or maybe jewish
that when skeletons drink, they turn black
that when skeletons drink, they die
that when skeletons die, their spirit leaves their body
ghosts are usually rotund
capital punishment is fairly ineffective against ghosts
when mammals breastfeed their bodies are consumed in the process
that when scared, some people invert their colors
giant witch tonsils have faces
ghosts reproduce asexually
great! but what's the song all about?
well, first off it was written by cab calloway (duh), but based on a song written by frankie "half pint" jaxon titled "willie the weeper" (recorded in chicago in 1927) ... don't believe me?
check out the lyrics
Have you heard the story, folks, of Willie the Weeper?as you can hear, minnie and willie have quite a different melody, but the words are quite similair in their structure ... to my ear, minnie sounds an awful lot like "st john infirmary blues", but anyway ...
Willie's occupation was a chimney sweeper,
He had a dreamin' habit, he had it kind of bad,
Listen, let me tell you 'bout the dream he had:
listen to it here
all still pretty innocent, however, i found these lyrics ... sung, and possibly written by ernest rodgers .... also recorded in 1927 (presumably in atlanta georgia as that was rodgers home)
Have you ever heard of willie the weeperhop habit=opium
had a job as a chimney sweeper
Had the hop habit and had it bad
Listen and I will tell you about a dream he had
listen to it here
so the original version of "willie the weeper" is all about an opium addicts hallucination and the jaxton version is all about a guy who just dreams alot ...
as should be obvious, calloways's version is all about a a gal named minnie and her druggie boy friend smoky joe ... who was awful "cokie" (cocaine) and took her down to china town for some "kicking the gong around" (opium) and while on an opium high, minnie has a dream about the king of sweden who gave her a million in "nickels and dimes" (nickel/dime bag usually of marijuana)
bottomline
drugs. in your music since 1927.
Posts
2 comments:
speaking of marijuana...
i think you might have done this post before
Just surfing in on a search query for my man "half pint" ... I wanted to remark about the phrase, "dreaming habit" -- this, too, is a euphemism for opium addiction, because opium causes its users to sleep deeply (eg. the use of 'opium dens' to lounge around) and dream strange dreams.
Post a Comment