Lyr Req: Fergie Tractor

Subject: Lyr Req: My beaut little Fergie tractor
From: GUEST,Koala Lou
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 10:50 AM

I have the chorus as follows;

Oh my beaut little Fergie tractor,
by jeez she goes like the clappers.
I can plough my fields and increase my yields,
even comes with a silage extractor;
my beaut little Fergie tractor.

but can't find the verses.
It was written by Peter Pentland about 25 years ago.

Subject: Lyr Add: FERGIE TRACTOR
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 09:20 PM

G'day Koala Lou,

This is from a Google search:

FERGIE TRACTOR
Peter Pentland, [e-mail]
from the album "Me Beaut Little Fergie Tractor"

Well I owns a few acres, pays a few quid rent,
And I overcome troubles where they be sent.
Be it rain, or drought, or some other factor,
I take it in stride on me Fergie tractor.

Ch:
Oh, me beaut little Fergie tractor,
Bedad, she goes like the clappers!
I can plough me fields, increase me yields.
Even comes with a silage extractor.
Me beaut little Fergie tractor.

Oh, me Fergie, she's a wondrous machine.
Love to sniff her exhaust, 'cause she always runs clean.
There's no machine I e'er took a jack ta
As few times as me Fergie tractor.

Oh, me wife was naggin' at me for years,
Her tongue always flappin' around me ears.
She nagged at me, me dog, and me farm,
So I run over her on me Fergie-son.

Oh, I once had a milkmaid workin' for me,
And the material of her blouse, it filled me with glee.
She winked at me, but I had to sack her,
'Cause although she liked me she hated me tractor.

Well, some folks say that I'm an idiot,
And if light bulbs were brains I'd burned out me filament,
But people like that I just turn me back ta,
And I goes in me shed and I sits on me tractor.

I'm sure I have it in a few books about home ... but Google produced it straight up.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 01:09 PM

Bob (or anybody), if you can come up with music notation for this and e-mail it to me, that would be wonderful.
-Joe Offer-
[e-mail]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 06:03 PM

G'day Joe,

I don't know if I have the dots (... fairly sure the words are somewhere in the bookshelves) - tune is remebered ... but how well?. I guess we should really ask Peter - whose e-mail address was on the site from which I grabbed the words, yesterday!

I'll chase that up ... maybe there is a tune written down ... but the folk scene of 1969 ... ?

.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.

Oh ... I have just sent off the request (address was his work e-mail at Museum Victoria) ... and got this auto-reply:
" ... I am on leave and will return January 23 ..." - so I don't expect any response until next week!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: GUEST,Koala Lou
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 12:06 PM

Thanks Bob,
I Googled it on several occasions and in several ways but the closest I got was a page for a hotel in Hong Kong that seemed to specialise in catering for expat Australians. It hinted at the complete words but I couldn't get at them. I have the tune in my head but know nothing about transcribing such into print.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 07:06 PM

G'day Koala Lou,

I suspect that what got me straight onto it, via Google, is that I omitted "My" ... suspecting (correctly, as it turned out) that it might be "Me". That's the problem with "exact phrase" searches ... you have to include only the bits that aren't likely to vary.

Enjoy!

BTW: Another of the Google hits was for the handy Australian 'folkie' record site FolkTrax. They had a fairly recent CD re-release of the 1969 LP ... with a 'bonus' set of additional tracks (Peter Pentland ... and what they felt was over-loud piano accompaniment ... ). I think it was Aust$20 ... plus postage (which might be free ... if you are a member of one of the major Folk Clubs).

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 12:30 AM

G'day again K Lou,

If you follow my first link, you have to fight your way in through a rather opaque "catalogue generator" ... but this link takes you straight to Me Beaut Little Fergie Tractor (which is, indeed, Aus $20):

Fergie Tracks.

You'll also find a few realplayer links ... one to the actual song track. I couldn't make it work ... probably blocked by the corporate "Net Nanny" ... but I'll give it a try tonight.

If I get a reply from Peter Pentland, when he gets back to work, next week, I'll pass on whatever I hear from him.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 05:54 PM

For the uninitiated, a Fergie tractor is a Massey Ferguson...Once there were only three types of tractor, the red Massey Ferguson, the blue Ford and the green John Deere.

You could tell what sort of tractor it was just by the colour, even from the other end of the field. My granfer had a Massey, but he still used horses up until the 1950s.

LTS

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: frogprince
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 06:44 PM

Heresy, Liz! There was only one REAL RED tractor: the International Harvester FARMALL. The green ones were, in deed, John Deeres (Save for a smattering of Olivers) The Orange ones were Allis Chalmers. The yellow ones were Cases. The blue (or gray) little motorized tricycles were Fords. Here and there some non-conformist did have some red thing called a Massey Whatchamacallit...
    (I grew up in southern Minnesota, sitting on either Dad's Farmall H or M, or the best neighbors "Poppa John"; where was your sampling based one?)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: cobber
Date: 21 Jan 05 - 08:52 PM

