01 The Springtime It Brings On The Shearing
- 2.42 [Trad. Arr. P. Jones] One
of the best known of all Australian folk songs, this was collected in
Victoria by Dr. Percy Jones. John Meredith found a rather different
version in New South Wales, and most of Dr. Jones' words turn up in
some verses called The Wallaby Track, which were published by a bush
poet called E.J. Overbury in 1865. Maybe some bush singer read
Overbury's words and set some of them to a tune; that was a common
habit with bush singers. Maybe Overbury heard a bush song, and took
some of the words into one of his own poems; that was a common habit
with bush poets.
coves: station managers or owners.
billy quart pot: an indispensable item of the bush nomads' gear; a can, here of quart capacity, in which water could be boiled and food cooked.
new-chums: newly arrived immigrants.
Flash shearers making johnny-cakes round in the bend:
a contrast in the lot of the shearer at different seasons of the year
is implied; during the shearing season he is fl ash (shows an
exaggerated sense of his own importance), because he is earning good
wages and respect for his skill; when the shearing season is over, and
he is unemployed, he is reduced to camping out in the open by some
river bend, and living on a diet consisting mainly of camp-made bread
(a johnny cake is, roughly speaking, a kind of small damper).
Track:
from the album of the same title, released on the CBS label in 1965.
Note: from the original album notes by Edgar Waters, supplemented by
Stuart Heather.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Richard Brooks, harmonica; Les Miller, banjo.
02 Bluey Brink
- 2.47 [Trad. Arr. G. Shearston]
There
are a lot of hard drinkers in frontier folklore, and it is only in
folklore that a shearer could drink straight sulphuric acid with never
a wink, and come back howling for more. But shearers did in fact get
sulphuric acid mixed in with their rum or whisky in outback shanties,
where publicans were much given to doctoring the grog they sold with
all kinds of poisons. Bluey Brink is one of the few old bush songs
which seems to be known to a lot of young singers in the bush. This
version comes from A.L. Lloyd, who learnt it from an old singer called
'Dad' Adams of Cowra, in New South Wales. The tune has been a great
favourite with folk singers for a long time now. It seems to have been
spread far and wide through being used as the tune for a popular
English music-hall song called Villikins and his Dinah. Shear his two
hundred a day: this would put Bluey Brink in the ranks of the very best
shearers.
Track: from the album 'The Springtime It Brings On The
Shearing', released on the CBS label in 1965. Note: from the original
album notes by Edgar Waters.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Les Miller, banjo.
03 Jim Jones
- 3.10 [Trad. Arr. G. Shearston]
It
is a popular belief amongst Australians that poachers made up a large
proportion of the convicts transported to Australia. In fact, the
records show that only a handful of men were transported for poaching.
However, the numerous poaching songs of the English countryside
&endash; such as the well known 'Lincolnshire Poacher' - show that
poachers were often men of great spirit and daring cheerfully defying
the law. It is not hard to see how such a man (after being transported
to Australia) might remain defi ant, but become bitter, and dream of
joining the bushrangers. This song was presumably fi rst sung in the
late 1820s, when Jack Donahue's gang was still at large. The words were
preserved for us by Charles Macalister, who grew up in the southern
highlands of New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s. He printed the
words in a book of reminiscences, 'Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny
South', published in 1907, and said that it was a typical song of the
convict days. Macalister did not print the melody, but said that it was
'Irish Molly 0'. It happens that, like many folk songs, 'Irish Molly 0'
is sung to more than one tune, but when the Scottish singer Ewan
MacColl recorded Jim Jones a few years ago, he chose this one. It seems
to fi t very well. Gary Shearston learnt the song from the singing of
Ewan MacColl.
iron gang: convicts set to working in chains.
Track:
from the album 'Bolters, Bushrangers & Duffers', released on the
CBS label in 1965. Note: from the original album notes by Edgar Waters.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Richard Brooks, harmonica; Les Miller, guitar.
04 The Death of Ben Hall
- 2.43 [Trad. Arr. G. Shearston]
A
number of versions of this song have been recorded from bush singers,
but their manner is not that of the general run of bush songs. It looks
like the work of some amateur poet with misplaced literary ambitions
who borrowed from some collection of 'poetic gems' a bombastic and
artifi cial style which he mistakenly thought fi tted his subject
better than the colloquial idiom of the bush folk song. However, the
badly chosen words somehow still manage to convey deep and strong
feeling, at least to the sympathetic listener. Jack Bradshaw printed a
version of the song in his 'True History of the Australian
Bushrangers', and one would not be surprised to fi nd that the song, in
its original form, was the work of Bradshaw himself. The version used
here sounds a little more natural and colloquial than the one printed
by Bradshaw. A Victorian folk song collecter, the late Joy Durst,
taught Martyn Wyndham- Read the present version and he passed it on to
Gary Shearston. Where Joy Durst learnt the song is not known.
Turpin: Dick Turpin, England's most famous highwayman; hanged at York in 1739.
Duval: Charles Du Vall, a Frenchman who became a notorious highwayman in England; hanged at Tyburn in 1670.
blue-coat imps: police troopers.
Peeler's pimps: police informers.
Track:
from the album 'Bolters, Bushrangers & Duffers', released on the
CBS label in 1965. Note : from the original album notes by Edgar Waters.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal; Kemp Fowler, concertina.
