My Old Man's a Fireman/Soldier/Dustman (strike out whichever is not applicable)

Some time ago I looked into the origins of My Old Man's a Dustman, the 1960 song by Lonnie Donegan which helped broaden his appeal.

I didn't look hard enough.

It hadn't occured to me to explore beyond a 1922 ditty entitled What D'Yer Think of That? by JP Long. In my defence it's actually subtitled My Old Man's a Dustman, and the phrase is included in the chorus along with references to "a dustman's hat" and legwear (of a style unspecified) ... but it's not the song which Donegan himself cited as the source of his novelty hit.

I can't say for certain whether he even knew of it, though I suppose you could call it a companion piece: despite being written 38 years apart What D'Yer Think of That? and My Old Man's a Dustman derive from the same song, a Liverpool ditty entitled My Old Man's a Fireman, already the subject of a parody by the time Long put pen to paper in the twenties. Donegan told Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh:

'My Old Man's A Fireman (on the Elder Dempster Line)' became a student's union song in Birmingham, and then it was picked up by the troops in World War I as 'My old man's a dustman, he fought in the Battle of Mons. He killed ten thousand Germans with only a hundred bombs.' We used it as a joke on stage and then the A&R department at Pye told me to write it ... We performed new verses every night until we had ones that would work well on record. 

That's England, not Alabama, in case you're wondering - a rare instance of Donegan finding musical inspiration on this side of the pond. He had been familiar with the song through its wartime version since his schooldays.

And if you're confused about why the number was taken up in the Midlands it's because students studying mining at Birmingham University would travel to West Africa via the Elder Dempster shipping line, which ran from Liverpool. Alan Rozelaar, who was there in the 1940s, writes:

A few Mining students became President of the Guild of Undergraduates and it was probably this which led to the university anthem sung on Saturday nights in particular:

My old man is a fireman now what do you think of that
He wears cor blimey trousers and a little cor blimey hat
He wears a flipping muffler around his flipping throat
Because my old man is a fireman on an Elder Dempster Boat. 

The Rampant Scotland website quotes a less bloodthirsty version from the first world war as remembered by the daughter of a Gordon Highlander:

My old man's a soldier,
He works at Maryhill.
He gets his pay on a Saturday night
And buys a half a gill.

Goes to church on Sunday
Half an hour late.
Takes his buttons off his shirt,
And lays them on the plate. 

The Mudcat website, indispensible for chasing down folk song variants, has a thread which offers not only the lyrics of the song as recorded by Donegan but alternative verses created by later singers, as though the song is gradually being reclaimed by its folk roots, which seems fitting. In an appearance a few months before his death Donegan described My Old Man's a Dustman as:

a genuine, proveable folk song ... we didn't write that, we wrote the gags is what we wrote ...

Note that "we": Peter Buchanan, Donegan's then manager, is credited as one of the writers of the published song along with Donegan and one Beverly Thorn. According to Dave Waller on the Lonnie Donegan forum:

"Dustman" was written by Peter Buchanan, and his son told me recently that Lonnie knew this song as a kid, but not in its original state, but as a ditty sung by WW1 soldiers, with some very original words!

Lonnie and his band at the time often would sing it on the way to shows, making up verses according where the were performing, ie. My Old Man's from Brighton, then whatever they could come up with. Apparently the band wanted to be a bit more involved with what was happening on stage, when one night they decided to "pull a fast one" Lonnie hit the first notes of a song, the band totally ignored this and started up on their own with "My Old Man's from". The audience were stunned into silence, and then at the end went wild. From this Lonnie told Peter this is a must for the show, and asked him to see if he could put something together. The rest as they say is history.

Was Buchanan simply recording, or tidying up, the band's live improvisations, or taking a lead from Lonnie? I don't know, but according to wikipedia the third name on the songwriting credits, Beverly Thorn, is actually Leslie Bricusse. It's not implausible - this is the man who wrote Bermondsey (more or less a parody of Basin Street Blues) for Sid James - but I note that the link provided by wikipedia leads to a Bricusse interview sans trousers, hat or any other reference to the hymning of refuse collecting apparel.

Below is the post I wrote under in less enlightened days, labouring under the misapprehension that What D'Yer Think of That? was the sole inspiration for My Old Man's a Dustman. Now I'd even go so far as to say that it's possible none of the three who took credit for "Dustman" knew of the other song's existence; the idea of a "dustman" could have suggested itself as the obvious antithesis of the military superhero in the version familiar to Donegan.

