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He wouldn’t be the first person to come to mind when it came to repairing a burst pipe but surprisingly he’d probably be able to fix it. I’m talking about John Robert better known as “Joe” Cocker. Born into a working class family in Sheffield Great Britain, Cocker started studying plumbing at a trade school. He later worked in his profession as a gas plumber by day and performed in the clubs of the area by night for several years before his music career slowly took off.

As the lead vocalist of the local 60s band “Vance Arnold and The Avengers” Joe Cocker was offered his first solo contract with the British label Decca which lead to nowhere. Despite the title of his first recording “I’ll Cry Instead,” Cocker simply went back to plumbing. Starting a career in arts or entertainment is always connected to the risk of failing, Cocker’s plumbing apprenticeship created a safety net for his future breakthrough in Rock and Blues. Throughout all the ups and downs of his career Joe Cocker sang songs written by the best songwriters in the world. It might be coincidence or a tribute to his trade background that one of his biggest hits was “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”.

Joe’s mother Marjorie once said: “When Joe left school at 16, I thought he was going to take up plumbing as a career. I even got him a lot of books on the subject, and he was interested in plumbing for a time, but there was always the music. That was what he wanted to do.”

In this case Plumbing’s loss has surely been show business’ gain.

Image by Fehlmann1960.