05 The Basic Wage Dream
- 2.48 [Words & Music: Don Henderson]
There
are two direct infl uences here - Henry Lawson's 'Shearer's Dream' and
a piece of Sydney's industrial folk-lore about wages and judges. The
song treats with humour and kindness the workers and machines making
pay by day and the dream horses and poker machines devouring it by
night. It was commissioned from Don Henderson by the Australian Council
of Salaried and Professional Associations as one of its contributions
to the humour, music, folk-lore and pay prospects of the 1964 Basic
Wage Campaign. Don Henderson has emerged as one of Australia's leading
contemporary songwriters and his songs are included in the repertoires
of folk-singers in many parts of Australia and the South Pacifi c.
Footnote: Don Henderson has written that Gary Shearston's version of
the Basic Wage Dream has the distinction of being the fi rst Australian
song ever transmitted by satellite, in a program called 'The Union
Man', broadcast via the Telstar satellite.
Track: from the album
'Songs Of Our Time', released on the CBS label in 1964. Note : from the
original album notes by John Baker.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar.
06 We Want Freedom (Aboriginal Charter of Rights)
- 4.25 [Words: Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal); Music: Gary Shearston]
We
Want Freedom (the Aboriginal Chater of Rights), as arranged by Gary
Shearston, is as new and different as the Yirrkala Aboriginal bark
painting petition on reservation rights to the House of Representatives
in 1963. The Aboriginal Charter of Rights (retitled 'We Want Freedom'in
its song form) was written by Aboriginal poet Kath Walker* and
dedicated to the 5th Conference of the Federal Council for the
Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders held in Adelaide
in 1962. The poem also appears as the dedication piece to Kath Walker's
book of verse published in April, 1964, under the title 'We Are Going'.
In the music of Gary's arrangement can be seen the modern folk process
of weaving together the old and the new as penetrating poetry becomes a
moving and powerful song. After writing the chorus, the inspiration for
his chant-like cadence in the verses came from the 'Devil Dance' (a
song from Yirrkala in Eastern Arnhea Land), collected and recorded by
Sandra LeBrun Holmes. The end result of this cross-pollination of
poetry and song in the tribal and folk fi elds is an anguished demand
for human understanding. [* later known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal]
Track:
from the album 'Songs Of Our Time', released on the CBS label in 1964.
Note : from the original album notes by John Baker.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar.
07 Who Can Say?
- 3.09 [Words & Music: Gary Shearston]
"Who
can take another's hand, the colour of coal, the colour of sand?"and
"travel to seek the face of a universal human race" are just two of the
eight poetic and universal questions Gary Shearston asks in this song.
It is left to each listener to seek his or her own personal answers to
them all.
Track: from the album 'Songs Of Our Time', released on the CBS label in 1964. Note: from the original album notes by John Baker.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Les Miller, guitar.
08 Don't Wave To Me Too Long
- 2.43 [Words & Music: Gary Shearston]
Don't
Wave To Me Too Long is a love song of young men in a hurry to change
the world for their generation and those to follow to the "time ahead
for all that might have been, when swords have turned to ploughshares
and all the world is green."
Track: from the album 'Songs Of Our
Times', released on the CBS label in 1964. Note: from the original
album notes by John Baker.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar.
09 It's On
- 2.08 [Words & Music: Don Henderson]
This
popular song of Don Henderson's is as Australian as the 'Basic Wage
Dream' and might seem to elevate the ideas of "step out the back" and
fi ght it out, the Irishism of "if there's a Government here I'll fi
ght it" and even gunboats up the Nile. Don's sympathy for the victims
pinpoints the men who have stepped out the back so many times that "now
they're fi ghting to see what they're fi ghting about". But he shrewdly
turns the argument on the defence versus education allocations into
proof that, perhaps, "elections should be the best of ten rounds."
Without mentioning Canberra, Sydney or "The Bush", 'It's On' is
unmistakably Australian folk-lore and, perhaps, folk-song too!
Track:
from the album 'Songs Of Our Times', released on the CBS label in 1964.
Note: from the original album notes by John Baker.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar.
10 Reedy River
- 3.30 [Words: Henry Lawson; Music: Chris Kempster]
A
poem by Henry Lawson set to music by Sydney folksinger, the late Chris
Kempster. The song has become widely circulated over the past ten years
and was used by Dick Diamond as the title of his Australian folk
musical produced by the New Theatre.
Track: from the album 'Folk
Songs & Ballads of Australia', released on the CBS label in 1964.
Note: from the original album notes by Gary Shearston.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Les Miller, guitar.
11 The Bush Girl
- 3.55 [Words: Henry Lawson; Music: Con Caston]
Another
poem from the poetic genius of Henry Lawson, set to music by Con Caston
of Warwick, Queensland. In a tribute. Dame Mary Gilmore once wrote:
"Henry Lawson wrote more than just man. There was a woman - mother,
sister, wife and sweetheart - behind everything he gave us." In the
last verse of the song reference is made to Lawson's visit to London
from 1900 to 1902 - a journey which proved to be a mostly unhappy one
for him
Track: from the album 'Folk Songs & Ballads of
Australia', released on the CBS label in 1964. Note: from the original
album notes by Gary Shearston.
Musicians: Gary Shearston, vocal & guitar; Les Miller, guitar.
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