And even if one or more of the trio happened to know of the JP Long song they don't appear to have taken anything from it beyond that change of occupation. Pete Frame's book The Restless Generation suggests Donegan was prone to musical pilfering and rarely scrupulous about acknowledgment, but there is enough material in the original "Fireman" song to mean that none of the notional "Dustman" writers needed to look elsewhere.

JP Long's song is still worth looking at, even if it didn't inspire Donegan, so here is that earlier post, unrevised:

Have just found JP Long's lyrics for the original version of My Old Man's A Dustman, actually entitled What D'Yer Think of That?

They are on the excellent Mudcat forum here - if you scroll down far enough. As mentioned before, this is a great place for checking out variants of folk and folk-related songs with nary a pop-up in sight.

Before someone posted up the lyrics (taken from a copy of the sheet music in the National Library of Australia, above), an ingenious and not implausible explanation was proffered for Donegan's use of the word "nana"  in his version of the song - as in:

He looks a proper nana in his great big hobnail boots
He's got such a job to pull 'em up that he calls 'em "daisy roots"

Could it, one contributor asked, have been "nabob" originally? Here was the reply:

It may be that "Nabob" was as originally written by the composer but Donegan interpolated "Nana" to give contemporary relevance and meaning - compelling evidence indeed for the man's genius and grasp of zeitgeist.

A sentiment which would be endorsed, I'm sure, by my Donegan-fanatic friend, if he's reading this - but alas, nohow and contrariwise: no equivalent word or phrase is found in the original.

Maybe, however, there was a stroke of genius, or at the very least shrewdness, in the general tone of that reworked version.

Donegan's dustman is, in more than one sense, earthy, with a keen sense of his rights:

Now folks give tips at Christmas, and some of them forget
So when he picks their bins up, he spills some on the step
Now one old man got nasty, and to the Council wrote
Next time my old man went round there, he punched 'im up the froat

Not to mention a prowess to rival that of Jake Thackray's Grandad who, some may remember, "offered to put the ladies' union in the family way":

Though my old man's a dustman, he's got a heart of gold
Now he got married recently, though he's 86 years old
We said "Here, hang on, Dad! You're getting past your prime!"
He said "Well, when you get my age, it 'elps to pass the time ..."

And reflecting that period of social change - it was released in 1960 - Donegan ends with an exhortation to the live audience to regard the dustman as fully human - connected, indeed, to the one who hymns him and, by extension, those listening to the 45:

Next time you see a dustman, a-lookin' all pale and sad
Don't kick him in the dustbin, it might be my old dad

But the 1922 original seems to be a Daily Mail-type dig at overpaid members of the working classes who are in danger of getting above their station, told from the point of view of the sensible and long-suffering wife, with whom the audience are clearly intended to identify:

When they only paid him thirty bob a week,
He called me his little turtledove;
But since they've raised his salary to four pounds ten,
He throws his rubbish where he throws his love!

We are reassured, nevertheless, that she knows how to work around his absurd pretentions:

He used to have beer for his breakfast, but now he wants nothing but "fizz."
So I give him a Seidlitz powder, and then I leaves things as they is.

According to the Dorothy Fields website,

Seidlitz powders were a very popular remedy to be taken for indigestion. A Seidlitz powder was, in fact, two powders - one wrapped in blue paper and one in white paper. The powder in the blue paper, containing sodium potassium tartrate and sodium bicarbonate, was thoroughly dissolved in half a pint (275ml) of water and the contents of the white paper, tartaric acid, added. The resulting solution was drunk while it effervesced.

Which would explain the similarity to champagne for a parvenu lout. And furthermore, this undeserved luxury is, for her, penance rather than pleasure:

You'll notice this dress that I'm wearing: it's sent all my friends up the pole.
He got it for me on my birthday from Robinson Peter's "dusthole."
Our rag-and-bone man said this morning the material's "creepy de shin."
I fancy it's "sackcloth and ashes" by the way that it scratches my skin. 

Note, by the way, that the song comes from a time long before Peter Robinson's was taken over by Burton so was indeed a byword for modish apparel, if the 1908 advertisement below is any guide - ie the husband isn't betraying his ignorance in having his wife kitted out there. Aimed at Americans, the text reads:

Every Trans-Atlantic visitor to London this season is cordially invited to pay a visit to our world-famous establishments -- inspect the newest fashions always in evidence here.

