Origins: Hot Buttered Rum (Tommy Thompson)

Subject: HotButtered Rum
From:
Date: 02 Apr 97 - 06:11 PM

Would someone please post the words to "Hot Buttered Rum"? There are two versions I know of, by Bryan Bowers & Red Clay Ramblers"

Thanx, Bob S.

Subject: Lyr Add: HOT BUTTERED RUM (from Bryan Bowers)
From: belter
Date: 03 Apr 97 - 08:36 AM

The one I know of I'm not sure who it's by, i'll have to check but it may be Bryan Bowers.

HOT BUTTERED RUM

When chimney smoke hangs still and low
Across the stubbled fields of snow
When angry skys reach down to seas
Of sorry blackened bones of trees
In the dead of winter
When, the silent snow* birds come
Your my sweet maple sugar honey,
hot buttered rum

When dreary christmas decorations
Line the streets and filling stations
Dime store centers can't diskize
Empty heads and empty eyes
In the dead of winter when,
The tinsel angles come
Your my sweet maple sugar honey,
Hot buttered rum

Boots and gloves and woolen parkas
Bring cold comfort to the hart
Bitter memories freeze the tung
Songs of love are left unsung
In the dead of winter when,
The cold feelings come
Your my sweet maple sugar honey,
Hot buttered rum

*no?

I'm not sure were some of the phrases should be broken

This song can be depressing if you don't concentrate on the ray of hope at the end of each verse.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Bob S.
Date: 03 Apr 97 - 05:21 PM

Thanx. That's the one by Bryan Bowers. The third verse of the Red Clay Ramblers is different

Bob S.

Subject: Lyr Add: HOT BUTTERED RUM (Tommy Thompson)^^
From: rich r
Date: 03 Apr 97 - 10:41 PM

HOT BUTTERED RUM was written by Tommy Thompson the long time heart and soul of the Red Clay Ramblers out of Chapel Hill, NC. It first appeared on their album "Chuckin' The Frizz" released by Flying Fish in 1979. That version is the same as the one sung by Bryan Bowers. It is essentially the lyrics reported above, however there are several errors so I will retype it below as it appears on the liner notes to the album. The Ramblers recorded it again on their "Rambler" CD, and Tommy made some slight changes to the last verse. I have included that also. The last I heard, Tommy Thompson was living in Carrboro, NC and suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer's disease.

HOT BUTTERED RUM
(Tommy Thompson)

When chimney smoke hangs still and low
Across the stubble - fields of snow
And angry skies reach down to seize
The sorry blackened bones of trees
In the dead of winter when the silent snowbirds come
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum

When dreary Christmas decorations
Line the streets and filling stations
And dimestore Santas can't disguise
Their empty hands and empty eyes
In the dead of winter
When the tinsel angels come
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum

When gloves and boots and woolen parkas
Bring cold comfort to the heart
And bitter memories freeze the tongue
And songs of love are left unsung
In the dead of winter
When those cold feelings come
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum

(revised last verse)
When burning embers in the darkness
Bring cold comfort to the heart
And bitter memories freeze the tongue
And songs of love are left unsung
In the dead of winter
If springtime never comes
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum

rich r

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: belter
Date: 04 Apr 97 - 12:23 AM

I hope I don't find myself quoted in a book of miss sung lyrics. It is nice to finally find out what the words I was guessing at really are.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From:
Date: 04 Apr 97 - 10:09 AM

Thanx to both of you. Maybe this song will get into the DT. HINT. HINT.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: rich r
Date: 04 Apr 97 - 08:09 PM

belter,

Don't feel bad, I've sung the worng words to songs for years, sometimes even making up something totally different if I couldn't figure it out. Then one day I will see it in print in a real book and say to myself "doh"

rich r

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Bob Schwarer
Date: 05 Apr 97 - 09:07 AM

Wrong words are part of the folk proccess. Even the ones who write the songs may use difirent words from time to time. Check printed lyrics that come with a disk and you will find many changes between what is written and what you hear. Bob S.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 05 Apr 97 - 11:00 AM

Fear not. Posted songs WILL find their way into the Digital Tradition. It may take time, though. There are a LOT of songs. And so little time....

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From:
Date: 05 Apr 97 - 03:10 PM

Thyme, it is a precious thing.

