Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)

Subject: Lyr Add: DARBY'S RAM (Grandpa Jones)
From: cnd
Date: 21 Sep 15 - 04:37 PM

So, you can use Max's magic multi site tool to search for "Darby's Ram," and as far as I searched I couldn't find any version with lyrics matching Grandpa Jones'. It's interesting to see how many version of this song there are. This site attributes the song to "A. Delmore / Louis Jones."

Darby's Ram
(A. Delmore / Louis Jones)

Ol' Darby lived across the creek, and when 'e told a tale
Ev'ry minner in that creek was big as Jonah's whale
My daddy had an ol' buck sheep, and then you'd hear him say
One of the finest rams, sir, that ever fed on hay
Well 'e had four feet to walk, sir, and 'e had four feet to stand
Ev'ry foot he had, sir, would cover an acre of land

Oh, wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Before they cut 'im down

Now the wool that growed on that ram's side reached to the ground
And it sold to Mistah Johnson for fourteen hundred pound
The wool that growed on that ram's back reached up to the sky
The eagles built their nest there for I heard their young ones' cry

Oh, wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Before they cut 'im down

Now this ol' ram, he had a horn, an' it reached up to the moon
A man went up in January and he never got back 'til June
Now the butcher man that cut him down was washed away in the blood
And the little boy that held the bowl went drownin' the flood

Oh, wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Wa'n't he a big one, boys
Before they cut 'im down

You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gpiDhH4nDQ

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: Lighter
Date: 22 Nov 25 - 03:31 PM

This guy is great. I wish I could understand more of the words though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KItdfbLAIzE

His chorus in particular is different from Jones's.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: cnd
Date: 24 Nov 25 - 08:53 AM

Ooh boy, that was a funone.   Here's my transcription.

(Side note -- I'd completely forgotten I made this thread. Thanks for reviving an oldie. I don't remember being so into exact dialectical transcriptions back then, but obviously the evidence indicates otherwise.)


DARBY'S RAM
(as performed on the video "darby ram" posted May 2, 2012 on YouTube by user squirrelbanjo)

Well, Darby had an old gray ram
I heard my pappy say
The finest ram you ever saw
That ever fed on hay

Well, he had four feet to walk upon
And he had four feet to stand
But every foot the big ram had
Took up an acre of land

CHORUS
Oh! They ain't gonna make no more
Why didn't they make no more?
Why didn't they make no more
Before they cut him down?

Grandpa had a muley cow
Muley she was born
It took a jaybird forty years
To fly from horn to horn

CHORUS

Well, the butcher had to kill that ram
Drownded in the blood
And the little boy that helped him
Got washed away in the flood

CHORUS

Well, the old ram had a big ole horn
It reached up to the moon
Why, a man walked up in January
And he ain't came back til June

CHORUS

Well, the old ram had the finest wool
It reached up to the sky
Why, buzzards built a nest in it
Cause I hear their young'uns cry

CHORUS (x2)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: GerryM
Date: 24 Nov 25 - 03:19 PM

Nice coincidence that both the Darby Ram and the I'll Fly Away threads have been refreshed today, as I first heard both songs on a Kossoy Sisters record.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: Lighter
Date: 24 Nov 25 - 05:45 PM

Thanks for that transcription, Carter, and thanks for starting this thread.

Jones recorded the song on the King label in 1948:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSxTAdJlZLI

But I have found no indication that he or the Delmore Brothers ever secured a copyright on it.

That's significant because Scott "Skyland Scotty" Wiseman of N.C. (1909-1981) had recorded the same version (with a couple of minor differences and one more stanza) in 1934:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLipxtVEuLE

According to William Lightfoot, in "North Carolina Folklore" (1986), Wiseman had learned the song "in the mountains from an old folksinger
named Aunt Nancy."

The bit about Darby and the minners appears in no field-collected version. Nor does the "Wasn't he a big 'un, boys" refrain.

Roud lists well over 200 appearances of "Darby's Ram/ The Derby Ram/
The Ram of Derbyshire."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 25 - 12:18 PM

A more reliable source than the AllMusic site I referenced previously, AirPlay Direct, has virtually the same credit for Jones' An American Original album, crediting both Alton Delmore and Grandpa Jones. Based on that, I found the BMI listing, which is:

DARBY S RAM
Writer / Composer: DELMORE ALTON, JONES LOUIS M
Publishers: FORT KNOX MUSIC INC (BMI), TRIO MUSIC COMPANY (BMI), VIDOR PUBLICATIONS INC (BMI)
BMI Work ID: 277939, ASCAP Work ID: 890312792
ISWC: T9196513312

This is where things get a bit strange, though: the US copyright office doesn't have an entry I can find prior to a mass entry of material in 1983 by Ft. Knox (document V2011 P243-948). I'd initially assumed that the Delmore/Jones copyright was only meant to be (retroactively) applied to the 1948 King release, but Jones' 1981 album Family Gathering also credits both Jones and Delmore -- before the 1983 copyright date. Adding to the confusion, Jones' 1963 release Rollin' Along With Grandpa Jones (where the recording I started this thread with originated from) credited the song as "Traditional - P[ublic] D[omain]." The Delmore/Jones credits didn't appear alongside that recording until the same song was later re-released on compilation discs; the 1998 An American Original is the first I can find.

After all that, I'm inclined to think that the 1983 submission was a renewal -- at the time, musical works were on a 28-year cycle, which would suggest an initial execution of 1955. However, I haven't found anything in that era, or earlier (when the 1948 King release came out), and I spent much more time than I should have perusing the Copyright Catalogs, both the book forms on archive.org, and the (very janky) digital card catalog.

Good work on finding the Skyland Scotty version -- I hadn't heard that one. Definitely seems like Jones may have 'borrowed' it from him (or perhaps both borrowed it from another source!). The 1948 Delmore/Jones recording hints Grandpa "used to sing it all the time," but I can find no references to him performing it prior to that disc's release.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: cnd
Date: 25 Nov 25 - 12:22 PM

A correction to the above -- Rollin' Along With Grandpa Jones actually is just a reissue of the Grandpa Jones + Delmore Brothers recording (link), so it being credited P.D. while the later ones weren't is even stranger. The recording used in the compilation album is from the 1981 Family Gathering album.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: Lighter
Date: 25 Nov 25 - 12:50 PM

What would really be strange would be asserting that a work one actually held copyright on was really "P.D."!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Darby's Ram (Grandpa Jones)
From: Lighter
Date: 30 Nov 25 - 09:35 AM

As I've told Wikipedia, the earliest printing of the song appears to have been in "A Garland of New Songs containing...The old ram of Derby [etc.] (Newcastle-on-Tyne?: Angus, Printer, 1790?)."

A "Darby [sic] Ram" tavern," however, was located in Philadelphia by 1785. ( "The Philadelphia Directory," by Francis White [Philadelphia, 1785]).

For all anyone knows, the Derby ram of the Christmas custom was suggested by the song rather than the other way around.

No evidence exists that the custom and/or the song date back to the Stone Age or even to the Renaissance. Lloyd reported that "some say"
the ram represents "the Devil himself." Who says so, or why, or when, is a mystery.

There are simply no printed references to the ram before the eighteenth century.

Rams are vital to those who raise sheep. The song may simply be a humorous description about a fancifully huge (and therefore useful and profitable) ram.