NINETY CENTS BUTTER
As recorded by Oscar Brand on "Pie in the Sky" (1969)

Come, ev'rybody; listen while I sing.
This high cost o' livin' is a terrible thing.
Ev'ry day you go into a store,
Prices hit the ceilin' just a little bit more.
You buy a piece of bread and some corned-beef hash.
All you got left is petty cash.
Look at your dollar now; what do you see?
It's only half as big as it used to be.

CHORUS: Ninety cents butter and ninety cents meat—
How in the heck can a poor man eat?

Winter time comes, there's a dickens to pay.
Food goes up in the same old way.
Coal gettin' higher and the kids gotta dress,
How you gonna do it is anybody's guess.
Even the bugs in the kitchen sink
Are pickin' in the pantry for food and drink.
If I don't get clothes and food to boot,
I'll starve to death in my birthday suit.

'Cause— CHORUS

I tell you, folks: you work hard all your life
Supportin' your kids and sometimes your wife.
Things gettin' higher, kind o' feel sick.
Somethin' gotta happen and it gotta happen quick.
Your congressman's workin' hard ev'ry day
Figurin' out how to cut down your pay.
Gotta give that boy somethin' to remember
When you meet him at the polls some cold November.

Well— CHORUS

You remember the days when butter and meat
Was the natural food for folks to eat.
I never had much as I now recall,
But nowadays I'm lucky when I eat at all.
I'm livin' in the hope I'll eat some day
Before my body just wastes away.
If they don't cut the price of a piece o' cow,
I ain't gonna linger; I'll starve right now.

CHORUS

When you go and ask 'em the cause of it all,
They hand you a line about ten foot tall,
Moan and groan and tear their hair
'Bout the high cost o' bein' a millionaire.
Take a full-page ad in the Evenin' News.
They blame it on Negroes and reds and Jews.
Well, I was born in the bushes; I was raised in the woods.
They can't sell me that line o' goods.

CHORUS