Well, it is nearly Christmas so it's time for a little frivolity. I'd never heard of this album until a friend passed some tracks from it on to me. It seems I've only kept 8 tracks but there's another fifteen tracks but I can't seem to find a copy of this 1995 CD. The CD was commissioned by the Goethe Institute and the New South Wales Education Department with the idea that it would be a useful German language learning resource. Can anyone help with more information?
The credited performers were Gunther Polsterl, Klaus Knipp and that fine Australian fiddler, Bob Campbell.
The seven featured tracks are:
1. Botany Bay
2. South Australia
3. The Catalpa
4. Black Velvet Band
5. Sergeant Small
6. Little Fish
7. Big Ben Pie (tongue in cheek here I expect)
8. Wild Rover (with some English)
All these tracks sound great.
Most visitors will be aware of the English language versions of these songs.
Little fish, a delightful lullaby credited as a traditional Australian song, has featured in the postings here previously.
Big Ben pie was a commercial jingle.
Sergeant Small aka
Down and Outback may not be so well known. Sergeant Small was a well-known police officer stationed at Roma in south-west Queensland. In the depression years, many men on the dole were obliged to travel the country searching for work as they had to collect their dole from different locations. With virtually no money, there were really only two ways to effect this travel - by walking or jumping a freight train. The railways tended to resent the second option and there was a constant effort by both the state police and the railway police to deter these free travelling swagmen or bagmen as they were sometimes called. Their usual technique was to intermittently board and comprehensively search trains. Sometimes the swagmen were arrested and other times they would be forced off the train in remote areas.
Sergeant Small developed a cunning approach. He would kit himself out as a bagman trying to find some space on a goods train for himself and he'd surreptitiously approach each carriage and ask if there was any room inside and many a concealed bagman would answer back and thus give himself up.
In 1938, the very talented New Zealand country and western singer then in Australia, Tex Morton, decided to write a song about Sergeant Small and it got a lot of airplay. Unfortunately, Sergeant Small took exception to this and his threats to sue resulted in the song being withdrawn from both broadcast and sale. Later, one Brad Tate amalgamated Tex's song with a poem with a similar theme by a Terry Boylan to produce, intentionally or otherwise, a much more folky feel and I suspect that the German Language version here arises out of the later version.
Anyway, just for the fun of it, I have included Tex Morton's 1938 original version (yes there is some yodelling) and also a rendition of the more modern version by Ian White from his 1983 LP "
Waiting for the Rain". Anyone got that LP? Sergeant Small has also been performed by others including the Irish group Patrick Street in "
On the Fly" and the Australian rock group
Weddings Parties Anything.
Download - all 320 CBR other than Ian White at 128 VBR
