Jock Stewart (The Man You Don't Meet Every Day)

DESCRIPTION: (Jock Stewart) invites the company to enjoy his generosity. "So be easy and free when you're drinking with me; I'm a man you don't meet every day" The singer may talk of his well-built hut, his hunting trips, or whatever people discuss in pubs
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1935 (Randolph)
KEYWORDS: drink hunting friend
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) Ireland US(So) Australia Canada(Newf,Ont)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice #17, pp. 139-140, "Jock Stewart" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph 476, "The Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (1 text)
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, pp. 161-162, 286, "A Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (2 texts, 2 tunes, heavily localized)
Vikár/Panagapka-SongsNorthWoodsSungByOJAbbott 47, "A Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (1 text, 1 tune; the man is "Pat" and grows his "own spuds"; the changes are almost enough to make it a separate song)
DT, JSTEWART*
ADDITIONAL: Chris Wright, "'Forgotten Broadsides and the Song Tradition of the Scots Travellers" -- essay found in David Atkinson and Steve Roud, Editors, _Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Tradition_, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 101-102, "(Jock Stewart)" (1 text plus a text of "The Man You Don't Meet Every Day")
Roud #975
RECORDINGS:
Hector MacIsaac and Jerome Downey, "A Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (on NFHMacIsaac01)
Cyril O'Brien, "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
Cornelius O'Sullivan, "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Victor 79126, late 1920s-early 1930s)
Belle, Sheila, and Cathie Stewart, "Jock Stewart" (on SCStewartsBlair01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Bound to Australia" (meter, floating lyrics)
cf. "The First of the Emigrants" (tune, meter, chorus)
cf. "The Hard Working Miner" (tune, form)
SAME TUNE:
The Hard Working Miner (File: DThrdwrk)
NOTES [125 words]: Chris Wright, in his "Forgotten Broadsides" article, observes that the chorus of this forms part of the chorus of the music hall song "The Man You Don't Meet Every Day," an undated broadside of which seems to have been printed before 1900. Wright discusses the relationship between the two; he seems to think the most likely explanation is that "Jock Stewart" borrowed the chorus and built a song around it. The minimal evidence available, however, would also suit the possibility that the music hall song borrowed two lines of "Jock Stewart." There is nothing else in common between the two.
Roud lumps the two songs. I frankly disagree, but on the other hand, I'm not sure it's worth separating them, given the problem of classifying fragments. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: R476

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