The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #2649   Message #4164493
Posted By: cnd
05-Feb-23 - 08:39 AM
Thread Name: Lyr ADD: Whoa Back Buck (Leadbelly)
Subject: RE: Lyr ADD: Whoa Back Buck (Leadbelly)
One idea for the fourth one. Somewhat surprisingly, that is the Golden Gate Quartet backing him.

[Spoken:]
This man was a long way from home. And it was so driven rain… and he's tryin' to get home and you know that's about how much speedy ox in this country. He was drivin' twenty yokes of oxen. Instead of the oxen gettin' faster, they was speedin' up slower. Every once in a while he'd look out on the cut-out, "Ta-ya! Yeah, gee Buck, whoa!"

And my impression of what he says in the sixth one:

Shoutin' on down ol' cotton-eyed Joe,

The seventh version seems to come from this recording. The origin of it is either (ultimately, probably) Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order: Volume 7, track 6 (which matches your title of Ox Driving Moan) or this release, by the Archive of Folk Music (FM 102), which seems to normally title the song Whoe Back Buck, except for the YouTube Music version of the German release (the recording I linked in the intro to this paragraphe), which also calls it Ox Driving Moan.

The first spoken section of that version probably is "them oxen's all bogged down" (instead of balled)

The Alan Lomax version you posted is the source of Fred Burns lyr add way down back in 2000 - link

Otherwise, versions 1-4 and 6-7 sound right compared to your posted lyrics. Note that I've also not found the source for Version #5.