Lyr Add: Feel So Good (Big Bill Broonzy)

Subject: Lyr Add: I FEEL SO GOOD (Broonzy)
From: CraigS
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 09:31 AM

I've just transcribed this, and I'd like some comments as to what the man meant. The second verse doesn't make a lot of sense, and I'd like to know about garden gin - sounds like it might be fun, but it might just be a Broonzy invention, like the long-billed boll weevil!


               I FEEL SO GOOD                   W Broonzy

I got a letter, it come to me by mail
My baby said she's coming home and I hope that she don't fail
You know I feel so good, yes I feel so good,
Now I feel so good, baby, I feel like balling the jack

I feel so good I hope I always will
I feel just like a Jack out with a Ginny, well behind the hill
You know I feel so good, yes I feel so good,
I feel so good, baby, I feel like balling the jack

I'm going down to the station, just to meet a train
I've got to see my baby you know I've got that aim
You know I feel so good, yes I feel so good,
I feel so good, I just feel like balling the jack

I love my tea, crazy 'bout my garden gin,
When I get high now, baby, I just feel like floating around in the wind
You know I feel so good, yes I feel so good,
I feel so good, baby, I feel like balling the jack

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 10:15 AM

Is garden gin the same as bathtub gin (hooch)?
"Tea" was slang for maryjane, ganja, weed, certainly Louis Armstrong, a lifelong smoker of the same, called it that.

RtS

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: JennyO
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 11:34 AM

Ah yes, there was something about tea and drawing on the thread "A proper cup of tea - nothing like it", I think.

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: CraigS
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 06:47 PM

Now you mention it, I remember a reference to Texas Tea in a talking blues.

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 07:55 PM

If you're talking about 'Jack out with a Ginny', he mis-spelled it. A Jack is a male mule and a Jenny is a female. I think that's what he meant.

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: JennyO
Date: 26 Jan 03 - 09:40 PM

Great!!! I'm a female mule.

I had heard that before and had filed that away under "things I don't want to know".

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: GUEST,Lionel
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 12:14 PM

Gordons Gin. A popular brand, both sides of the Atlantic, even today.

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: CraigS
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:21 AM

He didn't miss-spell it, I did! Thanks! The gin, however, he pronounced "garden" - Gordons is a good suggestion - any others?

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: GUEST,Lionel
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 10:29 AM

Mmmm... well, if you were a black, blues singing ex-sharecropper from Mississippi living in Chicago in the 1930s you might pronounce the word "Gordons" as "Gardens", Tampa Red made a blues recording in 1928 or 1929 titled "Good Gordon Gin." Maybe Tampa "mispronounces" the word or maybe he or his record company mis-spelt it, when they should have put "Good Garden Gin" instead. What do you think? And in Lonnie Johnson's recording of "Tin Can Alley Blues" does old Lonnie sing about "Buckhead gin" or is it "Butthead gin" ?
And anyway does it matter? It is'nt as if it were fucking Shakespeare or John Donne we are talking about here.

Subject: RE: Broonzy: Feel So Good
From: CraigS
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 03:30 AM

It matters to me that, in progressing this song into this century, I retain its original meaning. Too many songs have deteriorated - eg. if you hear people sing The Little Ploughboy around here the chorus has gone from "Good luck, God speed, no charing" to "Luck, God speed, no cherry" . Lots of blues have lost meaning - I find it all the time - that's why I want to know.