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Richard Rhys O'Brien blogs
Richard Rhys O'Brien
singer-songwriter, economist, futurist
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The Ballad of Highbury Barn
Five Hundred Sugar Bakers and Their Five Hundred Wives
Five Hundred Sugar Bakers and Their Five Hundred Wives
Edward Tyrell Smith, the new licensee, was one of London most experienced impresarios, of Drury Lane, Cremorne, the Italian Opera, Elephant and Castle, and elsewhere. He even tried racing pigeons to Belgium to bring in the crowds. But he lost most of his will to go on when as he put it “five hundred [German Lutheran sugar] bakers and their five hundred wives” were banned from having a little music at their annual dinner.
Vocals:
Henry Busiakiewicz and Richard Rhys O’Brien
Keyboards:
Richard Rhys O’Brien
Lyrics
Five hundred sugar bakers and their five hundred wives
Want to come for dinner, time of their lives
Day off from the oven, celebrate the year
But they wouldn’t let them dance, ‘case someone would hear
Five hundred German wives all flesh and bone
The greatest number Highbury ever had known
Their husbands bake your sugar so your coffee can be sweet
They want to come for dinner, they want to come and eat
I can tell you sugar baking was a terrible task
They had to give them beer otherwise they wouldn’t last
Even the Irish wouldn’t do it, so from Germany they came
When it comes to baking sugar they’re at the top of the game
We’ll bring our own fiddle, we don’t need a band
It’s only going to be a one night stand [
how d’you say
]
There may be other folk who don’t know how to behave
It’s not that we want to come and have an all night rave
If I’d been those bakers I know what I’d have done
Nothing sweet for Highbury in 1871
I’d tell them all to lump it, for another 8 years
When saccharin will be found by a countryman of theirs
1. Overture from Zampa
2. Here on the Hilltop
3. Cream Cakes and Ale
4. Beer Beer
5. Hinton's Highbury
6. Floating Over Highbury
7. Hinton's Highbury, reprise
8. Half a Million Lamps
9. The Highbury Polka
10. The Lottery Ticket Lament
11. Selina's Step Too Far
12. Sweet Highbury Barn
13. The Highbury Cradle Song
14. Hi Jinks at Highbury
15.
16. Five Hundred Sugar Bakers and Their Five Hundred Wives
17. Lights Out: the Safety Curtain Falls
18. Oh! I Want to Go to Highbury