The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #46751 Message #694538
Posted By: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
20-Apr-02 - 06:14 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Gold Miners' Songs (American) 2
Subject: Chords Add: JOE BOWERS
JOE BOWERS, chords: ## 4/4
My (D)name it is Joe Bowers, I've (G)got a brother (D)Ike
I come from old Missouri, yes, all the way from Pike;
I'll tell you why I left thar, and how I came to roam,
And leave my poor old mammy, so (G)fer away from (D)home.
John and Alan Lomax, 1934, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 422, use essentially the same words (Johnson's 1860 printing), but a different tune taken from J. H. Cox's Ballads of the South (Harvard Univ. Press), b4/4, but do not give chords.
A version in Randolph, Ozark Folk Songs, ed. Norm Cohen (##6/8), uses "Lily of the West" and "Young Caroline of Edinburgh Town."
Randolph says the piece seems to be a rewrite of the British "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (several versions in the Bodleian Library website) but the connection is not close.