The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #37515   Message #1201477
Posted By: Jim Dixon
06-Jun-04 - 05:39 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Whatcha Gonna Do...(Fiddlin' John Carson)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: 1929 song by Fiddlin' Joe Carson
WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN YOUR LICKER GIVES OUT, recorded by Fiddlin' John Carson, appears on Carson's "Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 6," Document CD 8019, 1998.

(By the way, there is no justification for spelling it LICKER rather than LIQUOR. Writers and linguists disparagingly call this "eye dialect." Although the words are pronounced the same, it's supposed to look like dialect because that's how an illiterate supposedly would write it. Like most cutesy illiteracies, I'd bet the record company, not Carson, invented this one. The idea that people who speak a dialect are necessarily illiterate is an abominable stereotype, in my opinion.

(I have enough liking and respect for dialect that I enjoy seeing it written in a way that accurately reflects pronunciation, but I don't like "eye dialect.")

I tried to transcribe the sound sample at Barnes & Noble, but didn't have much success:

... baby, I'm tired o' you, sweet thing.
Whoa, baby, I'm tired o' you,
I ain't came (?) for the ... way you do, sweet thing.

..., sugar babe.

SWEET THING in the DT is obviously related, but not quite the same.