You might be right in Minnesota frogprince, but in Australia, it's a matter of history that the Fergie was the tractor of choice. If you get Peter's CD you'll see a photo on the cover of the statue they set up here to honour the fergie's contribution to the country. If you get the CD you'll find that Peter is called by his nickname of "Hayseed" and at the time not many people remembered his real name. I was involved in the production of the record with Peter Parkhill and we both played on it. We tried recording in the studio but Peter's unique character was lost there so we carted a tape recorder into the Dan O'Connell pub and recorded it live. Hayseed usually performed unaccompanied and had an unusual style of timing to say the least, but he wanted instruments behind him as it was believed that nobody would buy a record of unaccompanied singing. The recording was actually made around 1980. I know that because we'd recorded the song in September 1979, before Peter's own recording. Anyway, as you will hear, the whole night was a hoot and all but one track was first take, with the audience getting right into the spirit of things. Actually, my favourite song is "The Mallee Sheep-crutcher".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 22 Jan 05 - 04:49 AM

G'day Liz the Squeak (UK) and me cobber, Cobber (Australia),

Oops ... ! My second reply did mention the "ubiquitous Massey Ferguson Tractor" ... and mention that most of my mates in the bush seemed to still have one in the machinery shed ... but the "Clicky" maker fell over ... and I had to start again ... and unaccustomed brevity must have seized me!

Regard(les)s,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 04:35 AM

Sorry to introduce a note of discord, but in the UK at least, 'Fergies' weren't Massey Fergusons at all, but the original Fergusons which ALWAYS came in grey. I know this is verging on trainspotterlyness, but the Ferguson was a Concord-like leap forward in technology and was instantly bought and loved by farmers in Europe and the rest of the civilised world, but not in the USA, I think.

The (red) Massey Fergusons were all very well, but no one would be moved to write a song about them, except maybe in Turkey, where they are still the tractor/status symbol/family transport of choice.

For proof of all this, look back at Liz The Squeak's posting of 21 January, where by the second sentence she has referred to a 'Massey'........

Personally, I preferred the Fordson Dexta, the hot hatchback of the 60's tractor world. I think I'll go and lie down in a darkened room now.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 04:42 AM

These days a 'Fergie' is the act of having a Texan suck your toes in public.....

Or a cantankerous football manager...

LTS

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: frogprince
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 05:15 PM

Now a little more of my battered old memory kicked in; there were FERGUSON tractors, and there were Massey HARRIS tractors, and later they begat MASSEY FERGUSON tractors.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: GUEST,Messmate
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 05:16 PM

From memory, both Rusty Dobro and Liz are correct. When Fergusons first came out to Australia (in the 40s?) they were grey. They had what was technically known as a wet-sleeved-cylinder motor (so you could replace the cylinders without replacing the whole engine block) the same as a Standard Vanguard (a uniquely shaped robust car popular in Australia at the time. I don't know any songs about Vanguard cars but I remember my grandfather's Fergie in South Gippsland (Arawata, near Korumburra) and learning to drive on it. It ran on a mixture of kerosene (what Poms call "paraffin")and petrol (what Americans call "gas") but others ran on either straight petrol or straight kerosene.

Ferguson in Australia were later taken over by Massey and the tractors were subsequently called Massey Ferguson (and I can't remember their colour but it may have been grey or red)but the grey Fergies were the ace and deuce of tractors for cockies (what Americans call "small-holders" I think)and are now collector's items.

Peter Pentland's repertoire was wonderful and I wish I could sing his Mallee Sheep Crutcher as well as he did. Whenever I drove back to Melbourne along the Calder Highway at night and got my first view of its lights as I came over the Pentland Hills Peter's songs would always stir my memory.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My beaut little fergie tractor
From: frogprince
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 05:44 PM

I Think all the common tractors around our part of the world, by the late 30's, were "wet sleeve". Put in a new set of sleeves and pistons, run them another decade or so.

Subject: Lyr Add: FERGIE TRACTOR
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 23 Jan 05 - 09:06 PM

G'day again,

I have a reply from Peter Pentland ... unfortunately, no dots - he never bothered with written music. I'll end up transcribing the tune from the CD ... er ... sometime ...!

Peter also sent his "updated" version. I have tidied up the layout a little ... but not punctuated!

I also asked around my more rural mates ... and they agree that the good old tractors were Fergusons not the post Massey- jobs!

Fergie Tractor

1/
Well I run a few acres, pay a few quids rent
And I overcome troubles when they be sent
Be it flood or drought or some other factor
I takes them in stride on me Fergie tractor
Refrain
Oh me beaut little Fergie tractor
By dad she goes like the clappers
I can plough me fields and increase me yields
Even comes with a silage extractor
Me beaut little Fergie tractor

2/
The Fergie she's a wondrous machine
I love to sniff the exhaust because it always runs clean
There's no other machine that I ever took a jack to
As fewer times as me Fergie tractor
Refrain

3/
The council had been on my back for years
About genetic experiments and mutated beers
But when they complained 'bout my nuclear reactor
I knocked down the town hall with my Fergie tractor
Refrain

4/
I had a milking assistant working for me
The material in her blouse filled me with glee
I gave her a wink, but I then had to sack her
For although she liked me she hated me tractor
Refrain

5/
Now some folk say that I'd be an idiot
And if brains were light bulbs that I'd burned out my filament
But people like that I just turn my back ter
And I go in the shed and I sit on my tractor
Refrain

Regards,

Bob