Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie

Subject: Bad Man's Blunder
From: Giac
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 10:16 AM

That wonderful thread on Lee Hays prompted me to bring this up.

Bad Man's Blunder was on the Kingston Trio's String Along album and was also a "hit" single (maybe their last?). They credit Cisco Houston and Lee Hays, but I can't find the lyrics anywhere other than on a KT site.

So, after all that, my question is: Are the parenthetical comments part of the original Houston/Hays version (akin to Bad Lee Brown?), or are they KT additions for comedic effect?

Mary

Subject: ADD: Bad Man's Blunder (Houston/Hays)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 12:54 PM

This has always been one of my favoriite Kingston trio songs. I'll post here what I found at The Kingston Trio Place, and then see what I can transcribe from the Cisco Houston recording.
-Joe Offer-

---

BAD MAN'S BLUNDER
(Cisco Houston/Lee Hays)

Well, early one evening I was rollin' around. I was feelin' kind of mean. I shot a deputy down.
Strollin' on home and I went to bed. Well, I laid my pistol up under my head.
He strolled along home (I took my time) and he went to bed (Thought I'd sleep some)
Laid his pistol (Big twenty-two) up under his head (I keep it handy)

Well, early in the morning 'bout the break of day, I figured it was time to make a getaway.
Steppin' right along but I was steppin' too slow. Got surrounded by a sheriff down in Mexico.
He was steppin' right along (I were a-high footin' it) but he was steppin' too slow (It was a sultry day)
Got surrounded by a sheriff (Boxed in) in Mexico. (I didn't even have a chance to see the country.)

When I was arrested, I didn't have a dime. The sheriff says, "Son, you're ridin' free this time.
Where you're goin' you won't need a cent 'cause the great state of Texas gonna pay your rent.
'Cause where you're goin' (I think he means jail) you won't need a cent (But he knows I'm broke)
'Cause the great state of Texas (Yippee!) gonna pay your rent. (I'm mighty grateful, fellas)

Well, I didn't have a key and I didn't have a file. Natur'lly I stayed around until my trial.
The judge was an old man, ninety-three, and I didn't like the way the jury looked at me.
The judge was an old man (Too old) Ninety-three (Entirely too old)
I didn't like the way the jury looked at me. (I think they were suspicious.)

The judge and the jury, they did agree. They all said murder in the first degree.
The judge said, same, ("I don't know whether to hang you or not, but this killing of deputy sheriffs has just got to naturally got to stop!"
"You got a point there, judge!")

It was a most unsatisfactory trial. They gave me ninety-nine years on the hard rock pile.
Ninety and nine on the hard rock ground. All I ever did was shoot a deputy down.
Ninety and nine (It could have been life.) on the hard rock pile (They might-a hung me)
And all he ever did was shoot a deputy down (This whole thing has sure been a lesson to me. Bang! You're dead!)

---

I listened to the Kingston Trio recording on their 1960 String Along album and made a few corrections to the text I found at the Kingston Trio Place. String Along was the sixth gold album award the Trio received, and the last Kingston Trio album to top the charts.
"The judge said, same" doesn't make sense to me, but that's what I hear.

Subject: ADD: Badman Ballad
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 01:32 PM

The Cisco Houston recording calls it "Badman Ballad," but does not give songwriter attribution. Songfile.com (Harry Fox Agency) attrributes it to Cisco Houston and Lee Hays, and calls it "Bad Man's Blunder." I transcribed this from Cisco Houston: Best of the Vanguard Years. It was originally on an LP called The Cisco Special! I didn't find a date for the song, and I didn't find any indication that Lee Hays or the Weavers recorded it - but I'm sure Lee Hays is the (unidentified) voice of the Judge on this recording. The instrumental accompaniment on this recording has a 50's rock 'n' roll dance beat.
-Joe Offer-

BADMAN BALLAD
(Cisco Houston/Lee Hays)

Early one evening I was rollin' around. I was feelin' kind of mean. I shot a deputy down.
Strolled along home and I went to bed. I laid my pistol up under my head.
He strolled on home (I took my time) and he went to bed (Thought I'd sleep some)
Laid his pistol (Big forty-four) up under his head (I keep it handy)

Early in the morning at the break of day, I figured it was time to make my getaway.
I was steppin' right along but I was steppin' too slow. Got surrounded by a sheriff down in Mexico.
He was steppin' right along (I was hot-footin' it) but he was steppin' too slow (A hot day)
Got surrounded by the sheriff (Boxed in) in Mexico. (I didn't even get a chance to see the country.)

