PRISON AND JAIL SONGS
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(Contents)
BIRD IN A CAGE
YONDER COMES THE HIGH SHERIFF
PORTLAND COUNTY JAIL
MOONLIGHT
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (2)
SEVEN LONG YEARS IN STATE PRISON
WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND FOOLISH
BEEN IN THE PEN SO LONG
THE PREACHER AND THE SLAVE
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BIRD IN A CAGE
In the mountains of Kentucky there was sung an old lyric of English origin, Down In The Valley. And there were jail-birds in Lexington, Kentucky, who built and wove from this older song with lines telling their sweethearts where to send letters. . . . Charles Hoening, working with a threshing crew near Lexington, heard four negroes, harvest hands, go off by themselves after supper, among strawstacks to sing. The gloaming crept on, an evening star came, a rising moon climbed the horizon dusk and mist. "They sang that song over and over and they knew how to sing it."
1. Bird in a cage, love,
Bird in a cage,
Waiting for Willie
To come back to me.
2. Roses are red, love,
Violets are blue.
God in heaven
Knows I love you.
3 Write me a letter,
Write it today.
Stamp it tomorrow,
Send it away.
4. Write rne a letter,
Send it by mail.
Send and direct it
To Lexington jail.
5. Bird in a cage, love,
Bird in a cage,
Waiting for Willie
To come back to me.
YONDER COMES THE HIGH SHERIFF
To the time-beats of galloping hoofs, the stride of horse and rider, convicts of the Kentucky penitentiary at Frankfort have made a song.
1. Yonder comes the high sheriff ridin' after me,
Ridin' after me, yes, ridin' after me.
Yonder comes the high sheriff ridin' after me,
O it's captain, I don't want to go.
2. Been down to Frankfort servin' out my time,
Servin' out my time, yes, servin' out my time.
Been down to Frankfort servin' out my time,
O it's captain, I don't want to go.
PORTLAND COUNTY JAIL
A Chicago newspaperman who happened to do in real life what Paddy Flynn does in this song, got ten days, as Paddy Flynn did, in the Portland County jail. While recovering from his bootleg headache, he learned the first three verses of a song there. For the fourth, we are indebted to philosophers at the extreme left in the labor movement and in modernist art in Chicago. Whether sung solo or in ensemble or melee, the ungrammatical "A" in the last line is to be howled with high scorn. The word "trun" means "threw" or "throwed"; it rhymes with fun. A "can" signifies a jail or place of forcible detention.
1. I'm a stranger in your city, my name is Paddy Flynn.
I got drunk the other night and the coppers run me in.
I had no money to pay my fine, no one to go my bail;
So I got stuck for ninety days in the Portland County jail.
2. Oh, the only friend that I had left was Happy Sailor Jack;
He told me all the lies he knew, and all the safes he'd cracked;
He'd cracked them in Seattle, he'd robbed the Western Mail.
Twould freeze the blood of an honest man in the Portland County jail.
3. Oh, such a bunch of devils no one ever saw,
Robbers, thieves and highwaymen, breakers of the law;
They sang a song the whole night long, the curses fell like hail;
I'll bless the day that 'takes me away from the Portland County jail.
4. Finest friend I ever had was Officer McGurk.
He said I was a lazy bum, a no-good and a shirk.
One Saturday night when I got tight, he trun me in the can,
And now you see he's made of me A honest workingman.
MOONLIGHT
Meet me by moon-light alone,
And then I will tell you a tale,
Must be told by the moon-light alone,
In the grove at the end of the vale;
You must promise to come, for I said
I would show the night-flowers their queen,
Nay turn not away that sweet head!
"Tis the loveliest ever was seen!
Oh! meet me by moonlight alone,
Meet me by moonlight alone!
The verse above is one of several in the popular song of many years ago, Meet Me by Moonlight. As it reached the Tennessee and Kentucky mountains and lived on there, the mountain people made adaptations till they had changed it into their own song and something else again. . . . See, in this connection, the note to The Ship That Never Returned, in this book. . . . The mountain lyrists who composed the verses to "Moonlight," as here given, eventually won an immense audience; desperate opera stars, hunting a composition that had a sure hold on American heart strings, put on its modern derivative, The Prisoner's Song, in their "popular performances," as the phrase goes. . . . The tune here is from Gilbert R. Combs and the text includes verses from Combs and from Mary Leaphart. ... In singing the refrain may or may not be used with all stanzas.
1 Meet me to-night, lover, meet me,
meet me in the moonlight alone,
I have a sad story to tell you,
Must be told in the moonlight alone.
(The first verse serves as a refrain.)
2. I'm going to a new jail to-morrow,
And leave my poor darlin* alone,
With the cold prison bars all around me,
And my head on a pillow of stone.
