Weird, everyone is suddenly looking for lyrics to this song! Where was all this technology when I was trying to figure out some way to sing it 25 years ago? anyway, while I was searching for any link to confirm a reference I saw to a previously published “pop” version of the song (which I still haven’t found), I stumbled on yet ANOTHER pre-war blues site, weeniecampbell.com, where there was a long thread of people trying to decipher it. I’m sure some of what they came up with is right. If you go there and do a search, you should be able to find the messages I’m talking about. I even posted some of my revisionist, phonetically inspired but logically reconstructed, version. Which I’m sure is wrong, but some of it I’m sticking to anyway.

above, I’m referring to “Chicken”, by the bye. I forgot to specify.

Geez, talk about synchronicity. 10 minutes after depositing the above posts, I was checking e-mail and there’s a message on 78-l about an ebay auction for a hillbilly 78 going over $10,000.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4762278681

yes, what should it be but Georgia Pot Lickers, “Chicken Don’t Roost too High”

Here’s my best stab at a transcription, based on what others have done and what my own ears tell me:

[spoken] – Boy, did you ever do anything like stealin’ chickens?

And now it’s chicken, chicken, oh chicken
you may go up in a balloon
chicken, chicken, you may hide behind the moon, doggone you now
chicken, I never [let a fowl be]
ten thousand dollars reward for a fowl [on earth]
you don’t roost too high for me

I got to thinkin’ ’bout chicken late last night
man, I couldn’t hardly rest
I jumped out the bed, grabbed up my own shoes
thought of where some chicken was at
I grabbed big [] stuck ’em along
some i never let [haul]
i don’t think I’ll rob your henhouse
’til I get your roost, po’ chicken an’ all

and now it’s chicken, oh chicken,
you may go up in a balloon, doggone
chicken, you may hide behind the moon, confound you now
chicken, I never [let a fowl be]
ten thousand dollars reward for a fowl [on earth]
he don’t roost too high for me

and that chicken made me awful mad the other night, man
that some [I didn’t like your take]
i grabbed my little haversack and down across my back
and grabbed the chicken by the neck
said, i turned around quick as I could
a chicken all the way up […]
I won’t steal meat and bread out of Crump’s parlour
I steal a chicken from anywhere

now it’s chicken, now chicken,
go up in a balloon, doggone
chicken, you may hide behind the moon
chicken, I never [let a fowl be]
ten thousand dollars reward for a fowl [on earth]
he don’t roost too high for me

and that police arrest me last friday night
you couldn’t think of what ‘t was about
I’m goin’ down in the alley where I lived there
a lotta chicken tied in my house
say you may carry me to the penitentiary wall
I’ll go to work out my time
and just as quick as you put me on the L&N track
I’ll have chickens on my mind

[ ] chicken, oh chicken,
you may go up in a balloon, doggone
chicken, you may hide behind the moon
now chicken, I never [let a fowl be]
ten thousand dollars reward for a fowl [on earth]
he don’t roost too high for me

Very good website http://feri.pornzonehost.com/pok5/

warlock band

voice transcription…

Hi. Very nice blog. I\’ve been reading your other entries all day long..lol….

Johnson City is a great song I heard in the 70’s and we are working on doing it today. Tom Paley is teaching it to me. There was one verse he had nver ben able to figure out. Lyrics anywhere?