Appalachian History

When you buy clothes on easy terms,
The collector treats you like measly worms;
One dollar down and then, Lord knows,
If you don't make a payment they'll take your clothes.

When you go to bed, you can't sleep,
You owe so much at the end of the week.
No use to collect, they're all that way,
Peckin' at your door till they get your pay.

Chorus:

I’m a-gonna starve, ev'rybody will.
You can't make a livin' at a cotton mill.

When you go to work, you work like the devil,
At the end of the week you're not on the level.
Pay day comes, you pay your rent.
When you get through, you've not got a cent

To buy fat-back meat, and pinto beans
Now and then you get a turnip green.
No use to collect, they're all that way,
You can't get the money to move away.

Chorus:

I’m a-gonna starve, ev'rybody will.
You can't make a livin' at a cotton mill.

Twelve dollars a week is all I get
How in the heck can I live on that?
I got a wife and fourteen kids,
We all have to sleep on two bedsteads.

Photographer Ben Shahn made this 1937 photo on the same trip he photographed square dancers at Skyline Farms in Jackson County, AL. He doesn't identify the player by name, however. More commentary at end of lyrics.







Patches on my breeches, holes in my hat,
Ain't had a shave since my wife got fat.
No use to collect, ever' day at noon
Kids get to cryin' in a different tune.

Chorus:

I’m a-gonna starve, ev'rybody will.
You can't make a livin' at a cotton mill.

They run a few days, and then they stand,
Just to keep down the workin'man.
We'll never make it, we never will,
As long as we stay in a roundin' mill.

The poor are gettin' poorer, the rich are gettin' rich,
If I don't starve, I’m a son of a gun.
No use to collect, no use to rave,
We'll never rest till we're in our grave.

Chorus:

I’m a-gonna starve, ev'rybody will.
You can't make a livin' at a cotton mill.

from Our Singing Country, A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs, collected and compiled by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1949
online at www.archive.org/stream/oursingingcountr013537mbp/oursingingcountr013537mbp_djvu.txt

Notes to piece from Our Singing County: No. 1629. Acc. on guitar and sung by Joe Sharp of Skyline Farms, Scottsboro, Ala., in Washington, D.C., 1939. By courtesy of Nicholas Ray. See also "Cotton Mill Blues." Decca 5559.

Sharp played mandolin for the Skyline Farms square dancers when they performed for Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House, and his band was recorded by the Library of Congress on that trip. Players: Chester Allen, guitar and violin, Joe Sharp, mandolin, Herbert Green, violin, and Thomas Holt, guitar.