Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs

On that "Midnight Train to Georgia"...

Hey, Algis. What are the lyrics to "Midnight Train to Georgia"?

HARRIS AND THE MARE

Harris, my old friend, good to see your face again
More welcome, though, yon trap and that old mare
For the wife is in a swoon, and I am all alone
Harris, fetch thy mare and take us home

The wife and I came out for a quiet glass of stout
And a word or two with neighbors in the room
But young Clary, he came in, as drunk and wild as sin
And swore the wife would leave the place with him

But the wife as quick as thought said, "No, I'll bloody not"
Then struck the brute a blow about the head
He raised his ugly paw, and he lashed her on the jaw
And she fell onto the floor like she were dead

Now Harris, well you know, I've never struck an angry blow
Nor would I keep a friend who raised his hand
I was a conscie in the war, cryin' what the hell's this for?
But I had to see his blood to be a man

I grabbed him by his coat, spun him 'round and took his throat
And beat his head upon the parlor door
He dragged out an awful knife, and he roared "I'll have your life"
And he stuck me and I fell onto the floor

Now blood I was from neck to thigh, bloody murder in his eye
As he shouted out "I'll finish you for sure"
But as the knife came down, I lashed out from the ground
And the knife was in his breast and he rolled o'er

Now with the wife as cold as clay I carried her away
No hand was raised to help us through the door
And I've brought her half a mile, but I've had to rest a while
And none of them I'll call a friend no more

For when the knife came down, I was helpless on the ground
No neighbor stayed his hand, I was alone
By God, I was a man, but now I cannot stand
Please, Harris, fetch thy mare, take us home

Oh, Harris, fetch thy mare, and take us out of here
In my nine and fifty years I've never known
That to call myself a man, for my loved one I must stand
Now Harris, fetch thy mare take us home

Written and recorded by Stan Rogers. Copyright Fogarty's Cove Music

It's amazing to me, Cav, how many ballad type songs that I have never heard. I'm trying to find the lyrics to Hazel Dickens' songs that she sang in the movie, Matewan. Old mountain music that she did a capella, and fantastic intonation. Back later.

Couldn't find Hazel, but I did find Virgil

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
(Lyrics transcribed from the studio recording by) Joan Baez
Virgil Caine is my name and I drove on the Danville train
'til so much cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
I took the train to Richmond that fell
It was a time I remember, oh, so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, .... "

Back with my wife in Tennessee
And one day she said to me,
"Virgil, Quick! Come see!
There goes Robert E. Lee."
Now I don't mind, I'm chopping wood
And I don't care if the money's no good
Just take what you need and leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, ..... "

Like my father before me, I'm a working man
And like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand
Oh, he was just 18, proud and brave
But a yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the blood below my feet
You can't raise a Cane back up when he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, ..... "

You can never post too many Joan Baez songs for me, Letty. I love that woman's voice. So, here's a Hazel Dickens song for you:

Fire in the Hole (Mason Daring and John Sayles)

You can tell 'em in the country, tell 'em in the town
The miners down in Mingo laid their shovels down.
We won't pull another pillow, load another ton,
Or lift another finger till the union we have won.

Stand up boys, let the bosses know!
Turn your buckets over, turn your lanterns low:
There's fire in our hearts and fire in our soul
But there ain't gonna be no fire in the hole.

Well, Daddy died a miner, grandpa he did too,
I'll bet this coal will kill me for my workin' days are through
In a hole that's dark and dirty, an early grave confined
I plan to make a union for the ones I leave behind.