When I was arrested, didn't have a dime. The sheriff says, "Son, you're ridin' free this time.
Where you're goin' you won't need a cent 'cause the great state of Texas gonna pay your rent.
'Cause where you're goin' (I think he means jail) you won't need a cent (Well, he knows I'm broke)
'Cause the great state of Texas (Mmmmm Hmmm!) gonna pay your rent. (I'm mighty grateful)

Well, I didn't have a key and I didn't have a file. Naturally I stayed around until my trial.
The judge was an old man, ninety-three, and I didn't like the way the jury looked at me.
The judge was an old man (Too old) Ninety-three (Entirely too old)
I didn't like the way that jury looked at me. (I think they were suspicious.)

The judge and the jury, they did agree. They all said murder in the first degree.
The judge said, "I don't know whether to hang you or not,
but this here killing of deputy sheriffs has just got to naturally got to stop!"
"You've got a point there, judge!"

It was a most unsatisfactory trial. They gave me ninety-nine years on the hard rock pile.
Ninety and nine on the hard rock ground. All I ever did was shoot a deputy down.
Ninety and nine (It could have been life.) on the hard rock ground (They might-a hung me)
And all he ever did was shoot a deputy down (This whole thing has sure been a lesson to me.)

Subject: RE: Bad Man's Blunder
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 01:49 PM

It seems to me that I came across a traditional song that parallels this, but I can't find it. Ah, here it is - Bad Lee Brown/Little Sadie. I should have paid attention to Giac's post. Take note of this "Badman Ballad" from Lomax. I think it's the "missing link" between these two songs (but the tune is sure different), but there are several others in the Bad Lee Brown thread that are related. Note the judge's statement in one of those versions.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Bad Man's Blunder
From: Giac
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 03:14 PM

Thank you, thank you, Joe!!

This has long been one of my favorites, too. A friend and I used to do this (30 years ago) and always cracked up while singing it (we were easily amused). **Grin**

Subject: RE: Bad Man's Blunder
From: Anglo
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 03:37 PM

Joe, I recall the Kingston Trio lyrics as: The judge said, "Son, I don't know… "

but I no longer have a recording to check.

Subject: RE: Bad Man's Blunder
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 03:41 PM

"Son" is what I always thought, Anglo, and that's how I sing it - but it's not what I hear on the recording. Maybe it's "the judge said th'same..." I'll keep singing "son."
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Bad Man's Blunder
From: ddw
Date: 26 Mar 03 - 08:58 PM

Joe, could that be a slurred "says to me, 'I don't know ...."?

Haven't heard the song in years, but it seems to me that's the way I hear it then.

Cheers,

david

Subject: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Nov 07 - 02:15 PM

Are these secretly the same song? In both the protagonist goes out one night, kills someone, goes home, puts the gun under the pillow, gets up in the morning, tries to run, gets caught. Otherwise they have nothing in common!

I think the lyrics to both are in the trad, but I'll check.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Nov 07 - 02:16 PM

OK, here is Bad Man's Blunder, I have it by the Kingston Trio:
^^
Cisco Houston/Lee Hays

Well, early one evening I was rollin' around. I was feelin' kind of mean. I shot a deputy down.
Strollin' on home and I went to bed. Well, I laid me pistol up under my head.
He strolled along home (I took my time) and he went to bed (Thought I'd sleep some)
Laid his pistol (Big twenty-two) up under his head (I keep it handy)

Well, early in the morning 'bout the break of day, I figured it was time to make a getaway.
Steppin' right along but I was steppin' too slow. Got surrounded by a sheriff down in Mexico.
He was steppin' right along (Were a-high footin' it) but he was steppin' too slow (It was a sultry day)
Got surrounded by a sheriff (Boxed in) in Mexico. (I didn't even have a chance to see the country.)

When I was arrested, I didn't have a dime. The sheriff says, "Son, you're ridin' free this time.
Where you're goin' you won't need a cent 'cause the great state of Texas gonna pay your rent.
'Cause where you're goin' (I think he means jail) you won't need a cent (Well, he knows I'm broke)
'Cause the great state of Texas (Yippee!) gonna pay your rent. (I'm mighty grateful, fellas)

Well, I didn't have a key and I didn't have a file. Natur'lly I stayed around until my trial.
The judge was an old man; ninety-three and I didn't like the way the jury looked at me.
The judge was an old man (Too old) Ninety-three (Entirely too old)
I didn't like the way the jury looked at me. (I think they were suspicious.)

