lbpesq wrote: ↑Sun May 08, 2022 8:35 pm
I would suspect the second verse is the earliest reference, 1920 when prohibition started. Jack’s dad wouldn’t have gone into business until then. Also interesting is the poetic license placing the stock market crash of 1929 a year later (“1930 when the wall caved in”).
Two sets of twins plus four other boys, all the result of sins, equals Delilah’s eight sons. And, at least to my ear, Jerry’s articulation isn’t clear enough to be sure of either. Of course I’m probably the same ... I know I’ve been singing it this way for many years at a lot of gigs with a lot of Deadheads and not once has anybody ever come up to me and questioned the lyric.
These type of questions can be found in other songs, too. For example, I’ve always heard the lyric in “Come Together” as “hold you in his arms yea you can feel his disease”. Yet, when my band decided to do the tune and I downloaded the lyrics, it read “hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease”. I’m still singing the first version.
Many years ago a friend was working as a roadie for Weir when he was in Kingfish. I was trying to learn “Looks Like Rain” (pre-internet days) and my friend got me the sheet music from Bobby. I thought one of the chords was wrong. My friend insisted it was correct because it was on the sheet and he got it from Weir. He told Bobby about how stubborn I was and Bobby looked at it and said that in fact I was correct and they had changed it in the studio after the sheet had been printed.
Bill, tgo
Hey Bill and everyone else!
I think that 2nd verse is earliest chronologically too. The 3rd and the Bridge may well be in chronological sequence. But the last verse is definitely out of sequence. (I have found non-linear story telling quite enjoyable in novels and movies.) As for why the song is like that could only be answered by Robert Hunter. But my sense is that memories are fluid, and that last verse has a younger Jack and his father working together; maybe amongst Jack's favorite memories. It echoes the 2nd verse's "he paid his way sellin' red-eye gin", though the drink in the last verse is whiskey. The idea of Jack drinking a bottle and being "ready to kill" again sounds like a fond/humorous memory again connected to his father. It had occurred to me that it hinted at Jack killing someone, but I think it's just an expression.
Have you heard the "Kesey Star" from 10/31/91? I strongly recommend it as it's unique.
The show is just after Bill Graham (the concert promoter) who was tight with the Dead (he went to Egypt with them in '78) died in a helicopter crash. During the Dark Star (which is my favorite of the later years; the tempo is perfect and has laid back, interweaving guitar lines, augmented by Gary Duncan), Ken Kesey comes out and does a spoken word kind of eulogy for Bill Graham which gives me goosebumps. It's tremendously powerful! You learn about a super-kind and deep gesture Bill Graham made after Kesey's son Zed died in January '84, going off an icy road in Oregon. Anyway, Kesey starts in a speaking-voice tone with "I was in D.C., and when I got the message (of Graham's death) I thought of two things..." but enumerates at least three and he becomes increasingly passionate, at times shouting (including a kind of direct address to the Dead, citing "Brokedown Palace") and finishes with "a simple old poem" from E.E. Cummings, although he didn't get it exactly correct. Here's the poem"
Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
The poem, obviously about the historical Buffalo Bill Cody, who after earning fame at a young age, eventually organized a traveling/touring show "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" that toured the US, the UK and Europe, also works as a reference to Bill Graham as a concert promoter. And Cody, Graham, Kesey and I bet Kesey's deceased son all had blue eyes.
Side Note: The first and last lines of this poem appear on a blackboard in the Movie "The Silence of the Lambs" in an early scene when Clarice Starling is going to meet Jack Crawford. They're on a blackboard in the first office she passes. It very quick. Their presence is kind of nonsensical because the creepy killer was given the moniker "Buffalo Bill" by law enforcement/the press and had no evidentiary connection to him! (Though the killer does turn out to have blue eyes.)
Anyway, regarding Brown Eyed Women, it occurred to me after my post that "the rest were sins" doesn't necessarily have to refer to more twins. And the "twins" don't even have to be all boys. My mistake! "The rest were sins" could refer to at the least, four more male offspring if the aforementioned sets of twins were all boys. "Raised eight boys" doesn't preclude there being girls.