One of my favorite Tom Waits tunes:

Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

Well I got a bad liver and a broken heart,
Yeah, I drunk me a river since you tore me apart
And I don't have a drinking problem, 'cept when I can't get a drink
And I wish you'd a-known her, we were quite a pair,
She was sharp as a razor and soft as a prayer
So welcome to the continuing saga,
She was my better half, and I was just a dog
And so here am I slumped, I've been chipped and I've been chumped on my stool
So buy this fool some spirits and libations, it's these railroad station bars
And all these conductors and the porters, and I'm all out of quarters
And this epitaph is the aftermath, yeah I choose my path, hey, come on, Kath,
He's a lawyer, he ain't the one for ya
No, the moon ain't romantic, it's intimidating as hell,
And some guy's trying to sell me a watch
And so I'll meet you at the bottom of a bottle of bargain Scotch
I got me a bottle and a dream, it's so maudlin it seems,
You can name your poison, go on ahead and make some noise
I ain't sentimental, this ain't a purchase, it's a rental, and it's purgatory,
And hey, what's your story, well I don't even care
'Cause I got my own double-cross to bear

And I'll see your Red Label, and I'll raise you one more,
And you can pour me a cab, I just can't drink no more,
'Cause it don't douse the flames that are started by dames,
It ain't like asbestos
It don't do nothing but rest us assured,
And substantiate the rumors that you've heard.

C & W angst:

1. The Wild Side of Life
You wouldn't read my letters if I wrote you
You've asked me not to call you on the phone
But there's something I'm wantin to tell you
So I wrote it in the words of this song
I didn't know God made honky tonk angels
I might have know you would never make a wife
You gave up the only one who ever loved you
And went back to the wild side of life
The glamor of the gay night life has lured you
To the places where the wine and liquor flow
Where you wait to be anybody's baby
And forget the truest love you'll ever know

2.It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
As I sit here tonight the jukebox playing
A song about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words that you are saying
It brings memories of when I was a trusting wife
It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
And have caused many a good girl to go wrong
It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the pain
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Is because there always was a man to blame

A classic Stan Rogers tune, done acapella, Letty:

BARRETT'S PRIVATEERS

Oh, the year was 1778,
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!
A letter of marque come from the king,
To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen,

CHORUS:
God damn them all!
I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns-shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers.

Oh, Elcid Barrett cried the town,
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now . . .
For twenty brave men all fishermen who
would make for him the Antelope's crew
(chorus)

The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight, How I wish...
She'd a list to the port and and her sails in rags
And the cook in scuppers with the staggers and the jags
(chorus)

On the King's birthday we put to sea, How I wish....
We were 91 days to Montego Bay
Pumping like madmen all the way
(chorus)

On the 96th day we sailed again, How I wish...
When a bloody great Yankee hove in sight
With our cracked four pounders we made to fight
(chorus)

The Yankee lay low down with gold, How I wish....
She was broad and fat and loose in the stays
But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days
(chorus)

Then at length we stood two cables away, How I wish....
Our cracked four pounders made an awful din
But with one fat ball the Yank stove us in
(chorus)

The Antelope shook and pitched on her side, How I wish...
Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs
And the Maintruck carried off both me legs
(chorus)

So here I lay in my 23rd year, How I wish...
It's been 6 years since we sailed away
And I just made Halifax yesterday
(chorus)

And some history from the man himself:

From an interview at the Winnipeg Folk Festival on July 10, 1977 here are Stan's own words on BP.

Q: How did the song BARRETT'S PRIVATEERS come about?

STAN: Well it sort of happened in two stages.. A year ago this past
spring, I was in Halifax working on a project with a poet by the name of Bill Howell. He and I had written a peice for television that CBC TV was producing in Halifax for us.. And during that time, Bill and I, as is our want, broke from our monastic training, and got into some imported stimulants.. Scotch and things from other parts of the world.. And we got talking, and he played me a radio piece that he had done not long before called MACMACHAN'S OCEAN. Now there was a historian who lived in Halifax, and died in the late 1930's by the name of MacMachan and he had chronicled the exploits of these privateers who had operated out of Halifax during the American Revolutionary War. The British Navy's resources were stretched at that time and they wanted to blockade the entire American coast, and they simply didn't have the ships or man power to do it, because they had wars going on in the other parts of the globe.

