David Jones: Any Old Iron

Track of the Week - 28 August 2022

I was out for a walk this week when I heard the distant, but distinctive, call of the rag-and-bone-man. Not that Rag'n'Bone Man.

When I was much younger I remember a horse and cart making occasional appearances in the road where I lived and the cry of 'rag bone' from the driver. I hadn't heard that for a lot of years but the fact that this occupation has returned to our streets says something about where we are I guess.

Rather than verbally announcing his presence though this particular rag-and-bone-man was playing a terrible instrumental version of the old music hall song Any Old Iron and only occasionally shouting those words in roughly the right place.

I could have gone with Peter Sellers' version (which reached number 17 in 1957) this week which is always fun and I might have chosen Lonnie Donegan's if I could have found it easily but here's one I didn't know existed.

David Jones' rather straight attempt is from his self-titled album which appears to mix several of these old 'standards' with newer songs and was released in late 1965. By the time of release Jones had already been signed for the group and TV show The Monkees. He shortened his name to Davy and the rest is history. 

He's one of my childhood heroes if you're interested.