Subject: Correction: Hot Buttered Rum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jan 00 - 02:59 PM

This message transferred over from the Help Forum:

Subject: Hot Buttered Rum
From: jf [e-mail]
Date: 17-Jan-00 - 12:57 AM

Hi, Thanks for the lyric site. Red Clay Ramblers CD, RAMBLER, credits Tommy Thompson as composer of "Hot Buttered Rum," rather than Bryan Bowers. Thanksssss

This song is on the excellent Voices of Winter CD by my favorite female singers, Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills, and Cindy Mangsen. They credit the song to Tommy Thompson (Southern Melody Publishing, BMI).
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Micca
Date: 17 Jan 00 - 09:00 PM

And there was I, hoping for a recipe***BG***

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jan 00 - 09:11 PM

Um, sorry about the oversight, Micca - click here or here. Think I'll put the song on the CD player and make one myself.
-Joe Offer-

Anybody got the tune for this song? I'm having trouble learning it.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Midchuck
Date: 17 Jan 00 - 09:24 PM

(CAUTION: SSP FOLLOWS!)

The song also appears on Woodchucks' Revenges' first CD and tape, Loose in the Hills (1996) available in fine stores in the Rutland, Vermont, area, and from yours truly.....

Peter.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: KathWestra
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 12:20 PM

The song (with notation of the melody) appeared in the Chicago-based publication "Come for to Sing" many years ago (like 15-20). Joe, I'll try to dig up my copy, from which I learned the song, and mail a copy of that page to you. By the way, "CFTS" was a terrific publication, edited by Emily Friedman, full of great information, controversial opinion, and lead sheets to neat songs. I subscribed for almost all its life and, I'm sure, am not the only one sorry to see it cease publication sometime in the 1980s (even though the editor's shoot-from-the-hip style drove me more than crazy on occasion).

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Micca
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 04:38 PM

Thanks Joe, having had a peek at the second recipe I can only say !!!JAYSUS!!!

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 08:30 PM

TOMMY THOMPSON (not the governor of Wisconsin with the same name) recorded his "Hot Buttered Rum" twice that I know of with the Red Clay Ramblers----the early group and the later incarnation too. It is a wonderful song. Possibly, Tommy wrote the second version of the second verse to let up on a perceived lack of positive feeling for Christmas in the first version. Personally, I like the original version:

When dreary Christmas decorations line the streets and filling stations,
And dime store Santas can't disguise their empty hands and their empty eyes,
In the dead of winter when the tinsel angels come...

Tommy and the Ramblers did several wonderful LPs on the Flying Fish label. I first heard 'em in Winnipeg and then in Winfield, Kansas. Later opened a how for tham in Illinois. Someone once said that if Charlie Poole were working today he and the North Carolina Ramblers would be doing music with the inventiveness of the RED CLAY RAMBLERS. Tommy is ill with Alzheimers Disease now and is in a North Carolina nursing facility. I'm sure he could use some of our prayers.

Listen to Tommy Thompson's song "TWISTED LAUREL" and try to keep a dry eye when thinking of his present situation. It can't be done !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: BillFisher
Date: 24 Jan 00 - 11:28 PM

Tommy Thompson's daughter has been keeping a journal of her visits with Tommy in the nursing home. Read them and weep. They're posted at : http://members.tripod.com/~RedClayRamblers/tommy.htm

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST,_gargoyle
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 12:22 AM

Backpacking in the Northern Colorado Rockies, outside of Estes Park, in the late 1960's. Three of us, exhausted tired, womped-out, and asleep for several hours.

Sometime after midnight, we awoke to the most ghastly, spin-tingling, hair-on-end sound and sight imaginable. There was the caterwailing of a thousand cats in the tumultuous frenzy of death curdling melodies....rising from our tent, and looking down across the long alpine meadow, under the full moon and over the 18 inch high foggy dew there was a full kilted bag-piper walking (more like floating) up the trail screeching a bag full of felines that echoed down again from the valley walls. We can close to skitering into the wilderness barefoot and empting our shorts later.

The piper, was a lone refuge from an encampment way down the valley through the trees, well over a mile away....We got dressed, followed him down to a raging bonfire with other pipers, and drank hot buttered rum.....made by plunging a red-hot-rail-road-spike into a mug of sugar, rum and water. We returned in the dawn to our encampment and slept until noon....the two other chaps took up the pipes shortly after the encounter.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST,_gargoyle
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 11:46 PM

Read and weep -

Or read and reflect!!!!!

