Talking Dust Bowl Blues lyrics

Song information

Artist: Woody Guthrie
Album: Dust Bowl Ballads (Rounder Records)

Lyrics

Back in nineteen twenty-seven
I had a little farm and I called that heaven
Well, the prices up and the rain come down
And I hauled my crops all into town --
I got the money, bought clothes and groceries
Fed the kids, and raised a family

Rain quit and the wind got high
And the black ol' dust storm filled the sky
And I swapped my farm for a ford machine
And I poured it full of this gas-i-line --
And I started, rockin' an' a-rollin'
Over the mountains, out towards the old peach bowl

Way up yonder on a mountain road
I had a hot motor and a heavy load
I's a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stoppin'
A-bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' --
Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous bustdown of some kind
There was a feller there, a mechanic feller
Said it was en-gine trouble

Way up yonder on a mountain curve
It's way up yonder in the piney wood
An' I give that rollin' ford a shove
An' i's a-gonna coast as far as I could --
Commence coastin', pickin' up speed
Was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it

Man alive, I'm a-tellin' you
The fiddles and the guitars really flew
That ford took off like a flying squirrel
An' it flew halfway around the world --
Scattered wives and childrens
All over the side of that mountain

We got out to the west coast broke
So dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak
An' I bummed up a spud or two
An' my wife fixed up a tater stew --
We poured the kids full of it
Mighty thin stew, though
You could read a magazine right through it
Always have figured
That if it'd been just a little bit thinner
Some of these here politicians
Coulda seen through it