G Em
Huddie sang about that old boll weevil
C D
And how that bug was looking for a home
G Em G Em
Every time I hear that song Seems he got it wrong
C D G
I know that old bug just liked to roam
Even Stephen Foster’s great plantation
And old folks at home were far away
How ever many times We all sing Stephen’s rhymes
He’s wandering creation to this day
C D G
Me and Stephen Foster and boll weevil
We’re travelers not looking for a home
Roads rambled, rivers crossed Some wanderers ain’t lost
We’re forty years from the milk and the honeycomb
Life ain’t some great eternal baseball game
There’s more for you and me than rounding third
Every child knows the poem There’s no place like home
Don’t you believe everything you’ve heard
chorus
Best beloved’s sitting by the fire
Simm’ring supper smell fills the air
But when Foster and the bug Look up from the rug
You’d best believe they’ll take you off somewhere
chorus, then
We’re forty years from the milk and the honeycomb
Huddie Ledbetter, Lead Belly, was such a great performer of folk music that the governor of Texas pardoned him after he’d served 7 years of a 30-year sentence for murder. If you grew up in California in the late 60s during the folk music revival, you knew this famous Leadbelly song about cotton farmers fighting against the seemingly indestructible weevil that destroyed cotton bolls, the seed capsule of the plant:
Boll Weevil
Now the first time I see the boll weevil
He’s a sittin’ in the square
Next time I see the boll weevil
Got all o’ his family there
Jus’ a-lookin’ for a home
Jus’ a-lookin’ for a home
In his 37 years in the early 1800s Stephen Foster wrote over 200 songs, many of which would be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Oh Susanna
C G D
Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me
G D G
For I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee
Camptown Races
G D
Camptown ladies sing this song, doodah, doodah
G D G
Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh doodah day
Beautiful Dreamer
G C
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
D G
starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee
Old Folks at Home
Way down upon the Suwannee River,
Far, far away,
There’s where my heart is turning ever,
There’s where the old folks stay