The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #76690   Message #1361623
Posted By: Joe Offer
20-Dec-04 - 01:14 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Dunderbeck
Subject: ADD Version: Donderback's Machine (Randolph 488a)
Here's #488A from Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs (Volume III)

Donderback's Machine

There was a good old German man,
His name was Donderback,
He was very fond of poodle-dogs
And sauerkraut and ........
He had a great big butcher-shop
The finest ever seen,
He fixed him up a patent
To make sausages by steam.

CHORUS
Oh Mister Donderback,
How foolish you have been,
And ain't you awful sorry
You invented that machine?
The long-tailed rats and pussy-cats
No more can they be seen,
All ground into sausage-meat
In Donderback's machine.

Then something got the matter,
The machine it would not go,
So Donderback he climbed inside
To find it out, you know.
His wife she took the nightmare,
And walking in her sleep
She gave the crank an awful yank,
And Donderback was meat.


sung by Mr. Robert Eddy, Joplin, Missouri; May 1, 1922. Mr. Eddy learned the song in Joplin about 1900.

No tune provided, but Randolph says Spaeth says it's sung to "The Son of a Gambolier." Randolph says that Randolph says the tune is "I'm a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech."
...or at least that's my interpretation of what Randolph says.