Lyr Req: The Fitter's Song (Ewan MacColl)

Subject: Lyr Req: diesel fitters song Ewan McColl
From: GUEST,ossnflags
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 02:50 PM

has any one got the words to this song (I have the tune)

Chorus goes:

"shift boys shift, do your work and get your pay
when this job is ended I'll be heading on me way,
I will wrap up me tools in a pair of oily jeans" can't remember any more.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: diesel fitters song Ewan McColl
From: belfast
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 03:33 PM

From the radio ballad "Song of the Road"? About the building of the M1. I think it's in the Ewan MacColl/Peggy Seeger Songbook (Oak Publications) which I don't have about me at the minute.

Great help, right?

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FITTER'S SONG (Ewan MacColl)
From: nutty
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 04:32 PM

THE FITTER'S SONG
1958 (Songs of a Road)

I am a roving rambler, a fitter to me trade
I can fix you anything, a camshaft to a spade
I can fix a dodgy gearbox or mend a broken tread
Decoke a Leyland engine while I'm standing on me head
   So shift,boys,shift, do the job and draw your pay
   When this road is finished I'll be moving on me way
   I'll clean me tools and wrap 'em in a pair of oily jeans
   You'll always find me working where you find the big machines


I've worked in far off places since I left the coaly Tyne
I work among the heavies and I wear a roving sign
I keep the tractors on the job, a-turning up the soil
And I've followed me nose around the world by the smell of diesel oil
   So shift,boys,shift, do the job and draw your pay
   When this road is finished I'll be moving on me way
   You'll find me where the tractors are, on roads or hydro schemes
   Playing the lousy nursemaid to a pack of big machines


Tune - trad Australian - ("Along the Castlereagh")
words and arrangement Ewan MacColl
Copyright - 1963 Stormking Music Ltd

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: diesel fitters song Ewan McColl
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 09:56 PM

G'day ossnflags,

I was sure I had posted this, a few years back ... but there are quite a few of my postings that have not yet made it into the DT. I was going to check from a search on my postings - but the new design Mudcat puts that up as 10 separate pages, and it's just too hard to search ten pages before lunch ends!

Anyway, Nutty has got the words there - and you know the tune. Enjoy!

As I mentioned, in the DT Study thread - "Hot Ash-pelt", this is personal favourite for me ... particularly since I worked in the big construction game, in Australia - in the '60s, with a lot of Pommy and Irish types very like those about whom Ewan wrote that song.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: diesel fitters song Ewan McColl
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Nov 02 - 11:55 PM

I've mentioned a few times in other threads that I worked as a diesel fitter in the 60s.

It was a ladies lingeree shop. A gal would come into the shop, I would hold up a pair of panties and yell, "Yeah, dese'll fit
er."

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: diesel fitters song Ewan McColl
From: GUEST,ossonflags
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 12:45 PM

many thanks nutty, me mind must be going but i thought there were more verses than that,but any way as I always say, less verses,quicker to learn!!!!

Art, the old jokes have always been the best ones havent they?