My bike has not seen much use during our long, snowy Stockholm winter.
But with all the snow and ice finally gone, I finally plucked up courage and cycled down in the sunshine to Liljeholmen today for a doctor’s visit.
One major delight was to cycle past the Enskede Riding School Stables and spend a moment or two looking at the rather splendid horses. Not only could I watch these beautiful creatures. There was also a chap bashing away at some horseshoes.
A blacksmith at work in 2024! A much-celebrated profession, still going strongish In 2024!
I wrote about it on Facebook and a pedantic pal in Hove (quite rightly so) pointed out that it is farriers not blacksmiths who do horseshoes.
I was happy to be corrected, Farriers! A profession I’d never heard of!
Back in the day, there was a blacksmith and/or a farrier in every village.
But the profession is far from dead. and still crucial for riders.
One of Mrs KFD’s TV favourites is to watch the Gothenborg Horse Show and other equestrian events. I can understand the appeal but I get bored after five minutes. But I do understand how important it is to have farriers on hand to put things right.
Blacksmiths!!
Is there any other profession which has inspired so much music??
The Anvil Chorus by Verdi, Gustav Holst – The Song of the Blacksmith. Spike Jones- Blacksmith Song
James Taylor Quartet- Blacksmith. Steeleye Span- Blacksmith
Lyle Lovett – Natural Forces. The Longest Johns – Hammer and the Anvil
Bert Jansch – Blacksmith. America – Horse with no name.
In terms of professions, I think, ahem, ‘Ladies of the night’ may have farriers beaten by several orders of magnitude.
I think you are on to something there, @Podicle. And those songs cover a broad range of musical genres. Everything from Verdi’s La Traviata to the Police’s Roxanne.
Not to mention..
funk: Labelle’s Lady Marmalade,
folk: Bellowhead’s New York Girls
disco: Donna Summer’s Bad Girls
Waits: Xmas Card from a hooker in Minneapolis
And if you include rent boys and pimps, the jolly blacksmith may find himself badly outnumbered.
Not many accountant songs
A few more insurance men ones.
Nice work, Hubert. Two modern professions not often celebrated in song.
The Beatles’ Lovely Rita Meter Maid also mentioned a job not often sung about.
Then there are songs about once common jobs, now almost gone.
No milk today. Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the west.
I can’t imagine there are many who milk for a living in 2024 however I am sure that folk-singers will never tire of singing about jolly milkmaids.
Personally, I have a soft spot for Norwegian milkmaids.
Sissel, sizzling as ever!
For redundant professions well represented in song, I think telephone operator would have to be king.
You’re on the ball today @Podicle!
Talk about a cue for a song!
The Faces’ version was also excellent.
Most leap years it’s as if a mental flocculent has been administered, and for a few short weeks after February 29 I have astounding clarity of mind. By mid-April the sediment has returned and I slump back into a muddled fog.
Bobbie Gentry – Ace Insurance Man
Jimmy Reed – Take Out Some Insurance
That’s that bird from Duty Free. Sort of ironic for an accountancy song.
Chris sieveys’ Freshies pawn to a mostly vanished trade and workplace
surely close to AWers’ hearts
You know they do. They really do.
I lived in Manchester when that came out and briefly knew* a girl who worked in said emporium.
Inevitably, she claimed the song was about her – as I suspect did every young woman who ever worked there.
* Sadly not in the Biblical sense
….she sounds so vain
Excellent @Jaygee! What a superbly catchy song.
All our yesterdays!
No worries, K. In case you didn’t know, Chris S was probably better known for donning a paper machier head and becoming Frank Sidebottom
Horses, you say? The best equine barbershop quartet on the internet:
https://www.crazygames.com/game/singing-horses
And, any excuse to share my Maggie obsession –
Superb song, Sal. I can see that becoming a big favourite.
And the equine barbershop is wonderful. It seems that it originated from an SVT kids show here in Sweden. A real find.
None more farrier than this chap, who sings his own song with the forge running full tilt in the background!
I particularly enjoy this vid KFD, especially the absence of any sound other than the “work”.
Later: “Twang seemed such an ordinary guy, kept himself to himself, who would have thought he would have done a thing like that?”
Is it pronounced Bowie or Bowie?
That’s fabulous work. I have no use for a monster like that, but I’ve always valued the practicality of a good camping knife, so a few years back I started making my own. There’s great saisfaction to be had from producing a nice artisan tool oneself.