The judge and the jury, they did agree. They all said murder in the first degree.
They judge said, same, ("I don't know whether to hang you or not, but this killing of deputy sheriffs has just got to naturally got to stop!" "You've got a point there, judge!")

It was a most unsatisfactory trial. They gave me ninety-nine years on the hard rock pile.
Ninety and nine on the hard rock ground. All I ever did was shoot a deputy down.
Ninety and nine (It could have been life.) on the hard rock pile (They might-a hung me)
And all he ever did was shoot a deputy down (This whole thing has sure been a lesson to me. Bang! You're dead!)

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Nov 07 - 02:18 PM

And Little Sadie is, indeed, in the database.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Nov 07 - 05:14 PM

Come on, people, this is a real song-related question!

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 08:21 AM

"Bad Man's Blunder" is a stage performance-oriented burlesque on the far more serious song Clarence Ashley made known years back as "Little Sadie," and as it's credited to Guthrie/Hays, is probably a Lee Hays work-over based on Woody's c. 1940s version called, I think, "Bad Lee Brown."

The original lacked the wisecracks. John A. and Alan Lomax in "American Ballads and Folk Songs," 1934, p 89-92, report it as sung by "a tongue-tied Negro convict at Parchman, Mississippi." Date of collection not given.

The convict may be the original source, but he equally well may not. He could have learned it from (or from an acquaintance who had heard) any of three 1928-29 commercial recordings. The song was first recorded by Buddy (Ernest) Baker on Vi 21549, June 21 1928 as "Penitentiary Blues," subsequently by John Dilleshaw (as "Bad Lee Brown") and, better known, Clarence Ashley (as "Little Sadie") both in 1929. Riley Puckett covered it as "Chain Gang Blues" in 1934.

It was the 1962 inclusion of Little Sadie on a Folkways Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson LP that circulated it by far the most widely. Before that it was little known except to record collectors and old time music fanatics. That's no doubt where Dylan learned it and eventually croaked the song into a media hit.

Gus Meade, in Country Music Sources, is unable to turn up any older roots for "Bad Lee Brown"/"Little Sadie"/"Penitentiary Blues." It does appear in Laws.

It would be nice to learn whether Bad Lee Brown ever existed, and if so who he was and what the details of the murder were. But so far as I know, no one has ever come up with anything certain on this score. Does anyone know different?

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 08:33 AM

"Check-list of Recorded Songs in the English Language in the Archive of American Folk Song" (Arno, 1942) lists the Lomaxes' "Bad Man Ballad" (their title for the Bad Lee Brown / Little Sadie song) as

Sung by Negro convict. State penitentiary, Parchman, Miss., [recorded by] John Lomax, 1933. The recording citation number is 1859 A1-10 in.

Three other Library of Congress recordings by the same name are listed, two from detention facilities: State (Reid) Farm,Boykin, S.C., 1936, Cumins State Farm, Ark., 1939. The third was collected from one Blue Heaven in Belle Glade, Fla., 1935.

Again, nothing to show it's earlier than 1928. Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 08:51 AM

From http://web.ukonline.co.uk/pdcmusic/little-sadie.html

Song History
"Little Sadie"
~ variants also known as
"Bad Lee Brown", "Bad Man Ballad", "East St. Louis Blues",
"Late One Night", "Chain Gang Blues", "Bad Man's Blunder",
"Penitentiary Blues", "Cocaine Blues", and "Transfusion Blues"

Excerpts from the "Traditional Ballad Index":

Bad Lee Brown (Little Sadie) [Laws I8]
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1922 (Randolph)
... the earliest reference to the "Bad Lee Brown"
variant of the song dates from 1922 and appears in Vance Randolph's
Ozark Folksongs, Vol. II (1948, pp. 117-118):

Sung by Miss Billie Freese, Joplin, Mo., Apr. 17, 1922. Miss Freese
learned it from her boy-friend, a native of West Plains, Mo.

Last night I was a-makin' my rounds,
Met my old woman an' I blowed her down,
I went on home to go to bed,
Put my old cannon right under my head.

Jury says murder in the first degree,
I says oh Lord, have mercy on me!
Old Judge White picks up his pen,
Says you'll never kill no woman ag'in.

