Lyr Req: Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People

Subject: newspapermen meet such interesting peopl
From: rjacques
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 04:20 PM

seeking lyrics of old newspaper guild song:

newspapermen meet such interesting people here's the story, now it can be told ...(we, the people?) ... chorus: hello, city desk? let's roll! go to press!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: Jerry Dingleman: The Boy Wonder(inactve)
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 04:30 PM

That song was written in the 1940s by Vern Partlow. There's a 1948 recording by Pete Seeger included in the boxed set "Songs For Political Action" on Bear Family.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: MMario
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 04:59 PM

I don't find the lyrics anywhere in GOOGLE

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: Bennet Zurofsky
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 05:12 PM

I am pretty sure that you can find words and music in the People's Song Book, first published by People's Songs in the forties and reprinted several times since. Quite a few copies of the Oak Publications reprint were sold in the Sixties.

Mine is at home, so I am sorry I can't help with the lyrics. The lyrics also appear in the book that accompanied the Bear Family Box Set mentioned above.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 06:01 PM

..."They wallow in corruption, crime and gore!"

The version I faintly remember was from Seeger, P, or possibly the Almanac Singers? The meories!

A.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 11:16 PM

FWIW, It's on the LP _Such Interesting People_ by Steve Addiss & Bill Crofut, Verve V6-8519.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 10:55 AM

Here's more about that boxed set that Jerry Dingleman first referred to:

It's called Songs for Political Action: Folk Music, Topical Songs and the American Left (Click here for the All Music Guide description.), Bear Family #15720, 1996. It consists of 10 CD's and contains 296 songs! "Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting People" appears twice on it, once performed by Vern Partlow (3:42) and once by Pete Seeger (0:53).

CDNOW has sound samples, from which I transcribed this:

...It's wonderful to represent the press.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

You remember Mrs. Sadie Smuggery.
She needed money for a new fur coat.
To get insurance, she employed skullduggery.
She up and cut her husband's only throat.
She chopped him into fragments. She stuffed them in a trunk.
She shipped them to her uncle back yonder in Podunk.
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people…

Here's some info about the author, from an article about the:Los Angeles Newspaper Guild

* Mr. Newspaperman, Vern Partlow - he can do anything. Partlow is lanky, talkative, 36 years old and a top reporter on the Daily News. But on his own time, with his long fingers on his guitar and his vocal chords throbbing, he goes through a transformation which suggests that, even for a newspaper reporter, he has found his way to the present by a strange, unbelievable route. He has been called "a singing newspaper," which is as good a way as any to define him when he's operating before a group with his guitar. Of the atom bomb, he sings: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are cremated equal. . . . The atom bomb is here to stay but are we?" In 1942 Partlow became administrative officer of the Guild. "Because," he says, "dissenting factions couldn't agree on anybody else. I was a compromise."

Subject: Lyr Add: NEWSPAPERMEN MEET SUCH INTERESTING PEOPLE
From: raredance
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 10:35 PM

NEWSPAPERMEN
(Vern Partlow)
^^
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
He knows the low-down (now it can be told).
I'll tell you quite reliably off the record
About some charming people I have known,
For I meet politicians, and grafters by the score,
Killers plain and fancy, it's really quite a bore.
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
He wallows in corruption, crime, and gore.

REFRAIN: Ting-a-ling-a-ling, city desk;
Hold the press, Hold the press;
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
It's a mess, meets the test.
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
It's wonderful to represent the press.

Now, you remember Mrs. Sadie Smuggery.
She needed money for a new fur coat.
To get insurance, she employed skullduggery.
She up and cut her husband's only throat.
She chopped him into fragments, and stuck them in a trunk.
She shipped them to her uncle back yonder in Podunk.
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
It must have startled poor old Sadie's unc.
Ting-a-ling....

Yes, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
I've met the girl with million-dollar knees.
The guy who sat five years upon a steeple;
(Just where the point was I could never see.)
I've met Capone and Hoover, and lots of other fakes.
I've even met a genius who swallows rattlesnakes.
Oh, a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
The richest girl who could not bake a cake.
Ting-a-ling...

Oh, publishers are such interesting people!
Their policy's an acrobatic thing.
They shout they represent the common people.
It's funny Wall Street never has complained.
But publishers have worries, for publishers must go
To working folks for readers, and big shots for their dough.
Oh, publishers are such interesting people!
It could be press-titution, I don't know.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling, advertising.
Ting-a-ling-a-ling, circulation.
Get that payoff, keep those readers;
What a headache, what a mess.
Yes, publishers are such interesting people!
Let's give three cheers for freedom of the press.

Oh, newspapermen are such interesting people!
They used to work like hell just for romance,
But finally, the movies notwithstanding,
They all got tired of patches on their pants.
They organized a union, and got a living wage.
They joined progressive actors upon a living stage.
Now newspapermen meet such interesting people,
Who know they've got a people's fight to wage.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling, Newspaper Guild,
We got a free new world to build;
Meet the people, that's a thrill,
All together fits the bill.
Oh a newspaperman meets such interesting people!
It's wonderful to represent the Guild.

From: The Peoples Song Book, Waldemar Hille, ed. (1948, 1959, 1961)

rich r

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: newspapermen meet such interesting p
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 02:32 AM

Subject: RE: Req: newspapermen meet such interesting people
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 11:49 AM

I believe this song was also recorded by Pete Seeger in GAZETTE I or GZETTE II.

That recording was too buried in our livingroom debrie to try and access the lyrics but Rich has done the job.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling!
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Req: newspapermen meet such interesting people
From: Anglo
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 04:10 AM

Interesting to see this - It's the theme music for "The Media Project," a journalist discussion program on our local public radio station WAMC, Albany NY. The director of the station and host of the program is Alan Chartok, who also teaches political science in the NY State university system. Who also happens to play the banjo.

Subject: RE: Req: newspapermen meet such interesting people
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 09:52 PM

A different version is on Steve Addiss & Bill Crofut's _Such Interesting People_ (Verve V6-8519, about 1965 I suppose), minus the Newspaper Guild but plus a good many topical allusions that are still funny if one is of a certain age.

Subject: RE: Req: newspapermen meet such interesting people
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 09:57 PM

The words, music and chords are also in Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser's Carry It On - a History in Song and Pictures of America's Working Men and Women.

Dan Schatz

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Newspapermen Meet Such Interesting Pe
From: GUEST,rene
Date: 13 Dec 06 - 06:12 PM

I listen to the media project on WAMC Albany and have been wanting to read the lyrics. Thanks so much for making them available.

-rs