Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 152 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "The striped elegance of gamblers, the hazards of the meat supply, the troubles of money, love, and sleep, are themes here. The verses are casual, typical of the impromptu, the "make-up" song of the black man and woman in America, "a product of economic and labor conditions," as Gates Thomas notes in No. 5 of the Publications of the Texas Folk Lore Society. . . . When the wooden slats, on which a mattress lay, broke and went "blam-to-blam," it took a good sleeper to go on drowsing."
Songs with this tune and metrical pattern turn up throughout North American tradition; like the limerick, this skeleton seems to have become a favorite framework for humorous material. The listener will recognize the tune as the "Crawdad" song. (gleaned from The Traditional Ballad Index)
Day 152 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "The striped elegance of gamblers, the hazards of the meat supply, the troubles of money, love, and sleep, are themes here. The verses are casual, typical of the impromptu, the "make-up" song of the black man and woman in America, "a product of economic and labor conditions," as Gates Thomas notes in No. 5 of the Publications of the Texas Folk Lore Society. . . . When the wooden slats, on which a mattress lay, broke and went "blam-to-blam," it took a good sleeper to go on drowsing."
Songs with this tune and metrical pattern turn up throughout North American tradition; like the limerick, this skeleton seems to have become a favorite framework for humorous material. The listener will recognize the tune as the "Crawdad" song. (gleaned from The Traditional Ballad Index)
