A CHICKEN CAN WALTZ THE GRAVY AROUND
As recorded by Stovepipe* on Okeh 8543, 1927.

My wife she called me to breakfast; I walked right to the gate.
She set me down to table to chicken on my plate.
I grabbed my knapsack on my shoulder, said: "Honey, you be too late."
In fifteen minutes by any man's watch, there's a chicken on my plate.

CHORUS: Oh, chicken, oh, chicken, you can fry 'em nice and brown.
Oh, chicken, oh, chicken, you can waltz the gravy around.
Oh, chicken, oh, chicken, I don't mean no fault** to that.
For chicken grow in this town, and their wings can't get too fat.

Oh, when I come to a neighborhood, chickens know just what I mean.
Chickens skippin' and dodgin'; no chickens can't be seen.
The hen she said to the rooster: "Lord, there ain't no use to hide.
Got a shotgun and it hurts to run and our wings can't roost too high."


* Not much is known about this performer. He is not the same person as Daddy Stovepipe. On this recording, when he is not singing, he seems to be blowing into a jug, or something similar, and playing guitar at the same time. The song sounds like a reworking of "Chicken You Can Roost Behind the Moon" recorded by The Beale Street Sheiks.

By the way, I Googled "by any man's watch," thinking it sounded like a folk saying, and the only instance I found, besides this song, is in a Fenimore Cooper novel. Maybe Stovepipe was a literate man!

For more information about Stovepipe, see Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City by Steven C. Tracy. My transcription is based on one in that book, but I made some corrections based on my own hearing.

**In the second chorus, he sings "I find no fault."