The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #104969   Message #2155032
Posted By: Joe Offer
22-Sep-07 - 02:44 PM
Thread Name: Origins:Jickson Johnson/Johnson Jinkson/3 Butchers
Subject: ADD Version: Johnson-Jinkson
The American Memory Collection has two pages, a recording and a text, of the song: Good song.
-Joe-

Johnson-Jinkson
Singer: Troy Cambron
Arvin, California, 1940

Johnson he was riding along
As fast as he could ride
He thought he heard a woman
He heard a woman cry.

Johnson getting off his horse
And searching, looked all around
Until he came to a woman
With her hair pinned to the ground.

Woman, dearest woman
Who has brought you here for sin
Who has brought you here this morning
With your hair pinned to the ground.

It were three bold and struggling men
With swords keen at hand
Who have brought me here this morning
With my hair pinned to the ground.

Johnson bein' a man of his own
And bein' a man and bold
He put off his overcoat
To hug her from the cold.

Johnson getting on his horse
And the woman getting on behind
Down this lonesome highway rode
Fortune was for to find.

They were riding all along
As fast as they could ride
She drew her fingers to her ears
And give three shivering cries.

Out sprung three bold and struggling men
With sword keen at hand
Who did command that Johnson
Commanded him to stand.

I'll stop them, said Johnson
I'll stand them, said he
For I never worried in my life
Afraid of any of three.

Johnson killing two of them
Not watching the woman behind
While he was after the other one
She stabbed him from behind.

The day was free and a market day
And the people all passing by
Who did see this awful murder
And saw poor Johnson die.


Alternate title: "Two/Three Butchers."
Source: Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941
My transcription is just a little different from that on the American Memory Collection Website.

Recorded as "Jickson Johnson" on the Ian & Sylvia Full Circle album, 1968; and as Jinkson Johnson on Mike Seeger's True Vine CD. Both recordings are very similar to the transcriptions 12-stringer and I posted.