All, too soon you and I will both be lying where he soon will lay....

And will our own obiturary/epitaph read even half so rich?

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Brendy
Date: 25 Jan 00 - 11:52 PM

No, I suppose it wouldn't

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jan 00 - 08:58 AM

See this week's cover story feature on Alzheimer's in Newsweek.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST,Jim Davidson
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 12:42 PM

Now that we have the words to Hot Buttered Rum, does anyone know where the sheet music can be acquired?

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST,Bob Schwarer
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 12:59 PM

I always thought the line should be:

"....empty hearts and empty eyes". Cynical I guess.

Just my $.02

Bob S.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: SINSULL
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 01:04 PM

I keep a railroad spike in my fireplace, Gargoyle. It's the only way to make hot buttered rum.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 01:07 PM

Hey Garg! Weren't you a Philmont Ranger then?

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: GUEST,Jim Davidson
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 07:15 PM

Earlier I requested assistance in locating the sheet music for Hot Buttered Rum. I found what I was looking for. Thank you.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: MMario
Date: 18 Jan 01 - 08:40 PM

jim - was it on the net?

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: JenEllen
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 12:54 PM

So Jim (or anyone else), any information on where to find the sheet music? Any tabs on the 'net?
~JE

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: curmudgeon
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 12:59 PM

Sheet music? Into a mug, pur a couple of ounces of good dark rum, stir in brown or maple sugar, add a cinnamon stick and a couple cloves and a pat of butter, fill with boiling cider and drink, you won't need written music.

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: JenEllen
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 03:31 PM

LOL Tom, you are hopeless. Pairing that with Linn's 'Margarita Mayhem', it's a wonder you two ever get out of the house! *g*
~JE

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: curmudgeon
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 08:04 PM

Actually, except for Bloody Marys, London Sours and Planters Punches on a warm day, we don't do a lot of mixed drinks. However, there is one other exception:

Keep, at all times, a pint of good gin in the freezer. When the mood strikes, in a martini glass, combine 4-5 parts of the aforementioned gin with 1 part excellent vermouth. Add 1-5 large green olives and sip. Always bear in mind that a mertini is like a woman's breasts -- one is not enough, three is too many -- Tom

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Amos
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 10:33 PM

Right, Tom, I'm going to walk around town "always bearing in mind"... let's see.

Go to hardware store, get piping, remember the bit about a woman's breasts and martini. Go to bank. Notice martinis on teller.   Fill car. A woman's martinins are like a breast. Shop for glassware. Stay abreast of that Martini woman.

Oh, don't forget to get stamps on a woman's martini-like breasts and mail that martini -- walk to pharmacy, tell the gal at the prescription counter -- "I need to fill these martinis, please..." "I beg your pardon???" "I mean, um, a woman's breasts...might be too many...or something....I forget..." "All right, buddy, that's enough. I'm calling the manager!" "But Tom told me to always keep it in mind..."

Lemme know if you got any more advice!! LOL!


A

Subject: RE: HotButtered Rum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Nov 02 - 11:38 PM

In case some of you forgot, this is a discussion about a song called "Hot Buttered Rum." It's our permanent record of all the information we've been able to collect about this song. The chit-chat is supposed to stay in the "BS" threads. Humor is welcome in music threads, as long as it's on topic. Seems to be drifting here.

Anyhow, I haven't been able to find this song in any printed source. If somebody can direct me, or send me a MIDI, I'd sure appreciate it.

