Did you ever hear the story 'bout Aimee McPherson,
Aimee McPherson, that wonderful person?
She weighed a hundred-eighty and her hair was red,
And she preached a wicked sermon so the papers all said.

Chorus:
Heigh-dee, heigh-dee, heigh-dee, heigh,
Ho-dee, ho-dee, ho-dee, ho.

Aimee built herself a radio station
To broadcast her preachin' to the nation.
She found a man named Armistead who knew enough
To run the radio while Aimee did her stuff.

She held a camp meetin' out at Ocean Park,
Preached from early mornin' 'til after dark,
Said the benediction, folded up the tent,
An' nobody knew where Aimee went.

When Aimee McPherson got back from her journey,
She told her story to the district attorney.
Said she'd been kidnapped on a lonely trail;
In spite of a lot of questions, she stuck to her tale.

Well, the grand jury started an investigation,
Uncovered a lot of spicy information,
Found out about a love nest down at Carmel-by-the-Sea,
Where the liquor was expensive and the lovin' was free.

They found a cottage with a breakfast nook,
A foldin' bed with a worn-out look.
The slats were busted and the springs were loose,
And the dents in the amttress fitted Aimee's caboose.

Well, they took poor Aimee and they threw her in jail.
Last I heard, she was out on bail.
They'll send her up for a stretch, I guess.
She worked herself up into an awful mess.

Now Radio Ray is a goin' hound'
He's goin' yet and he ain't been found.
They got his description, but they got it too late;
Since they got it, he's lost a lot of weight.

Now I'll end my story in the usual way,
About this lady preacher's holiday.
If you don't get the moral, then you're the gal for me
'Cause they got a lot of cottages down at Carmel-by-the-Sea.

The version of the ballad here is from the singing of Phyllis Zasloff
in Los Angeles, first in 1955, then again in 1964. She had learned it
from a friend, "who learned it from someone, who learned it from
someone. You know."

Zasloff's version is virtually identical with that sung by Pete Seeger
as early as the mid-1950's, and later recorded on Songs of Struggle
and Protest (Folkways FH 5233). Seeger includes the song in his Bells
of Rhymney (New York, 1964), pp. 82-83, where he credits the song to
John A. Lomax, Jr., who learned the ballad in California in the
1930's "from a hobo I think John said."

Zasloff sang the song to the tune of the American folk song "Willie
the Weeper." Versions of that song are in Sandburg, p. 204; Spaeth,
Weep Some More, pp. 123-26; Shay, More Pious Friends, pp. 76-77; and
Randolph, III, pp. 272-73. The melody was borrowed, too, by Cab
Calloway for a 1931 recording entitled "Minnie the Moocher."

From the notes of Ed Cray's unpublished Erotic Muse III.