The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #18902 Message #1864588
Posted By: GUEST,Bernie
20-Oct-06 - 05:02 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: My Pretty Quadroon
Subject: Lyr Add: MY PRETTY QUADROON (Terry Gilkyson?)
Kendall has kindly asked me to post this, so here it is...
CHORUS: Oh my pretty quadroon, my flower who faded too soon,
My heart, like the strings on my banjo, all broke, for my pretty quadroon.
VERSE: For years I have wandered alone
On the highway of pleasure and strife,
But the one rose I kept for my own
Will be with me the rest of my life. CHORUS
BRIDGE: Now, I'm not the lover to care
For the shade of the rose she may wear
But the dark rose, the white rose of summer
... All gone like my pretty quadroon. CHORUS
When I recorded this several years ago, and Kendall asked me where I had gotten this version [completely different than others]. I couldn't recall. I wasn't aware of his version, and was not even familiar with the term "Quadroon" until he explained it to me. A few years later, my brother told me he thought it was on an old LP he once owned by "The Easy Riders", a group from the fifties well known for hits like "Maryanne", and, I found out later, composing and writing a huge hit for Dean Martin in that era called "Memories Are Made of This."
The LP disappeared many years ago, but, as teenagers, we could learn a song after just hearing it once. [It don't work that way now!] Apparently the group was fronted by Terry Gilkyson, who was a prolific and very successful songwriter for movies as well [father of the fine present-day singer Eliza Gilkyson]. So, I'm guessing that this may be a song written by him, borrowing the chorus but adding more modern, pleasant but rather innocuous other lyrics. Hope this is reasonably accurate.