Allmusic.com says the Modern Folk Quartet's eponymous album, originally issued as an LP in 1963, has been reissued as a CD by Collector's Choice Music. It contains SASSAFRAS, and it still lists the composer as "Hargail." I listened to a sound sample and here's what I heard:

Way down yonder in the tall grass
A little bitty woman called Sassafras
A wiggle in her walk and a tickle in her talk
And a funny way of puttin' on the class

They say white lightnin's in a jar
Clear as the water but it's hot as fire
That may be true but I'm tellin' you
Glass won't hold Sassafras

So tell all the neighborhood boys
I'm the one makin' all the noise
'Cause a little bitty thing that...


The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, which Allmusic.com calls an "enigmatic psychedelic cult band", has also had their first album from 1966 reissued as a CD with additional material. It also contains SASSAFRAS, and it's obviously the same song, though it's credited to 3 members of the band: Harris, Harris, and Lloyd.

I listened to a sound sample, and I was able to decipher it with the help of the lyrics that have already been posted above, but the order is different:


...'Cause a little cup o' tea knocked the heart out o' me
And that cup o' tea was Sassafras.

First time I kissed her in the city park
Bells started ringin' and it got dark
The army and the navy couldn't keep the people calm
They thought it was a hydrogen bomb

Next day I kissed her in the swimmin' hole
I kissed her ...


Allmusic.com lists several other recordings called SASSAFRAS, but the ones that have sound samples are obviously different, unrelated songs, in a wide variety of styles. None of them is attributed to Billy Edd Wheeler.

ASCAP.com lists a song by Billy Edd Wheeler called SASSAFRASS (note spelling) but it doesn't say who recorded it.

Billy Edd Wheeler's web site mentions SASSAFRASS, and says "several artists" recorded it, but it gives no further information.

I did run across one other interesting song called SASSAFRASS recorded by the New Coon Creek Girls on their album "Our Point of View", and attributed to Si Kahn and Fred Koller:

... small thing that's all I ask
One tall glass of sassafras.
Junebugs dance in the heat of the evenin' and the fireflies playin' in the grass
Doesn't really feel like summer till I've tasted sassafras.
Sassafras goes down easy
Sassafras cools in the well
Sassafras wild on the mountain
One small thing that...