The website refers to an Inside Bluegrass article by Lyle Lofgren, "Remembering the Old Songs: Little Sadie [Laws 18]". It has no solid facts, only speculation, but the following statement is interesting:

"One writer says this song was very popular as early as 1885, but I couldn't find the source of that claim. There are lots of towns in America with the names given in the song, but Thomasville and Jericho, North Carolina are only 60 miles apart, which make them prime candidates for locale. There's no reason to believe this song is literal history, though. A cursory search shows no information on a real Lee Brown, or any evidence that the song describes an actual murder."

My comment:

It should be noted, though, that the town names vary from version to version, adapted by singers to their own locality. One even gives the place Brown was caught as Mexico. (Which could be the nation, or a local town called Mexico.

The fact that the song, though rare, was so widespread as to be found from Mississippi to Virginia to Florida -- virtually over the entire south -- argues for origin well before 1928.

I'd love to see someone do a detailed history as has been done for other songs like Frankie and Johnny, and turn up the facts, if any, behind the song.

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 09:32 AM

Randolph in his citation of the song refers to versions in Dorothy Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk-Song and Sandburg's American Songbag. These are false clues. The song referred to is "(A Game of) Coon Can," also known as "Poor Boy" -- not the same song at all. (Confusion may have arisen because both are sometimes called "Penitentiary Blues.")

However, on a later page Scarborough does give two verses of a song she got from "Professor W. H. Thomas." No bibliography given.

A little web research shows that this was Texas A&M College Professor W. H. Thomas of College Station, Texas, who served during the 1920s as President of the Texas Folk-Lore Society. In 1912 the Society's first publication was Thomas' monograph, "Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro". The implication is that the song appeared there.

That would push "Bad Lee Brown" / "Little Sadie"'s history back a good deal further! It also suggests research ought to be done on its possible origin in Texas.

Check in the interesting variation in the first line, if it's not a mishearing:

I dreamt last night I was walkin' around,
I met that Nigger and I knocked her down,
I knocked her down and I started to run,
Till the Sheriff stopped me with his Gatling gun.

I made a good run but I run too slow,
He landed me over in the Jericho,
I started to run off down the track,
But they put me on the train and they brought me back.

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 09:42 AM

One last tidbit, then I'll stop hogging the thread (at least for now).

Neither my Rand-McNally nor my road atlas turns up any Jericho in Texas.

However, I suggest that this commonly known biblical name may have been given either as a section name or a nickname to a local "black bottom" section of a Texas town or city. (For some reason the black district of Dallas comes to mind -- that was, if I remember correctly, where numerous itinerants and blues singers as well as fiddler-singer Prince Albert Hunt flourished, among many others.)

Or it might be a little hamlet that's disappeared and never got on a map.

A Texas origin for the song would make better sense of "Got overtaken down in Mexico."

Question for Texans, Texas historians and cartographers: where in Texas is (or was) Jericho?

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 10:01 AM

Oops here I go again. From The Handbook of Texas Online:

"JERICHO, TEXAS. Jericho, just off Interstate Highway 40 in northern Donley County, was established in 1902 as a station on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway. It was granted a post office that year and was named for the biblical city in Palestine. At its height in the 1930s, Jericho had three stores, a grain elevator, a tourist court, and a garage and filling station. Jericho's population was estimated to be 100 in 1933 and fifty by 1939. Its post office was discontinued in 1955, and by the 1980s little remained at the townsite."

Picture Lee Brown there trying to hide behind the grain elevator, spotted, cornered, getting the cuffs slipped on ...

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 03:10 PM

Further data:

The song appears as "Sadie" in Frank C. Brown, North Carolina Folklore, Vol II, Folk Ballads, p 597-8, as collected from Minnie Church of Heaton, Avery County, sometime in the 1930s. Avery County is near the Tennessee line, not far from Clarence "Tom" Ashley's place of origin.

I haven't been able to find out anything about Ernest "Buddy" Baker, who was first to record this song as "Penitentiary Blues" in 1928, vocal and guitar. He was almost certainly white, in contrast to this song's usual occurrence among blacks. He was recorded in Chicago; only two records were issued, a total of four sides. Some of his songs had African American themes (straight or caricature) to judge by a couple of unissued sides: "Razor Jim" and "Nobody Knows What's On My Mind Blues." The flip side of his version of Little Sadie, was titled "Box Car Blues."

W.H. Thomas' "Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro" was a 35-pp pamphlet in its original 1912 form. It is currently available as part of an anthology of Texas Folk-Lore Society articles edited by J. Frank Dobie, "Rainbow in the Morning." I haven't seen it. Have any of you?

Bob

Subject: RE: Origins: Bad Man's Blunder / Little Sadie
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 03:13 PM

Thanks, Bob!