suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle

Subject: suzy licked the ladle
From:
Date: 27 Nov 98 - 12:15 AM

has anyone heard the song, "suzy licked and ladle and johnny rocked the cradle, well it's goodbye my suzy girl, fairwell, my honey..."?

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle and johnny rocked the c
From: Sir
Date: 27 Nov 98 - 03:01 PM

I believe the Smithsonian had an LP out many years ago featuring music of the Ozarks on which this song was sung. The old man singing the song would sing the line you gave then another line which I don't remember then give tell a short joke and start the whole process over. The recording was done in Mountain View, Arkansas.

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle and johnny rocked the c
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Nov 98 - 09:25 PM

I have the record...do you need the words?...I'll dig it out this weekend

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle and johnny rocked the c
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 24 - 10:30 PM

Yes. I have heard that song

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 24 - 08:05 AM

As Sir pointed out back in 1998, the song is indeed on a compilation of Ozarks music by National Geographic (and put together by the inimitable Jimmy Driftwood) titled Music of the Ozarks, National Geographic Society 703, dated 1972. It's track B7, "Good-Bye My Susie Gal" by Floyd Holland. One of my favorites on the album. You can listen to the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwlK4MswjxI -- one

Holland's diction is somewhat difficult, so I'm glad the album came with some extensive liner notes, which I've reproduced below. Italicized portion is an introductory note, the remainder are the lyrics.

GOOD-BYE MY SUSIE GAL
Floyd Holland has been making music for most of his 81 years. He learned this one when he was a very young man. This talking-singing song probably comes from an early minstrel show put on by the traveling patent-medicine pitchmen. It preserves some of the traditional mountain dialect.

Refrain: O Susan licked the ladle and Dinah rocked the cradle and it’s good-bye my Susie gal, farewell, my honey. Sitting in the corner, well I guess I’m a goner, well it’s good-bye my Susie gal, I’m gone.

I’ve got a gal round here somewhere got corns on her toes big as goose eggs. Mind you, that don't have nothin’ to do with her appetite. She can eat forty biscuits and a gallon of molasses any old sottin' down.

Refrain

My gal, she wanted me to go down to the confectionery the other day and get her some sorghum molasses and flapjacks. So I went down there and didn't have nothin’ to get ’em in but my old hat. I started back down the road, and I felt something comin’ crawlin' down the side of my face, and I just took it in and it was good; it was molasses. Went on down the road a piece further and felt somethin’ comin’ crawlin' down the other side of my face, but I didn’t take it in. It was a fly.

Refrain

As I come around through the front yard, I met that bulldog. I never could make friends with that bulldog. We just went down the road nippity tuck. Maybe you folks don’t know what I mean by that, but he just nipped and tuck the whole seat of my right new pants out.

Refrain

As I went down the road, I had a mud puddle to cross, and I always heard them say as long as you had your confidence with you, you could do anything. So I had my confidence with me as I looked back and seen that bulldog coming. I jumped and hit right in the middle of that mud puddle and went plumb up to my ankles. Maybe you don't think that’s very deep but you don’t know which end I hit on.

Refrain

Me and my wife hadn’t been married long, but she put up a millinery shop and I put up a barbershop. We was doin’ very well, but I didn’t think we was doin’ well enough, so I opened up the First National Bank--with a crowbar. They opened up the jailhouse door for me, but, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to stay in there but three days and nights till I broke out--with the seven-year itch.

Refrain

My mother-in-law, she thinks more of me than she does the rest of her son-in-laws. She willed me a house and a lot the other day--a doghouse and a lot of pups.

Refrain

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 24 - 09:45 AM

Another curt edition of the song, from the Frank Brown collection of NC folklore (link), p. 372 (entry 320)

SUSY GAL
This sounds as though it might be a play-party song, but it is not so labeled. I have not found it elsewhere.

'Susy Gal.' Contributed by Beulah White of Durham in July 1923.

Susy licked the ladle
An' 'er dolly rocked the cradle.
Goodbye, Susie gal,
I'm gone again
I fell into the gutter
And my heart began to flutter.
Goodbye, Susie gal,
I'm gone again.

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 24 - 05:46 PM

Joe or another editor, please correct a typo to the above: the source's name is Beulah Walton, not White.

Further details on the entry from the Brown collection: A journal entry (link) from a Beulah Earle Walton (1897-1983) of Durham NC reads as follows:

My first teaching job was in the mountains, or maybe foothills. It was at Mountain Park School, about ten miles from Elkin, not very far from Mt. Airy. ... I enjoyed our trips to the home of a bachelor who played the banjo and played such songs as “Susie licked the ladle; Dolly rocked the cradle, Goodbye my Susie Gal, I'm gone again.” One selection popular with students was “I’m riding a New River Train.”

. . . . . .

A YouTube video (click) appears to identify that "bachelor" as an 'Uncle' (Roy) Tinsley Griggs (link) and provides some nice two- and three-finger (non Scruggs) style banjo-picking, though sadly this song is not included. Tinsley was well-traveled: he was born in Moores Mill, Virginia (and had family in that state he periodically visited, per newspaper reports) in 1904, but ultimately moved to Ruby, South Carolina. He graduated from Wingate University in 1920 (link), then studied at the University of South Carolina* before attending the University of North Carolina's summer school. A 1926 article on the Mountain Park School/Institute accredits UNC as Griggs's school and specifies he was a history teacher (Winston-Salem Journal, June 6th, 1926, p. C7). He also spent time in a local band called The Drifters. He passed away in 1985 at the age of 81.

* Newspaper accounts report his attending USC; I was unable to find his name in the yearbooks.

Subject: RE: suzy licked the ladle & johnny rocked the cradle
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 24 - 07:49 PM

Possibly related: a snippet from Louisville, Kentucky's Courier-Journal, December 8th, 1939, Section 3, p. 1 (link):

From L. B. C. at Bowling Green, who revived the old "Chicken In the Bread Tray" series, comes another old-timer of unknown origin. "I have never seen this in print," she writes, "but an old white nursemaid at Lexington used to recite it to the children in a sing-song monotone as she patted her foot:

The old woman licked the ladle,
From the kitchen to the table,
Up the chimney, down the gutter.
Piece o' bread and pound o' butter,
Sift'd the meal, give her the husk,
Boil'd the meat, give her the bone,
Broke her leg and sent her home.
Jubber this and jubber that,
Jubber all 'round the kettle and vat.