Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top (from Red Clay Ramblers)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Jan 03 - 02:40 AM

To add a belated corection to Willie-O, "Fox on the Run" was actually written by Mike Hazzard and it became a hit for Manfred Mann. Oddly enough, it seems to have become better known among country musicians in the intervening years. I believe Mike Hazzard is now living quietly as an actor in Cornwall.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jan 03 - 01:27 AM

So;...Bill...you were the original GUEST...attempting to plug your own CD????

Not half bad....there have been much worse crimes on the MC.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: GUEST,Bill Hicks
Date: 14 Jan 03 - 07:59 AM

The "live solo version" mentioned above is from my new CD, "The Perfect Gig," available via Amazon.com or thru efolkmusic.com. There are 16 other original songs on there too. It's a pleasure to find discussion of this one tho. The best part of the song is that drunks who request "Rocky Top" and get this one tend to think they actually got "Rocky Top." Quel bizarro. --Fiddlin' Bill

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lig
From: Muskrat
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 10:09 PM

A sign at Preservation Hall in New Orleans famously lists prices for requests -- with a premium for "Saints."

A fiddler friend of mine supposedly once punched an audience member who requested OBS.

Neither response is copyrighted (as if copyright law ever bothered 'Catters!).

Subject: Lyr Add: PLAY 'ROCKY TOP' (from Red Clay Ramblers)
From: Stewie
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 09:45 PM

PLAY 'ROCKY TOP'
(Bill Hicks)

Now I come down to this bar every evening
I get here just about ten
I been tryin' to get a little lovin'
Can't remember how long it's been
So if you'll just do me a favour
Play that song for me
I'll fix your car next Thursday
Throw in the lube and the oil for free

Chorus:
Play 'Rocky Top'
For the lady at the bar
With the long red fingernails
I been tryin' all night to get that girl
Ole 'Rocky Top' it never fails
I can't play no music
I ain't got no hundred dollar bill
But if you'll just play old 'Rocky Top'
I know that lady will

Now some people think that I'm stupid
That's all right with me
Some people can think of anything they want
Just as long as they let me be
I ain't got no education and I don't know how to spell
But I know what a good dried song sounds like
And I know how to raise some hell

Chorus

Well the money keeps getting smaller
And the rent keeps going up
I got me a little house trailer
And a brand new blue tick pup
I can't afford no regular woman
So this what I'll do
You play 'Rocky Top' for me
And I'll sing this song for you

Copyright Flying Fish Music BMI 1979.
Source: from insert to Red Clay Ramblers 'Chuckin' the Frizz' Flying Fish LP 089.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 06:32 PM

Thanks for the help all, sorry it took so long to get back :) Will search for the album. And yes, we get that song requested EVERY time we play lol. I did play it once at a party for a 50 dollar tip hehe. That is now my standard price lol. I guess if I could sing it like Bobby Osborne I might do it more often but I dont wanna pull something.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Mar 02 - 12:30 PM

JudyR: I think the link is fixed now. Try it again.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Mar 02 - 12:09 PM

JohnInKansas: Reminds me of the old quote attributed to Yogi Berra, about a certain vacation resort—or maybe it was a restaurant:

"Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Willie-O
Date: 04 Mar 02 - 09:31 AM

Rocky Top is right up there, but the other song of the same vein (by Sunday night at the bluegrass campfire, you'd be thinkin, "if anyone starts that song again, I'm gonna punch his lights out") would certain be Fox On The Run

written of course by English 60's rocker Manfred Mann. Go figggger.....

W-O

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Mar 02 - 02:26 AM

Rocky Top, the straight version, is one of those songs that "bluegrassers" refuse to play on the grounds that "everybody always plays that."

I've gone to ten years in row of local bluegrass fests without hearing it "because everybody always plays that."

Then somebody will actually play it - and then everybody plays it.

So the next (ten) year(s) everybody says "We don't play that because everybody always plays that."

In the meantime, they play the same ten or so tunes that everybody actually plays - over - and over - and over.

Just a thread drift nickel's worth.

John

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: JudyR
Date: 04 Mar 02 - 12:48 AM

Was curious, Jim (love the title), but the site says that Bill and Libby Hicks are not in their database. Interesting.

Reminds me having to suffer through "Orange Blossom Special" as a finale every time a country band features a fiddler.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Mar 02 - 01:57 PM

"Play 'Rocky Top'" was written by Bill Hicks, who was a member of the Red Clay Ramblers. You can download a free mp3 file of Bill singing it as a live solo performance from this efolkMusic.com page. My sound system isn't working right now, so I didn't do it myself, but of course anyone would be welcome to post the lyrics here.

Link #2 fixed. There was an extra ‘/’ at the end of the URL. --JoeClone, 6-Mar-02.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Mar 02 - 08:37 PM

You never know - GUEST might have been describing what would happen if we didn't come up with the lyrics, or perhaps someone said that to him/her, so s/he needed to come up with the lyrics to Rocky Top pretty darned quick.

I don't think I've heard the song, but I've heard bluegrassers complain about people always asking for the song. I guess it's to bluegrass what Wild Rover is to Irish singers. I like both songs, but if you're the one playing them, they could get rather tedious after about the 2000th time.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Mar 02 - 06:48 PM

oh she said in a small voice...........some days ya just feel like an idiot.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Mar 02 - 05:55 PM

From The Red Clay Ramblers website, the song is on "Chuckin' at the Frizz (Live at the Cat's Cradle) Flying Fish FF 089 (1979). It's out of print, but maybe somebody has it. Song title listed is "Play 'Rocky Top'."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Mar 02 - 04:20 PM

Rocky Topfrom the handy, dandy white search box......

Subject: Play Rocky Top or I'll Punch Your Lights
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 02 - 04:12 PM

Looking for the words to this tune by the Red Clay Ramblers