BIG JIM FOLSOM: Another song on the private lives of
public figures, this report is both recent and substantially accurate.
The most explicit account of bastardy by the two-time Alabama
governor James Folsom is that written by William Bradford Huie and
published in his collection Wolf Whistle (Signet, 1959). It is a hair-
raising account of one of those bizarre figures created by Southern
politics. Folsom, a 6' 8" giant from Cullman, Alabama, became enamored
of his own sex-appeal (partly as a result of reading A Lion Is In the
Streets, a fictional account of a sexy politician) and built himself
both a local and a national image as Kissin' Jim. In the course of
this, he fathered a child by a hotel cashier during his first
successful campaign for the governorship in 1946. According to Huie's
account, each fall when the boy starts to school he explains to his
new teacher: " 'I live with my grandparents,' he says, 'My mother is
dead. My father is Governor Folsom, but he doesn't claim me. Before my
mother died she told me all about it. She said I was not to be
ashamed and was always to tell my teacher. When I have fights you'll
know it's because somebody is calling me a bastard. My mother said I
wasn't really a bastard, that she and my father were legally married.'
" (This last refers to legal marriage under the terms of Alabama's
common-law statute.)

1960. Unexpurgated Folk-Songs of Men. pp. 2-3. From the booklet that accompanied the record.

Of course, this is related to the "She Was Poor But She Was Honest (It's the Same The Whole World Over)" British bawdy song.