Father’s got a job

AKA
First Published1910

Writer/composerJean HavezRoudRNV7454

Music Hall PerformersMaidie Scott, Frank Seeley
Folk performancesCollected from the singing of:
none
From monologues.co.uk at The Wayback Machine
Father's got a job

The chord of discontent once sounded in our domicile
And on the family physog you scarce could see a smile
Because a nasty rumour went around with such a vim
It was that Father would not work, and everybody worked but him
When Father heard the rumour, how bitterly he swore
He'd sit beside the fire for hours, and cuss and sleep and snore
His friends came to his rescue, and it made his poor heart throb
Before he could defend himself, they got poor Dad a job.

Mother's delighted, sister is glad
Everybody's happy now but poor old Dad
He's got a job of work at last. It's time that he began
He cannot shirk, he's got to work, has our old man.

Our friends and neighbours sympathise with poor old Father so
They formed a Willing Worker's Club to keep him on the go
Poor Dad got sick and would not take the pills Ma bought so cheap
Because he saw upon the box 'We work while you're asleep'
The butcher and the baker, and everyone Dad owed
All joined the Club to find Dad jobs, such loyalty they showed
They set him sweeping out a bank. He worked on such a scale
He swept the safe, as well as floor, so now Dad works in jail.

The Willing Worker's Club worked hard to keep poor dad in jail
But there they worked the old man so, that he grew thin and pale
His friends they found a home for him where he'd grow good and strong
That he might live to fill the job they'd hunted up for him so long
The place, which they had found, was called the home for working men
When Father saw the name, he said 'That's back to jail again'
One Sunday Father went to church. This hymn the preacher read
'Work for the night is coming on' and poor old Dad dropped dead.

This is not the song that was collected by Steve Roud from the singing of Freda Palmer – so far as I know it has not entered the repertoire of traditional singers.

A sequel to Everybody works but father, which itself was derived from an earlier song, We all go to work but father. The sequel was written and composed by the American songwriter Jean Havez and sung in the British Halls both by Frank Seeley and Maidie Scott whose brief biography appears below.

In 1891 Paul Pelham also sang a song called Father got a job, almost certainly a different song.

File:Maidie Scott.jpg

Maidie Scott (1881-1865) was born in Ireland, but moved to Manchester as a child. She was a comic, singer and dancer who seems to have first appeared on stage in 1902, working in provincial theatres and pantomimes until her London debut in 1906. She toured the States in 1908 . She was described as a graceful and ingenious comedian with a quietly effective style and seemed to specialise in tragicomic songs like Father Got the Sack from the Waterworks. Sam Beale, in her excellent book on the legacy of music hall women describes Scott as transgressive in that many of her comic songs rejected the traditional female role, quoting in particular the song If the wind had only blown the other way. The chorus of that song is:

If the wind had only blown the other way,
I might have been a single girl today,
Instead of putting carbolic,
Into kids who’ve got the colic,
If the wind had only blown the other way
.

A 1912 recording of Fathers got a job by Maidie Scott:

Sources:

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