The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123476   Message #2719460
Posted By: Don Firth
08-Sep-09 - 09:57 PM
Thread Name: Do you like 'Little Boxes'?
Subject: ADD??: Charlie the Midnight Marauder
This came out sometime in the late 1950s as I recall. The Limeliters. Except for the first verse, which is spoken (as if cominng through a police radio), it's to the tune of "The Old Settler's Song" or "Rosin the Beau." Perhaps it makes it's point a bit more graphically and amusingly than "Little Boxes," which never particulary rang my chimes. . . .
CHARLIE, THE MIDNIGHT MARAUDER
(Bagby / Davis)

The Limeliters

Calling car 41
Calling car 41
Investigate a code 7
At 116 west 14th St. and report
Looks like Charlie's at it again

Oh Charlie was raised in the city
He scoffed at the suburban life
Til satan disguised as a salesman
Bewitched and bewildered his wife

She heard of the pleasures of rural life
With barbecues under the trees
And so for a mere forty thousand
He purchased their dreamhouse with ease

He rose before dawn every morning
To dreamily fall into line (yawn)
And follow that bumper before him (Beep Beep)
To be on the job before nine

His dreamhouse of crumbling stucco
Was more like a nightmarish load
His weekends were spent in hard labor
He dug and he pruned and he mowed

One night an electrical failure
Blacked out every street in the tract
Our hero drove up in confusion
But couldn't locate his new shack

Each crackerbox looked like the one next door
As far as the eye could see
He cursed to himself as he pondered
Now where in the world can it be

He searched til a door looked familiar
Than tried out his key in the lock
The door open wide and he entered
Poor Charlie was on the wrong block

He strode to the couch of his sleeping love
He kissed her and backed off in fright
The girl he had kissed was a stranger
Who screamed and ran out in the night

They caught him a few minutes later
Still rooted and shaking with fear
They called him the midnight marauder
And put him away for a year

And put him away for a yea-ea-ear
And put him away for a year
They called him the midnight maurauder
And put him away for a year

When a salesman is touting suburbia
He's doing it purely for pelf
Remember the story of Charlie
And tell him to move there himself

And tell him to move there himsel-el-elf
And tell him to move there himself
Remember the story of Charlie
And tell him to move there himself
Don Firth