So they enlisted the aid of these Nova Scotian ship owners, gave
them "Letters of Marque" which made them licensed pirates.. In other words they were pirates but they had the protection of the British goverment, and that they could opporate out of the naval base. They weren't outlaws.. And some of these privateers were really successful, and a good deal of the old wealth around Halifaxis based upon privateering.. It's like many of the great families in the south, their moneys were based upon the slave trade.. (Some branches of the Kennedys for instance).. At any rate I absorbed all of this as a story I wanted to tell at some point..And last summer (1976 - ed) I was up at the Northern Lights festival in Sudbury. And I was hanging out with a group called THE FRIENDS OF FIDDLER'S GREEN who are a traditional british music bunch.. and they are all wild.. And one of their favorite things to do at a folk festival is to get into a hotel room after the show and they sit around in a big circle with a beer in their hands.. no instruments.. and they sing! They do all these great sea chanties and stuff.. Great chorus songs rom the British islands.. Just great stuff. And one guy will take the lead and the rest of them will all join in on the choruses in 9 or 10 part harmony. And it was so exciting to be able to do that.. and I felt kind of bad, becuase I didn't have a song that I could contribute to the gathering.. That >I< could lead and that everyone else could join in on
the chorus.. And not being of the mind to dig up some old tune, which they likely would have know of anyway. I wanted to give them something new..

So after the first night I went back to my hotel room and I
decided I was going to write an accapella chorus song.. and I remembered the story of the privateers and I invented this fellow Elcid Barrett who took a sloop of war out on a privateering venture.. and it was a pretty rickety ship and I invented all the rest of the details. I decided to tell it in the first person; the story of this 17 year old boy who shipped out as a privateer and made it back to Halifax 6 years later missing both legs from their first encounter..

Q: So Barratt was fictional?

STAN: Barrett was fictional, but the circumstances of the story are
based in fact.

Wow, everybody. These are all fantastic songs.

Thanks, Raggedy for unearthing Hazel.

Edgar, great!

Cav, the history behind music is always so meaningful in conjunction with the song. I'll be back later with a beautiful and sad song that began as a poem, and was later set to music. I will include the history.

The following song by Thomas Moore is in response to his wife who survived smallpox, but was so terribly disfigured, that she locked herself in her bedroom and would not come out. He slipped this poem under her door. In a sense, she "did Thomas wrong" in that she thought that his love could be so shallow.:

Believe me if all those
Endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away
Though would'st still be adored
As this moment thou art
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin
Each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself
Verdantly still.

It is not while beauty
And youth are thine own
And thy cheeks
Unprofaned by a tear
That the ferver and faith
Of a soul can be known
To which time will but
Make thee more dear
No the heart that has truly loved
Never forgets
But as truly loves
On to the close
As the sunflower turns
On her god when he sets
The same look which
She'd turned when he rose.

Thanks for posting that beautiful story, Letty. (I had heard it once upon a time ago, but completely forgotten it.) The movie, Those Endearing Young Charms, set during WWII, with Robert Young, Laraine Day and Ann Harding used the music as its theme throughout , but I think just a few lines of the song were spoken, if I recall correctly.

This song is not in that league, but fits the theme of this thread, and always makes an itty bitty tear fall.

In the corner of the bar there stands a jukebox
With the best of country music, old and new.
You can hear your five selections for a quarter
And somebody else's songs when yours are through.

I got good Kentucky whiskey on the counter
And my friends around to help me ease the pain
'Til some button-pushing cowboy plays that love song
And here I am just missing you again.

Please, Mister, please, don't play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it's over.
Pease, Mister, please, if you know what I mean.
I don't ever wanna hear that song again.

If I had a dime for every time I held you
Though you're far away, you've been so close to me
I would swear I'd be the richest girl in Nashville
Maybe even in the state of Tennessee.

But I guess I'd better get myself together
'Cause when you left, you didn't leave too much behind
Just a note that said "I'm sorry" by your picture
And a song that's weighing heavy on my mind.

Please, Mister, please, don't play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it's over.
Please, Mister, please, if you know what I mean
I don't ever wanna hear that song again.

