Every Moment Has A Song

Rolf Harris: “Two Little Boys” (1969)

From an American perspective, Rolf Harris and his 1960 novelty top ten “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” were a one-hit wonder and a footnote in pop history. Something akin to Tiny Tim.

But like Tiny Tim, whose extensive catalogue and encyclopedic expertise on early 20th century pop music are overlooked by most, Rolf Harris was–outside the US–much more than a guy with the proverbial 15 minutes of ephemeral fame.

With 30 studio albums, 48 singles and multiple long-running TV shows to his credit, Harris was a bona fide international star.

And his biggest success in terms of record sales was not that kangaroo song, but rather one that never sniffed the top 40–or even cracked the top 100 for that matter–in America.

That would be the American Civil War song “Two Little Boys”.

Originally written in 1902 and recorded in 1903, the song had a special sentimental attachment for Rolf. Its story of two boys who grew up to be soldiers evoked his own father’s World War I experience and the fact that his father’s younger brother Carl died at age 19 due to wounds received in a battle in France.

Harris’s version of “Two Little Boys” spent 6 weeks at the number one spot on the UK chart during the Christmas holidays in 1969. It earned a gold disc and sold a million copies, actually performing better there than in his native Australia, where it peaked at #7.

It was England’s last #1 of the 60’s and first of the 70’s.

As for the song’s origins, according to Wikipedia:

The song appears to have its origins in the fiction of the Victorian children’s writer Juliana Horatia Ewing, whose book Jackanapes was a story about the eponymous hero and his friend Tom, who having ridden wooden horses as two little boys end up together on a battlefield. There Jackanapes rides to the rescue of the wounded and dismounted Tom. Jackanapes nobly replies to Tom’s entreaties to save himself, “Leave you”? “To save my skin”? “No, Tom, not to save my soul”. And unfortunately takes a fatal bullet in the process.

Rolf Harris worked with producer George Martin prior to Martin’s pairing with the Beatles, and Harris and the Beatles performed together during the Fab Four’s 16-night run of Christmas shows in London in 1963.

From the Beatles’ first From Us to You BBC radio show in December of ’63 comes this performance of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” with Rolf adjusting the song’s lyrics in tribute to the Beatles, who sing backup vocals. The “whoop-whoop” sound that begins the tune? That’s Rolf providing percussion on an instrument of his own invention, the wobble board.