Song to Woody
Talkin' New York
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today,
Wintertime in New York town,
I swung on to my old guitar,
I walked down there and ended up
Well, I got a harmonica job, begun to play,
And after weeks and weeks of hangin' around,
Now, a very great man once said
So one mornin' when the sun was warm,
Song to Woody
I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seein' your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.
All the things that I'm a-sayin' an' a-many times more.
I'm a-singin' you the song, but I can't sing enough,
'Cause there's not many men that done the things that you've done.
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.
Somewhere down the road someday.
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too.
Talkin' New York
Ramblin' outa the wild West,
Leavin' the towns I love the best.
Thought I'd seen some ups and down,
Til I come into New York town.
People goin' down to the ground,
Buildings goin' up to the sky.
The wind blowin' snow around.
Walk around with nowhere to go,
Somebody could freeze right to the bone.
I froze right to the bone.
New York Times said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years;
I didn't feel so cold then.
Grabbed hold of a subway car,
And after a rocking, reeling, rolling ride,
I landed up on the downtown side;
Greenwich Village.
In one of them coffee-houses on the block.
Got on the stage to sing and play,
Man there said, "Come back some other day,
You sound like a hillbilly;
We want folk singers here."
Blowin' my lungs out for a dollar a day.
I blowed inside out and upside down.
The man there said he loved m' sound,
He was ravin' about how he loved m' sound;
Dollar a day's worth.
I finally got a job in New York town,
In a bigger place, bigger money too,
Even joined the union and paid m' dues.
That some people rob you with a fountain pen.
It didn't take too long to find out
Just what he was talkin' about.
A lot of people don't have much food on their table,
But they got a lot of forks n' knives,
And they gotta cut somethin'.
I rambled out of New York town.
Pulled my cap down over my eyes
And headed out for the western skies.
So long, New York.
Howdy, East Orange.