The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #6681   Message #2114376
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
29-Jul-07 - 09:50 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req/Add: Been All Around This World
Subject: RE: Been All Around This World
Janie, yes, you aren't just dreaming.
"My Father Was a Gambler," or "The Gambler," is not the same song as "Been All Around ..." although a verse or two express the same ideas, and some singers floated verses from one to the other- never know what one of those old-time singers would do.

Janie, yes, there is a version in Randolph, "Ozark Folksongs," vol. 2, no. 146- "My Father Was a Gambler," sung by Mrs. Jones, Pineville, MO, in 1929. Randolph also included a late, brief version in which the two are joined.
H. M. Belden has an older version, "The Gambler," "secured by Miss Frances Barbour in 1917 from the singing of Minnie Doyle of Arlington, Phelps County," [MO]; "Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society," 1940, p. 472-473.

I think I posted one or both somewhere in Mudcat, but it's too damn much trouble to go back through my posts, and there is no way in Hell to find them in Mudcat if they aren't in the old, unreliable DT. Search turns up lots of gambler songs, but not these.

I hesitate to post them again since they will just join the legions of the lost.