Jakewalk Blues, song lyrics

Song: Jakewalk Blues
Lyrics: Woody Guthrie⁽¹⁾

Music:
Year: c.1930
Genre:
Country:

Night drink liquor, night drink rum,
I drink lemonade and buttermilk some,
Here's my drink which I always choose,
I'm a jakewalk⁽²⁾ daddy with the jakewalk blues.

I got me a mama down in New Orleans
She's long and tall, she's keen I mean;
I lost my woman, I'm a singing the Blues,
I'm a jakewalk daddy with the jakewalk blues.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
I can't eat and I can't talk,
Been drinking Jake⁽³⁾ and now I can't walk,
Lost my clothes and working shoes
I'm a jakewalk daddy with the jakewalk blues.

Down in Texas there is a moonshine
To make a ginger, make you paralyzed
I won't let that troubled mind
I'm a jakewalk daddy with the jakewalk blues.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
You don't want me, gimme your left hand
Gonna take a jug to my buried land
Legs are stiff like a new pair of shoes
I'm a jakewalk daddy with the jakewalk blues.

Notes:

1 - Though Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics, he never apparently recorded this song.

2 - Jake Leg or the "Jake Walk". With changes the government imposed to prevent the abuse of Jake, some bootleggers adulterated Jake but with a substance that turned out to be a neurotoxin that if it did not kill them gave them a very peculiar gait that became known a "Jake walk". This partial paralysis affected some 50,000 Americans in 1930.

3 - "Jake" was a Jamaican ginger extract used as a patent medicine and contained 70-80% ethanol and was drunk during the years of Prohibition as a way to get around the ban on alcohol.