Filled With Chicken Pie

 

 

Well it’s time for Jim Adam’s Song Lyric Sunday again, and I know I offer up some pretty obscure historical pieces and folk songs from time to time.  So why should today be any different?

Old Joe Clark is an American folk song.  The lyrics are said to refer to Joseph Clark, a Kentucky mountaineer who was born in 1839 and murdered in 1885 (Wiki).  Wikipedia notes that there are about 90 stanzas in various versions of the song.  The song amassed its large number of verses as it was used as a type of a party song where each member would add a verse to build on what the previous singer had said before.

There have been noted releases of the song by Woody Guthrie and the Kingston Trio, as well as the attached Rosinators’ version.

Lyrics:

Old Joe Clark’s a fine old man
Tell you the reason why
He keeps good likker ’round his house
Good old Rock and Rye

Fare ye well, Old Joe Clark
Fare ye well, I say
Fare ye well, Old Joe Clark
I’m a going away

Old Joe Clark, the preacher’s son
Preached all over the pain
The only text he ever knew
Was High, low, Jack and the game

Old Joe Clark had a mule
His name was Morgan Brown
And every tooth in that mule’s head
Was sixteen inches around

Old Joe Clark had a yellow cat
She would neither sing or pray
She stuck her head in the buttermilk jar
And washed her sins away

Old Joe Clark had a house
Fifteen stories high
And every story in that house
Was filled with chicken pie

I went down to Old Joe’s house
He invited me to supper
I stumped my toe on the table leg
And stuck my nose in the butter

Now I wouldn’t marry a widder
Tell you the reason why
She’d have so many children
They’d make those biscuits fly

Sixteen horses in my team
The leaders they are blind
And every time the sun goes down
There’s a pretty girl on my mind

Eighteen miles of mountain road
And fifteen miles of sand
If ever travel this road again
I’ll be a married man

 

Padre