: RE: any songs about rag sorters
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 10:26 AM

Here`s one about "totters" called "Old-Rag-A-Bone"

https://soundcloud.com/john-hills/old-rag-a-bone

Subject: RE: any songs about rag sorters
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 05:30 PM

My friend Veronika Jackson has a song called The Ragman who was well known in Tampa/St Pete in the fifties .

Subject: RE: any songs about rag sorters
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 06:31 PM

I am also thinking of Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton about her mother making her a coat out of rags..

Also chairs to mend..any old rags

Subject: RE: any songs about rag sorters
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 08:16 PM

Jolly Beggerman sounds like he sells old clothes

Subject: Lyr Add: RAGS AN BONES (The Band)
From: michaelr
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 10:44 PM

Rags and Bones (Robbie Robertson)

Catch a taxi to the fountainhead
Blinking neon penny arcade
A young Caruso on the fire escape
Painted face ladies on parade
A newsboy on the corner
Singing out headlines
And a fiddler selling pencils
The sign reads, 'Help the blind'

Comin' up the lane callin'
Workin' while the rain's fallin'
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones with old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

Trolley car rings out the morning
The whistle blows at noon
A cat fight breaks open the night
While watch dogs bay at the moon
A preacher on an orange crate
With a salvation army band
And clicking along the cobbled stones
Well that's the sound of the ice cream man

Comin' up the lane callin'
Workin' while the rain's fallin'
Ragman, your song of the street
It keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

The organ grinder and his monkey
Still walkin' the same old beat
The shoe-shine boy slappin' leather
He puts the rhythm in your feet
Strollin' by the churchyard
List'nin' to the Sunday choir
With voices rising to the heavens
Like sirens screaming to a fire

Comin' up the lane callin'
Workin' while the rain's fallin'
Ragman, your song of the street
It keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Play them one more time for me


From the album Northern Lights, Southern Cross (1975)