I had actually already listened to the song once, and had started it over because the story recounted over the course of the song was really confusing me. I had drifted off listening to the rambling, tedious story recounted over the top of a prickly banjo riff, and I went back to the beginning to try and follow the story this time.
(I had this same scenario with an "old-timey" song only this morning, running in Hollywood. I was listening to "The Lady Gay" by Buell Kazee. This supremely inaptly-titled song had started out being a rather mundane song about children being sent away to "the North Country," there to study "grammary," after which my attention drifted to other matters, an internal monologue.
When I returned to the song it was now about the dead returning to life by God's right divine good Grace and mercy, and those same dead yet craving now only the divine solace and transcendent light that only the grave can give.
What had happened in that mysterious interim when I drifted off? Divine intervention is what.)
Letting Wilmer Watts's doleful drone wash over me unfiltered, I had been jolted back to attention by this peculiar line:
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
It seemed as far as I could tell a complete non-sequitur. So I went back to the beginning of the song and made a concerted effort to follow the story without becoming distracted.
Let us reason this out, you and I, together.
It starts out:
My name it is Joe Bowers, I have a brother Ike.
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike.
(i.e., Pike County, Missouri. Got it. Next: )
I had a pretty girl there, her name was Sally Black,
Asked her to marry, she said it was [unintelligible -- "the wine"?]
(What did Sally Black say? This missing detail is fairly crucial to my understanding of this saga.)
She said to me, Joe Bowers, before we hitch for life [?],
Better get your little home, to keep your little wife.
I said to her, Miss Sally, [unintelligible] for your sake
I'll go to California, and try to raise a stake.
(Pedantically writing this out like this is a good comprehension exercise. I am starting to discern a rude narrative here.)
And so I went to mining, and on the Vegas scene [??!!],
[Unintelligible; "Put"?] on down to Boulder, just like a thousand [unintelligible].
(I don't think he said that, about "the Vegas scene," but let's just keep going with this.)
(It could be he said "and on to vagrancy" but that seems almost as unlikely.)
(Bear with me the while.)
I work late and early through rain sun or snow
I was working for Miss Sally, and all the same for Joe.
(Who is Joe now? Did I miss a line?)
(Oh yes -- he's Joe. The guy singing. Joe Bowers. Got it. He's referring to himself in the third person.)
(Why is that.)
BANJO BREAK
(During which o let's try to find our wits and our resolve our doubts and endeavor to recover our poise and dignity.)
Well soon I got a letter from my dear brother Ike,
Came from old Missour-o, yes all the way from Pike,
It brought me some the darndest news ever you did hear,
My heart is almost bursting, fresh to the tear [?].
("Fresh to the tear." Must be a phrase from the 1930s no longer in use. Keep going.)
BANJO BREAK
It says that Sally is false to me... [peculiarly long pause]
Her love to me I'd bled [?]... [peculiarly long pause]
She had married a butcher, the butcher's hair was red.
And that isn't ham.[?!]
Enough to make me swear.
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
Not a boy, a girllllll-child ... [peculiarly long pause]
The letter never said... [peculiarly long pause]
But Sal has got a baby, this baby's hair is red.
(These long pauses after tentative fragments suggest to me that he's fallen to improvising -- and badly -- and then he gets wholly confused and repeats a line from the previous verse.)
I'll tell you why I left there [?] ... [peculiarly long pause]
Why I did run, to leave her good old mama [?],
Far away from home.
(Need it be said that he never does "tell us" why he "left there"?)
(And why suddenly does "Mama" enter the scene.)
Well I have written it out and it is no more coherent to me now than it was then. You might wonder why I care, and why I am so surprised and disappointed by the failure of this narrative, the mystery of this song. I care because this was a song from an era when stories were still expected to be coherent and structured. This one flops and collapses under its own minimal weight. It's like a poor short story from the McSweeney's stable.
The odd epilogue to this story is that as I was running up Meserole Avenue, frowning and trying to elicit a trace of logic from this halfarsed song, as the last daylight was failing and faintly throbbing blue, a bicycle emerged from Lorimer Street with a man riding atop the shoulders of the man who was cycling. They rode right in front of the ("justly acclaimed") 94th Precinct and wobbled out into the fading Greenpoint evening.
And I thought:
She had married a butcher, the butcher's hair was red.
And that isn't ham.
Enough to make me swear.
And Sal has got a baby, the baby's got red hair.
"Mystery solved."
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