The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #7746 Message #4212324
Posted By: cnd
25-Nov-24 - 08:05 AM
Thread Name: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
As Sir pointed out back in 1998, the song is indeed on a compilation of Ozarks music by National Geographic (and put together by the inimitable Jimmy Driftwood) titled Music of the Ozarks, National Geographic Society 703, dated 1972. It's track B7, "Good-Bye My Susie Gal" by Floyd Holland. One of my favorites on the album. You can listen to the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwlK4MswjxI -- one
Holland's diction is somewhat difficult, so I'm glad the album came with some extensive liner notes, which I've reproduced below. Italicized portion is an introductory note, the remainder are the lyrics.
GOOD-BYE MY SUSIE GAL Floyd Holland has been making music for most of his 81 years. He learned this one when he was a very young man. This talking-singing song probably comes from an early minstrel show put on by the traveling patent-medicine pitchmen. It preserves some of the traditional mountain dialect.
Refrain: O Susan licked the ladle and Dinah rocked the cradle and it’s good-bye my Susie gal, farewell, my honey. Sitting in the corner, well I guess I’m a goner, well it’s good-bye my Susie gal, I’m gone.
I’ve got a gal round here somewhere got corns on her toes big as goose eggs. Mind you, that don't have nothin’ to do with her appetite. She can eat forty biscuits and a gallon of molasses any old sottin' down.
Refrain
My gal, she wanted me to go down to the confectionery the other day and get her some sorghum molasses and flapjacks. So I went down there and didn't have nothin’ to get ’em in but my old hat. I started back down the road, and I felt something comin’ crawlin' down the side of my face, and I just took it in and it was good; it was molasses. Went on down the road a piece further and felt somethin’ comin’ crawlin' down the other side of my face, but I didn’t take it in. It was a fly.
Refrain
As I come around through the front yard, I met that bulldog. I never could make friends with that bulldog. We just went down the road nippity tuck. Maybe you folks don’t know what I mean by that, but he just nipped and tuck the whole seat of my right new pants out.
Refrain
As I went down the road, I had a mud puddle to cross, and I always heard them say as long as you had your confidence with you, you could do anything. So I had my confidence with me as I looked back and seen that bulldog coming. I jumped and hit right in the middle of that mud puddle and went plumb up to my ankles. Maybe you don't think that’s very deep but you don’t know which end I hit on.
Refrain
Me and my wife hadn’t been married long, but she put up a millinery shop and I put up a barbershop. We was doin’ very well, but I didn’t think we was doin’ well enough, so I opened up the First National Bank--with a crowbar. They opened up the jailhouse door for me, but, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to stay in there but three days and nights till I broke out--with the seven-year itch.
Refrain
My mother-in-law, she thinks more of me than she does the rest of her son-in-laws. She willed me a house and a lot the other day--a doghouse and a lot of pups.