Subject: Lyr Add: KITTY KANE (John Warner)
From:
Herga Kitty
Date: 07 Sep 02 - 06:24 AM
Here's Kitty Kane, with the additional second verse (which is pretty powerful, even if it does make the song very long).
I sang this at the Wareham Wail a week ago, and hardened male Middle Bar singers said it brought tears to their eyes, never mind the female MBS):
KITTY KANE - John Warner 8/11/93
I came up the Thomson with thousands of others
When Walhalla's gold wove its wild, shining spell.
I was young, I was pretty, I called myself Kitty,
I offered the best jewels a woman could sell.
A length of fine velvet in well fitting burgundy
Tight round the curves where a man's eye would fall,
Lace at the edges and eyes full of laughter,
Oh young Kitty Kane was the pride of them all.
Chorus:
I might take a walk by the wild Thomson River
Where the mountain ash rise in the soft misty rain,
There's gold in the range and there's gold in the memories
Of the lady of pleasure they call Kitty Kane.
[*As the wealth from the mining flowed into the valley,
I moved from a shanty up to a hotel.
I'd seen enough squalor, I saved enough silver
To make me a place where I'd play the game well.
Pregnancy, injury, theft and brutality
Threatened and scarred me again and again
But in black lace and silver I waltzed with the miners,
And shone in their vision, for I'm Kitty Kane.
]
The publican brought a piano from Melbourne,
I could tell you right now, it was never in tune,
But the work-weary diggers came crowding to hear it
When Samson would play on a late afternoon.
On nights when Walhalla lit up like a fire
And the miners were roaring some boozy refrain,
There would always be eyes lit with lust and desire
And bright gold for evenings with young Kitty Kane.
There were schemers and sailors and boozy old diggers
Whose tough, hairy hides had the gravel ground in,
Young men far from home who still needed their mothers,
And sad furtive parsons who needed to sin.
Rough, drunken brutes with the manners of cattle,
Who let me lie bleeding and shaking in pain.
But I served them their drinks while my bruises were healing,
And I laughed and I shone, I was still Kitty Kane.
I've heard the men singing down at the piano,
That youth it soon passes and beauty will fade,
But I gave them their pleasure when I was past forty,
It's the light in my eyes made me queen of my trade.
And though Walhalla now is all merchants and farmers,
Whose wives see in me what they think of as shame,
I'll die in this valley with fine, singing memories,
My name's Kitty Kane, I was best in the game.
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sj
