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Stay All Night/Old Dan Tucker
Old-Time and Bluegrass Breakdown; Southeast US.
ARTIST: Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes
DATE: Lyics from minstrel sources (verses); Shinbone Alley.
RECORDING INFO: Bob Wills; Willie Nelson; Roy Acuff & His Smokey Mountain Boys; Sleepy LaBeef; Merle Haggard; Red Stick Ramblers; Texas Kelly's
RELATED TO: melody of Old Dan Tucker
OTHER NAMES: “Stay All Night”
SOURCES: Mudcat
NOTES: Bob Wills song "Stay All Night, Stay A Little Longer" is based traditional/minstrel lyrics for the verses but resembles Old Dan Tucker in form and melody.
The song uses the name Shinbone Alley which is a minstrel song by "Daddy" Rice (1833) also known as Long Time Ago. The sheet music to M. T. Rice's "Long Time Ago" was published by John Cole in Baltimore in 1833- thus mention of Shinbone Alley goes at least this far back.
This is song is not the "Stay All night" song that is a version of Waterbound. Here are the minstrel lyrics to Shinbone Alley collected by Brown in the early 1900s:
Shinbone Alley
The oldest text of this sonsg that S. Foster Damon could find was published as sung- by Daddy Rice in 1833 (Series of Old American Songs No. 18, from a print in the Harris collection at Brown University) ; but he says it was already current in more than one form before that, being "rooted deep in the Negro past."
It had great popularity and prompted Morris's Long Time Ago ('Near the Lake where Drooped the Willow'). Our stanza is not in the text printed by Damon. A variant of it is reported by Odum and Johnson (NWS 176) as part of a Negro work song.
No title. Contributed by V. C. Royster of Wake county as from "an old man who lived in Cumberland county before the [Civil] War. Probably sung in Wake also."
Old Miss Tuck and my aunt Sallie
Both lived down in shinbone alley.
No sign on the gate, no number on the door;
Folks around here are gittin' mighty poor.
Stay All Night Stay A Little Longer Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
Tune of “Old Dan Tucker”
You ought to see my blue-eyed Sally
She lives down on Shin-bone alley
No number on the gate, No number on the door
The next house over is a grocery store
Chorus: Stay all night, stay a little longer
Dance all night, dance a little longer
Pull off your coat and throw it in the corner
Don't see why you don't stay a little longer
You can't get home if you're going by the mill
Cause the bridge washed out at the bottom of the hill
The big creek's up and the big creek's level
Plow my corn with a double shovel
Chorus:
Settin' in the window, singin' to my love
Slop bucket fell from the window up above
Mule and grasshopper eatin' ice cream
Mule got sick and we laid him on a beam
Chorus:
(additional verse from live performance)
Grab your partner, pat her on the head
If she don't like biscuits, feed her cornbread
Girls around Big Creek, 'bout half grown
Jump on a man like a dog on a bone
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