Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport - Rolf Harris

contributed by Annie Sattler, October 29, 1995

There's an old Australian stockman lying dying
And he gets himself up onto one elbow
And he turns to his mates who are gathered around
And he says:

Watch me wallabies feed, mate
Watch me wallabies feed
They're a dangerous breed, mate
So watch me wallabies feed

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

Keep me cockatoo cool, Kool
Keep me cockatoo cool
Don't go away from the fool, Kool
Just keep me cockatoo cool

All together now
Tie me kanagroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

And take me koala back, Jack
Take me koala back
He lives somewhere out on the track, Mack
So take me koala back

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

Let me aboes go loose, Lou
Let me aboes go loose
They're of no further use, Lou
So let me aboes go loose

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

And mind me platypus duck, Bill
Mind me platypus duck
Oh, don't let him go running amuck, Bill
Just mind me platypus duck

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

Play your didgeridoo, Blue
Play your didgeridoo
Oh, like keep playing till I shoot through, Blue
Play your didgeridoo

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred
Tan me hide when I'm dead
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde
And that's it hanging on the shed

All together now
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

This wacky Aussie tune was inspired by a calypso song sung by Harry Belafonte.

"It was written as a result of the Belafonte calypso craze that was sweeping the world in the 1950s," said Rolf Harris. "It impressed me enormously."

At the time, the Australian-born Harris played the piano and sang songs on children's television in England. He also performed one night a week at a night spot called The Down Under Club, which catered to Australians.

"I was trying to come up with new songs that had a simple chorus that everybody in the club could join in with," said Harris. Back then, Belafonte was riding a crest of popularity with his hit "Banana Boat (Day-O)" and had just recorded his follow-up "Hold 'Em Joe."

Recalled Harris, "I liked 'Hold 'Em Joe.' There was a line that went, 'Don't tie me donkey down there, let him bray, let him bray.' And I thought, 'That's good. I can change that and make it an Australian calypso. Instead of a donkey, I'll have a kangaroo in there somewhere.'

"Eventually, I came up with 'Tie me kangaroo down, sport.' And the tune seem[ed] to come from midair. It was just handed to me on a plate."

Harris then sat down and wrote as many verses as he could think of that had anything to do with Australia. One of the verses was about a didgeridoo. "I heard of a didgeridoo but I didn't know what the hell it was," he admitted. He later learned that the didgeridoo is an oversize wooden pipe that drones when you blow on it.

Harris wrote 12 verses, but he cut some of them out like, "Let me gray dingo go, Dick/He can't stand the snow, Dick/Boy, our kid's gone delirious/ That's not snow. That's his dandruff."

Harris sang the song publicly for the first time at The Down Under Club. "I didn't have the storyline, just a bunch of verses. And when I started singing it, I was booed. People shouted, 'Dreadful!' 'Stop singing it!' So I did. The next week at the club, someone shouted to me, 'Sing us that mad kangaroo song.' And I said, 'No one liked it.' He replied, 'I did. I thought it was good.' So I sang it again and this time everybody listened and seemed to like it. If it hadn't been for him, I probably never would've sung that song ever again."

Instead, Harris sand it every Thursday night at the club. Three years later, back in Australia, he sang the song on a TV show on a lark and received 200 letters from people asking for a copy of the lyrics.

"I then made a demo and played it for a friend in the record business. He listened to it and asked me, 'Where did you record this? In your bloody bathroom?' And I said, 'Yes I did, because it's the quietest room in the house.' He told me, 'These record people get 60 songs a week and if you don't impress them in the first few seconds, they throw it in the bin. Don't sent them this crap. This is bloody dreadful. Get a studio and hire some musicians. At least do the best job you can.' So I did and I sent it off to Sydney and they put it out immediately. They used the demo as the record. Four weeks later, it was number one in Australia. It was amazing."

The song was a hit in England, too. But, said Harris, "It died a death in Canada in 1961--just disappeared without a trace." A year later, he wrote an aborigine-inspired song called "Sun Arise" which made it to #61 in the U.S. At the request of Epic Records, Harris sent them other songs, including "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport." It was included on his new LP.

"A disc jockey in Denver played 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' for a laugh," said Harris. "He told his audience, 'I don't understand the lyrics and I don't know what a didgeridoo is.' He got such a reaction to the song that he played it almost every hour. So Epic Records put it out as a single and it became a hit."

NOTEWORTHY NOTES

• Before it was recorded, the song was called "Kangalypso."
• The whoop-whoop-whoop sound in the background came from a wobbleboard--a thin sheet of Masonite that is held between the palms and shaken.
• Harris was so broke when he made the recording that he offered the backup singers 10 percent of the royalties. They demanded cash instead. So he paid them $15 apiece.
• Harris' brother Bruce came up with the idea of tying all the verses together into a story about a dying rancher. "There's a very macabre sense of humor in Australia," Harris said.
  
• Pat Boone was in Australia in 1961 when the song became a hit there. "When he returned to the United States, he told his record company he wanted to do the song," said Harris. "They said it was ludicrous and stupid and talked him out of it. Then, when it became a hit in the U.S. in 1963, Pat came out with his own version. He was angry with his record company for not doing it earlier." Boone's version failed to make it onto the charts.

  PLATTER PATTER

  Rolf Harris used to perform with the Beatles--but it wasn't a pleasant experience for him.

  In the early 1960s, he and the Fab Four shared the same producer, George Martin. (Martin produced the American version of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" before dropping Harris to concentrate on the Beatles.) So Harris sometimes appeared as the emcee or opening act for the group.

  "They didn't have much to do with me," said Harris. "But occasionally they mucked about with me. During one of my songs one night, they stood off in the wings with a microphone and made silly comments. I came storming off the stage and shouted, 'Get some bloody professionalism into you! You don't muck around with somebody else's act! Don't ever bloody do that again!' I was so angry. And after that, they didn't do it again, I can tell you!"

  ROCK ON

  Rolf Harris, who splits his time between England and Australia, still writes and sings wacky songs. "I'm just a novelty-type guy doing weirdo bloody comedy," he said.

  In 1993, he had a Top 10 hit in England with a version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" musically molded after "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport." His zany version features the sound of the wobbleboard and a chorus singing "All together now . . ." The record made it all the way to #7 in England.

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