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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Bob Coltman Lyr ADD: Duck Foot Sue (Harry Bennet) (37) Lyr Add: DUCK FOOT SUE (Harry Bennet) 06 Dec 06


Four years later (I get up late), here, just for the record for anyone who hasn't already gotten it from the Bodleian, is the complete lyric from Lester Levy at:

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/display.pl?record=047.019.000&pages=5

Irresistibly romantic! -- Bob

DUCK FOOT SUE
Written by Harry Bennett in 1884, and sung by G W Hunter.
It was also sung, later, by George Foster (1864-1946). It appears the song had some East Anglian popularity.
Recorded by Bob Miller Trio, 1932.

VERSE 1. Oh, listen for a while, and I will sing to you
About a girl I had. Her name was Duck-Foot Sue.
She was gentle and divine, long-waisted in the feet,
And her heel stuck out behind like an eighteen-carat beet.

CHORUS 1: So now I’ll sing to you of the girl I loved so true.
She was chief engineer in a white-shirt laundry out in “Back Yard View.”
Her beauty was all she had, with a mouth like a soft-shell crab.
She’d an India-rubber lip like the rudder of a ship, and I tell you she was bad.

VERSE 2. She was not very fat, nor was she very thin.
She looked when she was dressed like a straw in a barrel of gin.
I took her to a hall, the “Fat Man’s Social Club,”
And it cost me half a sov* to settle for her grub. [*=sovereign]

CHORUS 2: Her face was the color of a ham. She had ears like a Japanese fan.
She could talk for an hour with a forty horsepower. She’d a voice like a catamaran.
Her hair was indigo blue. She was graceful as a kangaroo.
You ought to see her tussle with a patent-leather bustle. She could whistle like a steamboat, too.

VERSE 3. When first she went away, it almost took my breath.
There’s one thing I am sure: she’ll never starve to death.
If I had married her, I’d have always been afraid
Of being shot or scalped by the mother-in-law brigade.

CHORUS 3: She was a funny old guy, with a double-barrel squint in her eye.
Her number-ten feet would cover up the street. She’d a mouth like a crack in a pie.
She’d a cheerful cemetery laugh, and a head like a Mexican calf.
She’s an iron-clad clipper-built gunboat brig, with a ball on her maintop gaff.


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