FRIEND IS A FOUR LETTER WORD
Cake

To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

End is the only part of the word
That I heard,
Call me morbid or absurd,
But

To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

End is the only part of the word
That I heard,
Call me morbid or absurd,
But

To me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

When I go fishing
for the words
I am wishing you would say to me,
I am really only praying that
The words you'll soon be saying
Might betray
The way you feel about me

But to me,
Coming from you,
Friend is a four letter word

Fairytale Of New York
By Shane MacGowan / Jem Finer (1987)

Him: It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
'The Rare Old Mountain Dew '
And I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Him: Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

Her: They've got cars
Big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old

Her: When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

Her: You were handsome
Him: You were pretty,
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more.
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing,
We kissed on the corner
Then danced through the night

(Chorus)
The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing
Out for Christmas day

Her: You're a bum
You're a punk
Him: You're an old slut on junk
Living there almost dead on a drip
In that bed

Her: You scum bag
You maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God
It's our last

(Chorus)

Him: I could have been someone...
Her: Well so could anyone,
You took my dreams
From me when I first found you...
Him: I kept them with me babe,
I put them with my own,
Can't make it all alone,
I've built my dreams around you.

(Chorus)

Hey, Raggedy. I love Olivia Newton John.

WOW! Cav. Those songs are what I call, somebody done somebody wrong with a vengeance. Great!

HOW ABOUT PLEASUR P-DID YOU WRONG its a new one and goes on about 2 ppl doing each ova rong its good

Your Dictionary
xtc

H-A-T-E
Is that how you spell love in your dictionary
K-I-C-K
Pronounced as kind
F-U-C-K
Is that how you spell friend in your dictionary
Black on black
A guidebook for the blind

Well now that I can see my eyes won't weep
Now that I can hear your song sounds cheap
Now that I can talk all your corn I'll reap
I'm not so sure that Joey wed a Virgin Mary
There are no words for me inside your dictionary

S-L-A-P
Is that how you spell kiss in your dictionary
C-O-L-D
Pronounced as care
S-H-I-T
Is that how you spelt me in your dictionary
Four-eyed fool
You led 'round everywhere

Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes
Now that I can hear all your poison prose
Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze
I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy
There are no words for me inside your dictionary

Now your laughter has a hollow ring
But the hollow ring has no finger in
So let's close the book and let the day begin
And our marriage be undone

GIRL, welcome to A2K and to the archives.

We miss you, Paul, and djjd understands.

Beyond The Sea

Somewhere beyond the sea
Somewhere waiting for me
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailing

Somewhere beyond the sea
He's watching for me
If I could fly like birds on high
Then straight to his arms I'd go sailing
It's far beyond a star, it's near beyond the moon
I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon

We'll meet beyond the shore
We'll kiss just as before
Happy we'll be beyond the sea
And never again I'll go sailing
Some sailing.

La mer
Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d'été confond
Ses blancs moutons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer bergère d'azur
Infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouillés
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouillées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d'une chanson d'amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Odd, I thought there were no tears left.

Any Favours - Tom Robinson

If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours
If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours
If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours

I never get to meet your friends or folks (Don't do me any favours)
But I'm the butt of all your jokes (Don't do me any favours)
You talk down to me like a clapped-out fool (Don't do me any favours)
If you're so clever and cutting and cool (Don't do me any favours)
And...

If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours
If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours
If you think you're slumming when you're coming with me - don't do me any favours

Well you may be pretty
And you might be young... (Forget it - don't do me any favours)
You think the sun
Shines out of your bum... (Forget it - don't do me any favours)
You're so sarcastic
Ha ha ha... (Forget it - don't do me any favours)
Just who the hell
Do you think you are... (Forget it - don't do me any favours)

Talk, talk, talk...
Talk, talk, talk...
Bitch, bitch, bitch...
Talk, talk, talk...

If you think you're coming
When you're slumming with me...

Forget it.