Lyr Add: Wanderin' Blues

Subject: Lyr Add: WANDERIN' BLUES
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Apr 00 - 05:28 PM

I posted about this a while back - to a resounding silence, mostly. The lyrics I have to Wanderin’ (or Wanderin’ Blues) which I learned from a book when I was a kid, are not quite the same as in the database, and indeed the tune I have is clearly a variation on the one in the database, being similar but not quite the same. Has anyone got the definitive answer? My version of the lyrics is

WANDERIN’ BLUES

My daddy was an engineer
My brother drives a hack
My mother takes in washin’
And the baby balls the jack
And it looks like I ain’t ever gonna cease my wanderin’

Said I’ve been wanderin’ early
And I’ve been wanderin’ late
Been out to the Rocky Mountains
And down to the Golden Gate
And it looks like I ain’t ever gonna cease my wanderin’

I never keep a job for long
I just take off and roam
If I could save some money
I could buy myself a home
And it looks like I ain’t ever gonna cease my wanderin’

Been workin’ in the city
Been workin’ on the farm
But I ain’t got no money
Just the muscle in my arm
And it looks like I ain’t ever gonna cease my wanderin’

Sometimes I feel so weary
Sometimes I feel so worn
It seems that I’ve been workin’
Since the day that I was born
And it looks like I ain’t ever gonna cease my wanderin’

HTML line breaks added in place of double spacing. --JoeClone, 21-Feb-02.

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Ed Pellow
Date: 16 Apr 00 - 12:34 PM

Richard,

What exactly do you want to know? I'm not sure what you mean when you ask for a 'definitive answer?'

Ed

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Apr 00 - 12:37 PM

Well, where do the lyrics in the database come from, and are mine neologism - can anyone define (with reasons) the "correct" lyrics (with apologies to the folk process)

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 00 - 09:50 PM

The version you post is just as correct as any, I suppose, but as I recall song was most circulated as performed and recorded by Dave Van Ronk, and your version has several verses his does not. I don't know where his version derived from (nor where yours did). The version in the DT is different in minor ways from both yours and van Ronk's, I believe.

A

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Apr 00 - 05:10 AM

Thanks Amos.

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 17 Apr 00 - 10:48 PM

I don't know who wrote your verses, but I know Paul Clayton added one verse that I really like to the usual ones that you'll find in the DT (which I learned from Walt Robertson in Seattle in about 1950, with minor word variations, such as there being "snakes on the mountains and eels in the sea"). Paul's verse, which he gave me in about 1955, went:

I wake up in the morning,
Haven't got a dime,
I don't know where I'm going,
But I'm gonna take my time,
And it looks like, I ain't never gonna cease,
My wanderin'.

I still sing that one!

Sandy

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Apr 00 - 05:13 PM

from Carl Sandberg---The American Songbag -- 1928

Art

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Apr 00 - 05:32 PM

Pardon---Sandberg's book came out in '27.

Of this song he says, This puculiarily American song in text A is from Arthur Sutherland of Rochester, N.Y., as learned from comrades in the American Relief Expedition to the Near East. It is a lyric of tough days. The pulsation is happy until contemplative pauses, the wishes and the lingerings, of that final line in each verse, and the prolonges vocalizing of "like". The philosophy is desperate as the old sailor saying, "To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all, would be too damned hard. Texy B, also a lyric of tough days, is from Hubert Canfield of Pittsford, New York.

Text A:

1)...engineer
...hack
washin'
...jack

chorus)And it looks like,
I'm never gonna cease my wanderin'.

I been a wandering,
Early and late
From N.Y.City
To the golden gate.

Been a-workin' in the army
Workin' on the farm
All I got to show for it
Is the muscle in my arm.

Text B:

1)Snakes on the mountain
And eels in the sea
'Twas a red headed woman
Made a wreck out of me.

Same chorus

2)Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
If whisky don't get you
Then the womwen must.

Art Thieme
(I got this from Win Stracke--a founder of the Old Town School Of Folk Music in Chicago. Win learned it directly from Carl Sandberg I believe. Frank Hamilton, do you know for sure?

Subject: RE: Wanderin' Blues
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Apr 00 - 04:01 PM

Thanks Art