3. Your father and mother don't like me,
Or they never would have drove me from their door;
If I had my life to live over
I would never go there any more.
4. I wish I had never been born
Or had died when I was young.
I would never have saw your sweet face
Or heard your lyin' tongue.
5. If I had a-minded my mother
I had been with her today,
But I was young and foolish
And you stole my heart away.
6. I have three ships on the ocean
All laden with silver and gold;
And before my darlin* should suffer
I'd have them all anchored and sold.
7. If I had the wings of an eagle
Across the wide sea I would fly.
I would fly to the arms of my darling
And there I would stay till I die.
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (2)
A fast train, such as "The Midnight Special," means a getaway, outside air, freedom. They sing about it in the Houston, Texas, jailhouse, and elsewhere. The verses here can with little or no practice be adjusted to the tune of Midnight Special (1) in our folio of Dramas and Portraits.
1. If you evah go to Houston,
You better walk right;
You better not gamble
And you better not fight.
T. Bentley will arrest you,
He'll surely take you down;
Judge Nelson'll sentence you,
Then you're jailhouse bound.
Refrain: O let the Midnight Special
Shine a light on me,
Let the Midnight Special
Shine a evah lovin' light on me!
2. Every Monday mawnin',
When the ding-dong rings,
You go to the table,
See the same damn things;
And on the table,
There's a knife an' pan,
Say anything about it,
Have trouble with a man.
3. Yondah come Miss Rosy;
Oh, how do you know?
By th' umbrella on her shoulder
An' the dress that she woah!
Straw hat on her head,
Piece of paper in her hand,
Says, "Look here, Mr. Jailer,
I want's my life-time man.
SEVEN LONG YEARS IN STATE PRISON
A convict tells what life has done to him. . . . During the international imbroglio known as the Spanish-American War, I heard half of this song from a high private in the rear ranks; we went to Porto Rico and the oftener it rained between Guanica and Utuado, and the worse the mud and the higher the water in the pup tents at Adjuntas, the more Private Campbell sang "Sad, sad and lonely." . . . The other half of the song came to me at Denison College, Ohio, twenty-seven years later.
SEVEN LONG YEARS IN STATE PRISON
1. I used to have a brother and a sister,
Who lived in a cottage o'er the sea.
I used to have a father and mother,
But they are all gone from me.
2. I wish I had the wings of a sparrow.
I wish I had wings for to fly.
I'd fly to the side of my mother
And there let me lay down and die.
WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND FOOLISH
There are sailor and lumberjack, railroad and cowboy versions of this. New York, Atlanta, and Seattle have local variants. It is sung in jails and outside. The tune is from Albert Richard Wetjen, of Salem, Oregon, able seaman and story teller.
1. His shoes were neatly polished,
His hair was neatly combed,
And when the dance was over,
He asked to see me home.
2. As we walked home together,
I heard the people say,
"There goes another girlie,
That's being led astray."
BEEN IN THE PEN SO LONG
Three musketeers, regular army men en route to a fort in Texas, learned this in jail in Oklahoma. They "blued" it in unison, with harmonics, with a chromatic harmonica. They made a Santa Fe smoking car melodious. ... A white man's rearrangement of a negro wail such as one recorded in a publication of the Texas Folk Lore Society.
BEEN IN THE PEN 90 LONG
Been in the pen so long,
honey, I'll be long gone,
Been in the pen, Lawd,
I got to go again.
Been in the pen so long,
honey, I'll be long gone.
Been in the pen so long,
Lawd, I got to go again.
Been in the pen so long,
O honey, I'll be long gone.
THE PREACHER AND THE SLAVE
When Joe Hill, the I. W. W. man, had the death sentence executed on him in Utah while the World War wa* on, big logs was mourned by the members of his organization. He waa their star song writer and is the only outstanding producer of lyrics widely sung in the militant cohorts of the labor movement of America. Jails and jungles from the Lawrence, Massachusetts, woolen mills to the Wheatlaud, California, hop fields, have heard the rhymes and melodies started by Joe HilL One of them is The Preacher and the Slave, going to the tune of Sweet By and By.
1. Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet:
Refrain: You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
2. And the starvation army they play, And they sing and they clap and they pray.
Till they get all your coin on the drum, Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
3. Holy Rollers and jumpers come out, And they holler, they jump and they shout:
"Give your money to Jesus," they say, "He will cure all diseases today."
4. If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell, When you die you will sure go to hell.
5. Workingmen of all countries, unite, Side by side we for freedom will fight:
When the world and its wealth we have gained, To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
Last Refrain: You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and to fry;
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good, And youll eat in the sweet bye and bye.