lyr req: Time Just Slips Away

Subject: Time Just Slips Away
From: clueless don
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 06:45 AM

I'm curious about a song I heard some years ago. It had an "old time" feel to it, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was a contemporary composition rather than trad. The chorus starts off something like:

Time just slips away.
It seems I left here yesterday,
this world is round
we all go home in time ...

and then there are some words that I don't remember, and then the chorus ends with:

We're all just putty
in the hands of
Old Father Time.

I would have thought that this song was well known, but when I looked for it in the Mudcat search I came up empty.


Don

Subject: RE: lyr req: Time Just Slips Away
From: clueless don
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 06:54 AM

The years may have played tricks on my memory, but I recall hearing it at an open sing, or similar gathering, in Ithaca NY. This was not in my graduate school days, but later, probably the 1980s. My recollection is that Phil Shapiro (host of the Bound for Glory radio show on WVBR in Ithaca) sang it.

Don

Subject: Lyr Add: Old Father Time (Jim Ringer)
From: cnd
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 09:38 AM

The song is "Old Father Time" by Jim Ringer. He and Mary McCaslin sang it together on his 1973 LP, Good To Get Home (Philo ?– 1012). It was also recorded on Mo Mack's New & Used Tines in 2000.

One of the only recordings I've found online (so far) is this cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijHRUChsDtI

The cover seems longer but was recorded with some fairly low-quality mid-2000's microphones, so I'll transcribe the lyrics from Mo Mack's version instead. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcLATZMsuKA

OLD FATHER TIME
(Jim Ringer, Folklore Music, ASCAP)

Time just slips away
Seems I left here yesterday
The world is round and we all come home in time
No one here's the same
I wonder what has caused the change
We're all just putty in the hands of Old Father Time

Oh, I left some time ago
I thought I'd soon be back, ya know
Somehow I just kept moving day by day
Just drifting along
Somehow the road keeps stretching on
'Til 'fore you know what's happened, half your life has gone that way

Well, there's a woman that I knew
She used to hang around with you
And now it seems that she's just disappeared
Oh, don't mention my name
If she comes around again
Don't tell her that I came back after all these many years

But she meant a lot to me
Sometimes in my dreams I see
Her bright hair bouncing lightly when she ran
But sometimes when the wind
Brushes me, I feel her hand
And it's all that I can do to keep from calling her again

Yes, time just slips away
Seems I left here yesterday
The world is round and we all come home in time
Yes, time just seems to fly
We keep changing, you and I
We're all just putty in the hands of Old Father Time

Yes, we're all just putty in the hands of Old Father Time

Subject: RE: lyr req: Time Just Slips Away
From: clueless don
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 07:57 AM

Thank you, cnd!