Lyr Req/Add: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)

Subject: Lyr Req: Paddy Welcome Back
From: GUEST,ssander0
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 06:11 AM

Looking for the lyrics to Paddy Welcome Back sung by Fast Rattler on the CD Singing Through the Hard Times.

TIA

Subject: ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 03:37 PM

This is from the Utah Phillips Starlight on the Rails Songbook, published in 1973. The book used to be online, but I couldn't find it anymore. If you email me, I can send you a scan with notation.
[e-mail]-

PADDY WELCOME BACK
(Utah Phillips, 1973)

I left my wife in a pauper's grave
Over by the Loray mill.
I left my thumb in a bluecoat trench
On the edge of Chancellorville.
I left my youth in a railroad camp
And my pride in a whiskey jar.
I left my pay in a little black book
Down at the commissary store.

CHORUS
Still she rolls and still she blows
And her thunder shakes the land.
It's Paddy welcome back to the end of the track
With a gun and shovel in your hand.

I wish I was the suttler's mule
And could draw his stable and board.
You'd never find my name in that little black book,
And I'd buy on account no more.
I'd rather have the bridle and lash,
Sure, I'd be driven no worse
Than by that hijack yankee clerk
With his hand ever in his purse.

Ching-chong Chinaman, he's got a curlicue,
And he'll get my job some day,
'Cause he works like the devil owned his soul,
And settles for half the pay.
I'd drink bad whiskey and strong barge rum
By the light of the brakeman's lamp,
Then try another turn of the chuck-a-luck
Down in the railroad camp.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Welcome Back, Paddy
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 03:48 PM

There are several differences in the lyrics used by Fast Rattler on the Singing Through the Hard Times CD. I don't know if those changes were by Fast Rattler, or if Utah Phillips made them. The 1973 lyrics did need some updating.

Here's a YouTube recording of the Fast Rattler version of the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTFPvyHfaQ4

-Joe-

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 12:37 AM

Kendall Morse or Dan Schatz or Fast Rattler, can you give us the Fast Rattler lyrics and tell us why they were changed and who changed them?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 11:00 AM

Fast Rattler is Brendan Phillip's (Utah's younger son) band. Any changes are probably his. Much as I love Brendan (I taught him banjo & guitar) he does take a fairly liberal view of his dad's music.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 09:42 PM

As Mark says, Fast Rattler is Brendan Phillips's band. Brendan, like all of Utah's kids, is a Good Egg. I should think he's entitled to play with the lyrics, if anyone is. Besides, if you raise a kid as an anarchist, what do you think'll happen?

Dan

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 10:29 PM

Yeah, I thought it wouldn't work in this day and age to have a line like this:

Ching-chong Chinaman, he's got a curlicue

I was wondering, though, if Utah Phillips could have changed the lyrics himself in the current, enlarged edition of the Starlight on the Rails Songbook. Anybody have the new songbook?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 11:09 PM

I have it around here somewhere Joe.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 11:12 PM

Just checked the new edition, the lyrics are the same as posted.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 12:29 AM

Oh, jeez, I'd totally forgotten the "Chinaman" line. (Clearly I didn't read through the thread carefully.)

I was involved in the decision to change it. Brendan called me to talk about it, and figure out what to do about the use of racist language in that line. We knew that Utah was just telling a story, but it didn't necessarily come out clearly to someone who didn't already know and trust him, and could have adversely affected the track and the whole project. So we agreed it would be best to change the line, and Brendan came up with "Send in the Chinaman," which still included one racist term, but didn't compound it with the "ching chong" language.

Mark, you can blame me.

But I still think it was the right call. Brendan's edit rescued that song from never ever getting sung again.

The expanded songbook was Utah's other son Duncan's project, put together completely after Utah died as I recall, and the lyrics are the same as in the original.

Dan

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 12:30 AM

(Any other changes in Brendan's version I had nothing to do with. But like I say, if anyone's entitled, it's him.)

Dan

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 12:40 AM

One more thought on producing Singing Through the Hard Times -

Lots of musicians had strong opinions on how Utah's legacy should be approached, or ways that things should be done. When they would call him up, I think he tended to give them the impression that he shared those opinions. People would ask him, "What would you think if I did it this thing," or "How about if I did it this way," and Utah would say, in essence, "absolutely, that's how it should be done."

So I'd get some artists calling me and saying, "Utah really wants to make sure all the songs are exactly as he wrote them" while others said, "Utah is very happy to see all these musicians taking the songs in their own directions and making them their own."

What he said to me was how happy and grateful he was that the album was getting made, and how much it meant to him that all these folks were coming together, including his son, his hero Pete Seeger, many of his best friends, etc. I asked him if anyone was missing from the artist list he really wanted to include, and he mentioned Harry Tuft (who ended up doing one of my favorite tracks on the CD). That conversation was very shortly before he died.

Dan

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Paddy Welcome Back (Utah Phillips)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 03:21 AM

Thanks for the stories, Dan and Mark. That's what I was hoping for. And Dan, I think you made the right call on the "Chinaman" line.
-Joe-