Lyr Add: So Long, Mississippi (Si Kahn)

Subject: Lyr Add: So Long, Mississippi
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Aug 21 - 09:44 PM

Another from Rick Pollay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuzRZ4zRHEk

In 1989, Si Kahn adapted traitional lyrics from song like Go Down Hannah with a new tune and chorus. My mash up adapts his tune with more trad lyrics, new verses and arranged with doubled verses.

SO LONG, MISSISSIPPI (Si Kahn-adapted)

So long ago, so long ago
So long Mississippi goodbye my friend
So long ago, so long ago
So long Mississippi goodbye

Been a convict here since nineteen oh one
Choppin’ cotton in the white man's sun
Was down in the delta in nineteen oh two
Where they did anything that they wanted to do
CHORUS

If a convict here in nineteen oh three
You’d a seen the things that they done to me
Oh the convicts here in nineteen oh four
We slept in rooms that had no floor
CHORUS
To escape from here in nineteen oh five
Some fled North tryin’ to stay alive
The convicts here in nineteen oh six
Were layin’ track with shovels, hammers and picks
CHORUS

Oh. I realized in nineteen oh seven
I won’t be free ’til nineteen eleven
and the convicts here in nineteen oh eight
The railroad track we had to make straight
CHORUS

All the convicts here in nineteen and nine
Were workin’ hard in the turpentine pine
And the convicts here in nineteen and ten
They was workin’ the women like they workin’ the men
CHORUS

Rick's notes: Si Kahn, in 1989, adapted lyrics from old prison songs like Go Down Hannah with a new tune and chorus, recording an elaborate instrumental arrangement as So Long Ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dieZ-iFqP6k). My mash up is a variant of Si’s tune with verses doubled up, and with more of the traditional lyrics and I added verses to mention a few more of the many hard jobs given to leased convict labor: e.g. building railroads and gathering pine sap for turpentine. Convicts were also made to work the worst jobs in mines and steel mills in Alabama, which at one point in the late 19th Century got 70% of the entire State’s revenue from leasing convicts, very predominately black prisoners often imprisoned for minor offenses, such as vagrancy.