I have no forge facility so I have bought in blank blades from Mora of Sweden, and I make them into hand made woodcraft knives with handles of local woods and hand stitched sheathes from fine vegetable dyed leather. Here’s my first ever effort, with a handle of Oak, Ash and Thorn going from hilt to blade, separated by fine slivers of Chestnut.
That is seriously impressive, Vulpes! Well done! Time to go the whole hog and invest in a forge and some bellows. What is the word for the profession of a person who makes knives?
I’ll ask this guy:
Awesome work VV. Looks great. I still have my scout sheath knife which has aged nicely. For quite a while I had a classic switchblade which I bought in France on a school trip and used as a letter opener, but it began to freak me out so I gave it to a cop friend of mine to dispose of.
Knife? Maggie has a song about that. Obsessed, moi?
Bless her! Ms Rogers and you are really keeping this thread trundling along!
She’s a very charismatic performer and it’s another darned catchy song.
For a second, I thought she might be doing a Genesis cover!
“A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork. That’s the way you spell New York”..
@twang @kaisfatdad
You might enjoy this video –
I have several of these guys’ axes, they are all different, for different purposes, and all superb to use. Each one has its maker’s initials hammered into the steel.
A modern smith at work! What a wonderful video @Vulpes Vulpes..
And so very true to my question that kicked this thread off.
I’ve really been enjoying finding songs that mention different professions.
The gasman cometh by Flanders and Swann takes some beating!
Here it is with a video in Lego!
Thanks Vulpes and Twang. Two superb clips from the forge.
Clever idea to have the forge providing ambient noise for his farrier song.
And Twang, your guy would be In like Flynn with Einsturzende Neubaten. All that wonderfully percussive banging and bonking.
There is something magnificently primal about a blacksmith’s workplace. This scene from Il Trovatore at the Met really captures that.
I’m sure you all immediately recognised the Jonathan Richman song from which I got the name for this thread.
Such a magnificent earworm. Let’s give it a listen!
I rediscovered it on this wonderful playlist of horsey songs.
The Norwegian geezer who compiled it did a splendid job. Gems old and new.
There’s something very distracting about equines. Just ask Prince.
You had me confused there, fentonsteve. I thought I was going to see The Purple One on horseback.
Back to folk music. Here are The Watersons singing about ….a Young Banker!
Not a profession I’d expect in a folk song. I found the explanation.
!”The young banker in this song, incidentally, is not a high-flying, cocaine-snorting, economy-destroying financial whizzkid, but “a man who made embankments, stone walls and such” (A.L.Lloyd), or perhaps “A labourer who makes or repairs the banks of waterways; spec. one who digs drains, ditches, or canals” (OED).”
That’s from the excellent A Folk Song a Week blog which also mentions some songs about blacksmiths and other professions.
https://afolksongaweek.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/week-214-the-blacksmith/
“In September, my cousin tried reefer for the very first time/Now he’s doing horse, it’s June”
I have no idea what British Navy reefer jackets have to do with horses. But then I don’t think my Donkey jacket was made from donkeys, either.
How many songs refer to “buffer girls at Mappin and Webb” ?
How many people outside of Sheffield even know what this is without googling?
I guessed it was some kind of waitress in a posh teashop like Betty’s.
I got that wrong!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny_Was_a_Buffer_Girl
Pop songs embraced the ups and downs of modern working life. Martha and the Muffins, for example.
From nine to five, I have to spend my time at work
My job is very boring, I’m an office clerk
The only thing that helps me pass the time away
Is knowing I’ll be back at Echo Beach someday
The Human League sang about a waitress in a cocktail bar. Kraftwerk about a Model.
Bowie sung about an astronaut. Could he have guessed that one day an astronaut would take a guitar to space?
Short(?) order cook?
Short(?) order cook?
Thanks @Retro for reminding us about Mr Melly.
A national treasure. And a Smutmeister of the first order.
I suspect that modern food and beverage regulations would not allow George to put his dogs on sale.
What a magnificent performer he was
You had to be there!
Betty Wright – Clean Up Woman
Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks – Sweetheart (Waitress In A Donut Shop)
Also..
Benny Hill – Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)
I thought of Ernie too @Mike_H
Then Billy Bragg.
I’m surprised* that nobody posted it much further up in the thread.
*And a little shocked, TBH.
Out here in the Wild West (of South Cambs) we still have a milkman.
Dan Hicks mingling with Betty Wright and Benny Hill! I like it.
