Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Sep 16 - 05:13 PM

three chords, if you are in d major, the only time you use the g chord is on to hell with you jack im alright.the rest is d or a major. three nights and sunday double time is d major. the second line finishes on a major on the word time.
next line starts with d major, then g major on to hell.
the last three nights is d major. on sunday its a major. the last word timeis d major

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Sep 16 - 05:03 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxkOv3U9778

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 08 Sep 16 - 03:27 PM

Can't help with the tune although I'm sure Matt recorded it. He was a regular guest at the Marsden folk club in South Shields in the sixties. He was unpretentious, direct and funny- not a stage Scot at all& able to adapt/invent tunes to his excellent songs in a unique way.

I'm still singing a verse to the song which is the header of this discussion- not sure if it was ever recorded by him but I clearly recall him singing...

I've a big post office book, it's true
And in it I've aa fiver more than you
I've saved through eatin' potted heid***
It'll pay for the hearse when I drap deid
chorus..
** as a mere Geordie, I'll leave it to those ''''Geordies with their brains kicked oot'''''' north of the border to explain this Scottish delicacy

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)
From: GUEST,Alistair Mackie
Date: 07 Sep 16 - 03:53 PM

I am looking for the chords to Three nights and a sunday.
Anyone who can help

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Three Nights and a Sunday (Matt McGinn)
From: GUEST,Margaret
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 04:54 PM

I am going back to 1961 and I remember the man himself singing this song on a BBC programme that featured Nadia Cattouse.
The programme was a weekly folk item and various folkies had their first exposure to to "the rude and scoffing multitudes", my oul memory also conjures up another name, Steve Benbow. Any takers?. Ard Mhacha.

Aye, that would be The London Folk Song Cellar, w/ Robin Hall & Jimmie MacGregor. They'd Matt, Nadia, Benbow, the Watersons, Martin Carthy, Lyn & Graham McCarthy from Oz, Packie Manus Byrne, Alex Campbell before he killed himself with the drink, Gareth & Elinedd(sp?) Francis and I can't remember how many others. What a bugger that BBC never issued the recordings.

Subject: RE: Three nights and a Sunday double time (McGinn)
From: GUEST,Sarah
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 06:27 PM

The beauty of matt McGinn is that he was the genuine article; he wrote daft throw away songs and he produced classics like the DEPTH of my EGO;

Deep in my heart
and deep in my mind
Deep in the depth of my ego
Deep in my breast
lies a treasure chest
a world that only I can know

You can criticise me try to analyse me
put me in your little pigeon hole
but I'll still hold the key to the place where I am free
A place that only I control

I can love you dearly I can love you true
I can love you long and love you well
but I must have my own song only I can sing
my own tale that only I can tell

Place me in your prison put me in your cell
lock me up and throw away the key I will only wander wander all around
this big world that's inside me


Deep in my heart
and deep in my mind
Deep in the depth of my ego
Deep in my breast
lies a treasure chest
a world that only I can know

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 09:00 PM

Jock, "Guthrie was in a different class than stereotypical bunnet-wearing drunks, rolling their rrrrrrrrrrrrrrs in a hamely way...": I couldn't agree with you more - but so were Matt McGinn and Harry Lauder. What have the Scots done to you that you feel the urge to put them down (not only in this thread)? Get rid of that chip on your shoulder!

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 04:49 PM

C`mon all of you Jocks and enlighten me.
I am going back to 1961 and I remember the man himself singing this song on a BBC programme that featured Nadia Cattouse.
The programme was a weekly folk item and various folkies had their first exposure to to "the rude and scoffing multitudes", my oul memory also conjures up another name, Steve Benbow. Any takers?. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Big Jock
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 04:27 PM

I've never written a song in my life. I'm merely saying that people in general deserve better than McGinn and Lauder. Guthrie was in a different class than stereotypical bunnet-wearing drunks, rolling their rrrrrrrrrrrrrrs in a hamely way or living off the great Scots myth of tightness while accompanying himself on a bent stick.
Orrrrrra best,
Big Jock

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 02:55 PM

I take from Big Jock's remark that Harry Lauder is also deserving of BJ contempt? I do hope Big Jock does not approve of me - I'd rather be classed with McGinn and Lauder, who brought more joy to more people than most of us ever encountered personally. Big Jock must be a helluva good songwriter himself if he can be so superior.

