DTStudy: When A Fellow Is Out Of A Job

Subject: Lyr Add: When A Fellow Is Out Of A Job
From: sed
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:44 PM

The version printed in the Digitrad substitutes for the words I remember Grant Rogers singing at a concert in DC about 1971.
See the lyrics I remember in [*] below:

Every man that's a man wants to help push the world
But he can't, if he's out of a job.
He's left out behind, on a shelf he is curled
When a fellow is out of a job.
He feels he's no part in the whole of the plan,
An obsolete cog, only half of a man   [*he's got the old mitten from nature's own hand}
And the world isn't what he's had it to plan [*he's truly rejected; a left-over man]
When a fellow is out of a job.

Steve Sedberry

PS Also I think Grant's Folk-Legacy lp album has the above [*] words.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: When A Fellow Is Out Of A Job
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:55 PM

Hi, Steve. Let's turn this into an edited DTStudy thread, and see if we can get definitive information on this song. I see we have both lyrics and tune, and the songwriter names. Is the song available in a printed source? Anybody got the Folk-Legacy album?
-Joe offer-

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This is an edited DTStudy thread, and all messages posted here are subject to editing and deletion.
This thread is intended to serve as a forum for corrections and annotations for the Digital Tradition song named in the title of this thread.

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WHEN A FELLOW IS OUT OF A JOB
(Grant Rogers and John Barnes)

All nature is sick from her heels to her hair,
When a fellow is out of a job.
She's all out of kilter, beyond all repair
When a fellow is out of a job.
There's no juice in the earth,
No salt in the sea,
No ginger in life in this land of the free.
And the universe ain't what it's cracked up to be,
When a fellow is out of a job.

What's the good of blue skies and blossoming trees?
When a fellow is out of a job.
And your kids have big patches all over their knees,
When a fellow is out of a job.
Those patches, you see, look as big as the sky
They blot out the landscape and cover your eye
And the sun can't shine through the best it may try
When a fellow is out of a job.

Every man that's a man wants to help push the world
But he can't, if he's out of a job.
He's left out behind, on a shelf he is curled
When a fellow is out of a job.
He feels he's no part in the whole of the plan,
An obsolete cog, only half of a man
And the world isn't what he's had it to plan
When a fellow is out of a job.

(repeat first chorus:)
There's no juice in the earth,
No salt in the sea,
No ginger in life in this land of the free.
And the universe ain't what it's cracked up to be,
When a fellow is out of a job.

Copyright Stormking Music, Inc.
@work
filename[ FELLOWJB
TUNE FILE: FELLOWJB
CLICK TO PLAY
RG

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Subject: RE: DTStudy: When A Fellow Is Out Of A Job
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 03:17 AM

I've just finished making Grant Rogers' recording available as a CD, folks. In fact, it was the first of our old LPs that I elected to turn into a "custom CD" (made here in our own studio). It's got some darned fine songs on it, most created by this remarkable stone quarry worker, fiddler, and "Songmaker of the Catskills." I know that Pete Seeger recorded this song once. He learned from Grant's singing of it back in the days of Camp Woodland. I haven't heard Pete's recording, but wonder if the alternate words could be from that source. Grant always explained that he heard John Barnes (pronounced Bar-ness), a fellow construction worker on a job with Grant in New Jersey back in the days of the Depression, sing a fragment of this. Grant said Barnes couldn't carry a tune and only had a bit of the song, anyway. So Grant, never one to pass up a good idea, created the tune and wrote most of the words himself.

Sandy

Subject: RE: DTStudy: When A Fellow Is Out Of A Job
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 03:25 AM

The text in the Digital Tradition is almost exactly what's printed in the labor songbook called Carry It On (Pete Seeger & Bob Reiser, 1985, 1991). The book says the words were by Sam Walter Foss, adapted by John Barnes. Music was written by Grant Rogers in the 1940's, they say. Copyright 1962 by Stormking Music.
So do you believe Seeger/Reiser, or Paton?
Probably both.
[grin]
-Joe Offer, diplomatically-