You’ve brought a wonderfully eclectic group of guests to our party, @Mike_H
Well, there’s this by the Stranglers. Not actually their finest moment however but…
By the time my tall chum wrote this, the Cigarette Girls were already drawing their pensions.
Exquisite song @fentonsteve.
By complete co trast, here’s one of the first pop songs I liked.
You should have stopped at “trast”
I say, I say, I say…
I think I had some cor blimey trousers when I was about 8.
PJ Proby’s trousers were corblimeys, I think.
Here’s one for all the jobsworths.
You’ve done it again, @hubert_rawlinson!
Introduced us to a quite wonderful new combo!
Ragged bur right indeed!
Can this be the best ever song about a specific profession?
Forget jolly blacksmiths! Glen Cambell’s melancholic linesman is the real deal!
Never mind songs about professions, how about bands named after trades? Here’s a band who could have been called Electricians:
And my fave song by Chippies:
Now look here KFD, how am I supposed to make my regulation contribution to your thread, while I’m halfway round the world and on my batphone?
Funnily enough, I’m hosting a night of work songs at the club in a fortnight. Almost certainly, someone will do this.
I do hope you’ll be performing this.
I will be expected to open the evening with Right Side of the Footplate.
Thanks a lot @thecheshirecat. That really is a very fine song.
I Googled Will Noble:
“Will Noble comes from a South Pennine family of farmers and builders and is well-known to lovers of English traditional song for his rich oak baritone and his repertoire of Yorkshire songs.
Many of the songs learned at the hunt suppers of the Holme Valley Beagles during the early 1970s.
He sang with the group The Holme Valley Tradition for several years, and later as a duo with John Cocking but is now best known as a solo singer, having appeared at many festivals and traditional singing events, and been twice invited to the USA.
His son Cuthbert and daughter Lydia are both keeping the family traditions of walling and singing and can be heard on several tracks providing vocal encouragement.”
Enjoy your travels!
Halfway round the world
Has ever a profession been portrayed so dramatically as in Bizet’s Toreador song from Carmen?
Good to listen to it with subtitles. Toreadors and bullfighting really do not belong in the 21st century. But it’s a great tune.
Back to the farrier’s forge for a moment. Here’s a very unexpected but rather enjoyable find.
Øyvind Skarbø is a Norwegian jazz drummer from Bergen who is famed for his involvement in the free jazz scene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98yvind_Skarb%C3%B8
He’s written a funky jazz instrumental about a farrier!
The band name is a joke. Skulekorps means “school marching band”. Nostalgia for their early days as musicians? A very talented bunch anyway.
And now a song containing prison officers.
Earlier @Jaygee, you mentioned the late, great Chris Sievey of the Freshies. When he became Frank Sidebottom, he certainly did not let his guitar playing go rusty.
One of the stand out tracks from JCC’s Snap, excellent Crackle and Bop from 1980.
As I was mates with two of the Invisible Girls, got free tickets to the early 80s tour during which the band backed both JCC and Pauline Murray.
Jesus, where did all those 40-odd years go
Lucky you @Jaygee!! I am very jealous.
That Pauline Murray album is stupendous as are both the JCC albums that the Invisible Girls played on.
Hmmm … Vini Reilly definitely played on that Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls album, but I must say I can’t see him lurking in the background of that video. Perhaps he wasn’t keen on playing live with them.
@duco01
I saw the gig in Manchester so I would imagine there was a good chance he was there
@kaisfatdad
I know I was incredibly lucky.
Reason why was that I drank in the same pub as several of Manchester’s more notorious small-time villains, several of whom worked as bouncers as places like the Poly and the Apollo. A pint or two the right person, and I got into see pretty much anyone I wanted.
I also knew a couple of local muses (all three of them drummers oddly enough). The best known of them was Paul Burgess (IGs. TMT and 10CC) with whom I memorably saw Ry Cooder/John Hiatt and got a backstage pass for BOC. Happy days
What an interesting past you have @Jaygee! It sounds like a novel waiting to be written.
There’s a decent wiki page on the Invisible Girls. It seems that Vini didn’t play with them when they toured @DuCo01.
Wayne Hussey was was brought in to play guitar as you’ll see in this very decent clip from a gig in Oslo. I had no idea they had toured outside of the UK,
Here’s JCC and the Girls. Great film too!
One of the band, guitarist Dave Rowbotham was brutally murdered in 1991. The police never found the killer.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/cowboy-dave-film-colin-otoole-14328430
The crime led to a song by the Happy Mondays. Cowbóy Dave, and a short documentary with the same name.
The stuff you discover once you start to dig around!