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 03 - 06:23 PM

Hi Strupag, stick tae yer tea. The Rolling Hills of the border brings Harry Lauder intae the equation.
Big Jock

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Strupag
Date: 14 Mar 03 - 06:35 PM

Hey Big Jock, You've got problems!
Have you heard "The Rolling Hills of the Borders?
It's a great pity that the Scots Cringe is alive and well

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Big Jock
Date: 14 Mar 03 - 12:20 PM

Matt McGinn was closer to William McGonnigle than Woody Guthrie. His songs were shallow and appealed to the lowest common denominator of the Scottish working class. He went down to the lowest level but did not pick anyone up -- he stayed there.
Big Jock

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Billy
Date: 14 Mar 03 - 12:57 AM

Dick Gaughan pays wonderful tribute to Matt on his website at www.dickalba.demon.co.uk in a section called "Links In The Chain".

Dick writes " 'McGinn of the Calton'. Once met, never forgotten.

He constantly played the clown but behind that mask lay an extremely sharp mind with a deep knowledge of the history of the Scottish working class. I served as accompanist to Matt for a short time in the late 60s and played on his album 'Take Me Back to the Jungle'. It was quite an experience.

He had a highly idiosyncratic attitude to performance, particularly to pitch. He would begin by giving the audience a long and hilarious preamble to whatever the song was, which might or might not have any direct relevance to the song, and launch himself into the first verse without warning. I would spend the first couple of bars finding what key he was approximately singing in and just when I had managed to catch up with him, he'd stop and start talking, wander up and down the byways of wherever his mind took him before firing into the next verse of the song. By this time, I would be falling about laughing as helplessly as the audience and would struggle to regain some kind of composure and try to find whatever key he was singing in this time, usually far away from the initial key. This was the pattern for the evening.

Comparisons are always a bit of a waste of time but if I were forced to make one, I would say that Matt is probably as close to a Scottish equivalent of Woody Guthrie as we've produced. His songs had the same deceptive simplicity but always with the same objective - to instill a sense of pride. In his song about the new Cunard liner being built at John Browns (codenamed Q4, later named QE2) there are quite profound ideas lurking behind the apparent simplicity of the literal text. He pays homage to the skills of older generations of workers and shows how these skills are passed on and improved upon -

Thank you dad for all your skill
But the Clyde is a river that'll no stand still
You did gey well but we'll do more
Make way for the finest of them all, Q4."

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Dave Smith
Date: 13 Mar 03 - 12:26 PM

I seem to remember the "weekend waiter" was "drinking waiter". It was a long time ago. I saw the great man himself sing it in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, not bad for a Glaswegian, but he had a rotten voice. Far better for others to sing his songs. No offence to the departed.
Dave

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 04:29 PM

Good ones, Jim.
I never spotted the 'Left My Baby' into 'Coorie Doon' transmogrification.
Vigilante Man is fascinating too. Now, what tune did Guthrie use for that? High On A Mountain which I've heard sung by a singer with a wondrous name - something like Ola Belle Reed - springs to mind.

The closest I have thought of yet for Three Nights is Wee Gallus Bloke, but I feel there ought to be a closer one. In the original of this by the way Josh Shaw does not sing 'factory lassies', he sings 'hairy pie'.