-Joe Offer (click to e-mail)-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 10:51 PM

Sorry Joe -

My posting was nearly three years ago - While at that time I had already been exiled.....In those days B.S. was not known.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: Amos
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 12:19 AM

Tribute Page to Tommy Thompson, with lyrics:

http://redclayramblers.tripod.com/tributes2.htm

A

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: GUEST,donotml
Date: 06 Dec 07 - 06:34 PM

The lyrics make much more sense if you substitute "Dime store Santas' for "Dime store centers. that's the way have always heard it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Dec 07 - 06:50 PM

I've proposed to Dick and Susan that the transcription above from rich r would be much better than what we have in the DT. Any corrections to the transcription from Rich?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 06 Dec 07 - 06:53 PM

There was also a nice recording by Jane Voss & Hoyle Osborne back in the days of vinyl. I haven't seen anything of theirs re-released on CD.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: gabbyhayes
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 10:20 PM

I think Tommy's been gone five years now. When a man dies of Alzheimers, I wonder if he knows he's dead. I suppose it would be a kindness to forget you are mortal. The only drink that will make a winter night warm is this one:

pack snow into a glass as tight as you can. Maybe you shouldn't use a glass because a glass might break under the pressure. Sprinkle a little sugar on top. Pour about a quarter cup to half a cup of lemon juice over the snow--you'll see it soaking in. Then top of the glass with rum, vodka, or gin--anything clear. This should pretty much melt the snow. Chug it. You won't taste it, anyway, with the lemon, and the brain freeze will hit you like the kick of a mule. It's the only way to get through a really awful winter night.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: GUEST,tanders
Date: 04 Feb 09 - 09:32 AM

Anyone have the chords for Hot Buttered Rum

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: topical tom
Date: 04 Feb 09 - 11:35 AM

When we attended the Champlain Valley Folk Festival back in the 80s and 90s the two most warmly applauded bands were The Red Clay Ramblers and La Bottine Souriante (from Quebec). This song is surely the one for ...the dead of Winter when Springtime never comes...It warms the cockles of the heart.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum
From: open mike
Date: 04 Feb 09 - 12:53 PM

further on this..
there is a band
http://www.hotbutteredrum.net/   
http://www.myspace.com/hotbutteredrum
and they did not know the song...
i played it for them at a music festival

their tour bus runs on veggie oil--biodiesel

i do not see this song in their repertoire...they really should do it!

i do this song in "G"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum (Tommy Thompson)
From: GUEST,NC Donna
Date: 24 Feb 09 - 10:13 PM

So does anyone know how to get access to the sheet music?

Subject: Chords Add: HOT BUTTERED RUM (Tommy Thompson)
From: GUEST,ednaelk
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 12:13 PM

I've figured them out, they're pretty simple guitar chords:

C
When chimney smoke hangs still and low
F
Across the stubble fields of snow
    C
And angry skies reach down to seize
    G
The sorry blackened bones of trees
C                              F
In the dead of winter when the silent snowbirds come
          C
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
G            C
Hot buttered rum.


When dreary Christmas decorations
Line the streets and filling stations
And dimestore Santas can't disguise
Their empty hands and empty eyes
In the dead of winter
When the tinsel angels come
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum.

When gloves and boots and woolen parkas
Bring cold comfort to the heart
And bitter memories freeze the tongue
And songs of love are left unsung
In the dead of winter
When those cold feelings come
You're my sweet maple sugar, honey
Hot buttered rum.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum (Tommy Thompson)
From: open mike
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 02:24 PM

i do it in "G" so each chord will be 4 steps up from the above printed

C = G , F = C , G = D this is in better range for my voice

and makes for easier bass line walk-up notes.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum (Tommy Thompson)
From: GUEST,NC Donna
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 02:35 PM

I really want the piano music. Any tips?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hot Buttered Rum (Tommy Thompson)
From: Joe_F
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 09:49 PM

In a large snifter, mix, according to taste & conscience, dark rum, water, maple syrup, & a couple of drops of lemon extract. Add half a pat of butter & sprinkle with ground nutmeg. Cover with something nonmetallic (the lid from a U.S. frozen-orange-juice container is good), and microwave for half a minute or so until the butter is melted. Think of someone you are grateful for.

Subject: i.s.o. 4TH VERSE TO HOT BUTTERED RUM
From: open mike
Date: 02 Dec 21 - 09:48 PM

I REMEMBER HEARING LYRICS OF THE SONG BY TOMMY THOMPSON OF THE RED CLAY RAMBLERS...WHICH HAD IMAGES OF SPRING...THE THREE VERSES (WHICH ARE IN THE MUDCAT DATA BASE) ARE THE I=ONLY ONES I CAN FIND, BUT I AM HOPING THAT SOMEONE OUT THERE MIGHT KNOW OF THE 4TH ONE!!

---

Click here for the four-verse version that is posted above. -Joe Offer-