The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30719   Message #719870
Posted By: Stewie
29-May-02 - 08:18 PM
Thread Name: Origins: In the Jailhouse Now
Subject: RE: In the Jailhouse Now
Dicho, I don't have the Gennett recording, but it is a related song. Oliver quotes the following from Whistler's - Buford Threlkeld's - 'Jail House Blues' [p91 'Songsters and Saints']. It may be the complete text:

I went out last Friday
I met a big brown girl named Idie,
I told her I was the swellest coon layin' around in town
She started to call me honey
You know I got [hip?] and started to spend my money
We took in every cabaret and buffet in town
We were striking every minute
I made sure I was in it
I was buying Jamaica gin just by the gallon
But when I went to pay that man
I found that poor gal's hand
In my pocket where my money was
She's in the graveyard now
She's in the graveyard now
I told the judge right to his face
That woman's hand was out of place
She's in the graveyard now

He noted also that the version by Earl McDonald's Original Louisville Jug Band 3 years later had only slight changes in words.

--Stewie.