Export Girl- Louisiana Lou (LA-MS) 1933 REC
[Louisiana Lou, on 12-04-1933 Chicago, Illinois on Bluebird B5424.
The first recorded version of this ballad under any title by a woman was made by Louisiana Lou, the "Southern Songbird," in 1933. She recorded "The Export Girl" under her maiden name, Eva Mae Greenwood, and later became Eva Conn. Although she may well have been from Louisiana, the first historical trace of her was as a student at Clarke Memorial College near Jackson, MS, in the '20s. She began recording in the mid-'30s.
R. Matteson 2016]
The Export Girl - Sung by Louisiana Lou, on 12-04-1933 Chicago, Illinois on Bluebird B5424, my transcription.
1. I fell in love with an Export girl
With brown and rolling eyes,
I asked her if she'd marry me,
She said she'd never deny.
2. Come on, come on unthinkables[1]
And talk about it now;
And talk about our wedding day,
And when it's going to be.
3. They walked and talked, they walked and talked,
Till they came to the level ground;
There he picked up a seaside[2] stick
And knocked that fair maid down.
4. "Oh Billy, oh Billy, don't you kill me now
For I'm not prepared to die."
Her beat on the fair maid more and more,
until she fell to the ground.
5. He took by her little-white hand
And flung her 'round and 'round;
And took her to some deep water sea,
And threw her in to drown.
6. He went to his mother's house
It was the middle of the night;
Where he found her sleeping sound
She about woke up in a fright.
7. "Billy, oh Billy, what have you done
To bloody your hands and clothes?"
He answered in a solemn tone,
"Been bleeding from my nose."
8. "Oh mother give me a towel,
For my aching head;
And mother give me a candlestick
To light me off to bed."
9. Two months, four months, six months from then,
That Export girl was found,
Floating down that little mill stream,
Right through that Export town.
10. They got me now in an Export jail,
An awful place to die;
They're going to hang me by my neck,
Between the earth and the sky.
1. The first two lines are unique to any extant version.
2. My best guess.