Outback Songman by Ted Egan

Author:Ted Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

23

GREENHOUSE AND THE SHEARERS

Two down—The Urapunga Frog and The Overlanders—in my proposed Faces of Australia series. The total recording and manufacture of stock for The Overlanders had cost around $50,000. I had limited money, although my shows at the Stuart Arms were still popular.

I was thrilled when Sally Milner, the boss of Greenhouse Publishers, agreed to do a companion songbook for each of the Faces of Australia albums. Sally had had tremendous success with the Bushwackers’ songbooks and their dance book; these had become de rigueur possessions of anybody seeking out bush ballads and appropriate dance routines. Sally had a super staff, headed by the highly intellectual, incredibly perceptive Sue McKinnon and business manager Peter Steer, who also soared to cantorial heights as a chorus singer on The Shearers; Nerys dubbed him ‘the Pavarotti of Bridge Road’ (their offices were on Richmond’s main road).

Sally assigned Marg Bowman as my editor. Marg and I shared a great relationship around the books; Nerys and I are still great friends with her. In fact, we subsequently enticed Marg to live in Alice Springs for many years, where she did superb work promoting traditional First Australian art.

Recording was ever so expensive in those days, pre-computers. You had to hire the big studio, with the huge multi-track desk, plus the engineer. We always engaged the best available musicians and singers, and paid them handsomely. After working with Herbie Marks, I made sure there was always plenty of food and drink available. We were very fortunate with our sound engineers.

We recorded three albums in quick succession between 1984 and 1987—The Shearers, The Anzacs and The Aboriginals. I had been working on the many new songs for those albums in the ten years since Barry Forrester’s initial suggestion. Erik Kowarski was amazing, quick with the various arrangements, and I also enlisted the skills of Michael Harris when we did most of The Shearers with the Bushwackers in Melbourne. As Dobe Newton constantly reminds audiences at their concerts, ‘The Bushies are deeply into sheep!’

Everybody in Australia relates to shearing in terms of cultural heritage. Many folk singers to this day regard the wool industry as the specific background to the political events that shaped our nation. The establishment of trade unions, the camaraderie of the shearing sheds, the attitudes to ‘cooks, cuckoos and wilful murderers’, the social rift between the squattocracy and the working class, the strikes of the 1890s, the establishment of the Australian Labor Party, the Wide Comb dispute—all of these are grist to the mill for historians, songwriters and singers. People who have never touched a sheep earnestly sing about ‘tallies’ and ‘squatters’—and if the rouseabout doesn’t respond at speed when they call for tar, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.

In the bar at Lazy Harry’s mate

They shore sheep big as whales

And the bar was two foot deep in dags

As the crutchers told their tales …

‘Jackie Howe’ (1980)

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