Dale Petley: OUR JIMMIE RODGERS

OUR JIMMIE RODGERS

Play some Country Music if you play that thing at all

Let’s hear the Carter Family and the Wabash Cannonball

Before there was Rock Music, long before your Blue Suede Shoes

We had our Jimmie Rodgers and his mule skinner blues

Go on up to Woodstock, Old Home Week and the Fair

They love their Country Music; it’s playing everywhere

Hank Snow and Wilf Carter sing of life and love and pain

You can hear that yodeling brakeman still waiting for his train

Go on down to Cocagne, Bouctouche, or Cap-Pelé

They love to hear the fiddle and sing and dance all day

A common language spoken whether French or English born

Is a Jimmie Rodgers love song from a heart so sad and torn

Up in Jacket River and way down in Letang

They love to hear Hank Williams and everything he sang:

Your Cheating Heart, the Mansion on the Hill, and Lovesick Blues

Were written cause Old Jimmie paved the way and paid his dues

At the Legion Hall in Harcourt or a camp in Boishebert

You feel old Jimmie’s spirit when a guitar rings the air

It’s music pure and simple; it’s a love we will not lose

It’s Jimmie Rodgers singing his mule skinner blues

“Good Mornin’ Captain …”

Dale Petley