Which is just about all I have to say for the moment - except to qualify my "biting satire it ain't" remark in an earlier post about the Donegan song.

For all my facetiousness above, when Donegan refers to "an unsung hero" at the start of his version of the song I think he sort of means it: he may have created a cartoon character but I do think we're meant to be on that character's side. There may not be much - alright, any - directly political intent but it is, nevertheless, a song of its time. And the "punched 'im up the froat" line isn't about senseless violence but linked to the intro, which makes clear it would be a pretty big deal for such a man not to get a Christmas box:

Some people make a fortune, others earn a mint
My old man don't earn much
In fact ... he's flippin' ... skint.

The reverse position, in fact, of What D'Yer Think of That? So maybe Donegan was a bit of a genius after all.

It's also worth noting that Shaw's Alfred Doolittle was created for Pygmalion in 1912 - and came back to prominence via the hugely successful musical adaptation My Fair Lady in 1956 played by Stanley Holloway:

 Something in the air, or might those two versions of the song have been inspired by those respective incarnations of Shaw's character?

Below, in full, are the original lyrics of JP Long's song:

WHAT D'YER THINK OF THAT? (MY OLD MAN'S A DUSTMAN)

Written and Composed by J. P. Long

"Featured and sung with great success by Joe Brennan in J. C. Williamson's pantomime 'Forty Thieves'"

1.
I've married a man of position. I've married a man of great wealth.
He works very hard for his living, and it isn't too good for his health.
I think his good job will continue. Well, that's what I fervently trust.
He's rapidly making his fortune. Yes, he's covered all over with dust.

CHORUS:
My old man's a dustman. What d'yer think of that?
What d'yer think of that? What d'yer think of that?
He wears a dustman's trousers, he wears a dustman's hat,
And he talks a dustman's language. What d'yer think of that?

OPTIONAL:
When they only paid him thirty bob a week,
He called me his little turtledove;
But since they've raised his salary to four pounds ten,
He throws his rubbish where he throws his love!

2.
He used to have beer for his breakfast, but now he wants nothing but "fizz."
So I give him a Seidlitz powder, and then I leaves things as they is.
I'm getting quite jealous of Herbert. The ladies admire him, I know;
And the way that he picks up a dustbin, oh, it does show his figure off so!

3.
You'll notice this dress that I'm wearing: it's sent all my friends up the pole.
He got it for me on my birthday from Robinson Peter's "dusthole."
Our rag-and-bone man said this morning the material's "creepy de shin."
I fancy it's "sackcloth and ashes" by the way that it scratches my skin.

The original post about What D'Yer Think of That? was part of the Gnome Thoughts series exploring novelty songs which may have inspired the young David Bowie; there is a general guide to those posts here. More JP Long songs are explored in a post in the series here.

The main Lonnie Donegan quote comes from Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh's 1000 UK #1 Hits, quoted on the songfacts website here; Spencer Leigh's website is here.

The Mudcat thread on My Old Man's a Dustman can be found here.

Here is the JP Long song as recorded by Ernie Mayne. I'm presuming from the sheet music cover, above, that the song would have originally been sung by Joe Brennan in pantomime dame garb, but it's hard to say whether Mayne is affecting a female voice here:



Here is some film of Mayne in action - not, unfortunately, singing this particular song:



Oh, and if you're wondering what prompted me to revisit my earlier post about this song the reason is simple. Yesterday I was breakfasting at a cafe attached to a well-known supermarket when, faut de mieux, I picked up a copy of the Daily Express and, in one of those "Any Answers?" type columns which you find in most papers, found someone asking whether Lonnie Donegan's father had been a dustman. The answer was no, nor had he worn gorblimey trousers, etc - I admit I summoned a smile as the journalist went through the card. Donegan pere was, it seems, a classical violinist, albeit one only intermittently employed. Here is that same enquiry as reproduced online:

My head afizz with the Seidlitz powder of creative impulse, I immediately began to frame a new version of the song incorporating this information; even though the metre was proving a problem I could feel a solution straining for egress ... And then a Person from Porlock arrived bearing my Big Breakfast, asked me if I wanted any sauces, and the moment was lost.

Perhaps it's for the best. I awoke today, all of that preprandial frenzy gone, and settled down soberly to part-write, and part-reinvigorate, the above.