I now and then wonder how much Harry Lauder raided traditional tunes for his compositions.
Best regards
Ewan

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Jim McLean
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 04:22 AM

PS. Try Woody Guthrie's 'Vigilante Man'

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Jim McLean
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 01:57 PM

You're quite right, Ewan, to spot a few close relatives, one of them being 'Mary, My Scotch Bluebell' or 'I love a sausage'. When Matt lodged with me (a long while ago) in London, he suggested we write a song together and told me how he went about the process. He would take a well known tune, e.g. 'I left my baby lying there' and change certain parts to come up with 'Coorie Doon'. We never did write anything together.(!!)
Jim McLean

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 04:52 PM

I am scratching my head to identify what tune Matt used for this. I have spotted some close relatives, but what actual song did he draw on?

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Hugh
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 03:23 AM

What memories! I had the great pleasure of seeing Matt McGinn quite a few times, performing in the Bathgate area. I seem to recall a verse that starts.... Theres a fellow doon the road that I avoid he's one o' them they call the unemployed he hasnae goat a job you see he hasnae goat a job, an av'e goat three etc.

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,andymac
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 01:29 AM

If you're looking for books on Matt McGinn, then try "McGinn of the Calton" which is his autobiography, not quite finished before he died, but wonderful nonetheless. It was published by Glasgow District Libraries to mark the 10th anniversary of his death. Apart from that, you could look for the CD "best of..." mentioned earlier, which was published with help from his wife Jeanette recently, for a contact number/email and try from there. Adam McNaughtan and Matt were not at school together, but got to know each other through the Glasgow folk scene in the 60s and 70s, would have been fun and a privilege to have been around them though...

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: robinia
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 05:31 PM

Does anyone know if McGinn's songbook is still available? (The websites I accessed sell CDs; they don't seem to mention songbooks). And were he and Adam MacNaughton in school together (as I seem to remember hearing). What a pair they must have made!

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Annegi
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 01:26 PM

It was written by Matt McGinn - I have it in his song book. The other missing word is 'Dunlo-pillow' - it's a brand name - pillows made by Dunlop.

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 10:53 AM

The missing line is : Ah never miss the pub on a Friday night
It's there you'll always find me gay and bright
Ye'll see me doon at the auld Bay Horse
Ah'm a weekend waiter there of course

Cheers

Steven

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: GUEST,Moleskin Joe
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 08:22 AM

The Bay Horse is a pub at the corner of Bath Street and West Nile Street in Glasgow and Matt McGinn used to drink there.

Subject: RE: Help: Three nights and a Sunday double time
From: Zipster
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 08:14 AM

Its on my "Best of Matt MCGinn" so I've assumed its he wrote, if I find out different I'll post. You'll get more on MAtt McGinn websites (search on Google).He was "born and raised in Glasgow in a Gallowgate tenement", so your info is inaccurate.

Zipster

Subject: Lyr Add: THREE NIGHTS AND A SUNDAY (Matt McGinn)
From: robinia
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 07:59 AM

Can anyone help me with a lyric gap and some info on a song that I have on tape (simply labeled "from the Northeast of Scotland")? It goes:

CHORUS: Three nights and a Sunday double time.
Three nights and a Sunday double time.
I work all day and I work all night.
To hell wi' you, Jack; I'm all right.
Three nights and a Sunday double time.

There's a fella doon the road that I avoid.
He's one o' them they call the unemployed.
He says it's all because o' me,
He cannae get a job when I've got three.

[They've went and introduced a new machine.
Noo it's two men where they once had seventeen.
The machine does the work of four[teen?] you see.
I do the work of the other three, three nights...]*

The wife came to the work the ither day.
Says she, "We've another wee 'un on the way."
Says I: "Nae wonder you can laugh.
I've no been hame for a year and a half."

Now, I never miss the pub on a Friday night
And there you'll always find me gay and bright.
Ye'll see me doon in the Auld Bay Horse
I'm a weekend waiter there, of course.

Now there's some'll head for heaven when they die,
Tae find the Dunlo pillow in the sky.
But I'll be going to the other place.
An idle life I couldnae face.


I also wish I knew who wrote this song. Any help out there?

* All the verses but this one are on the album "Matt McGinn Again" (1967)