Woody Guthrie – Talking Dust Bowl Blues (Guitar)

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Back in nineteen twenty-seven,

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I had a little farm and I called that heaven.

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Well, the prices up and the rain come down,

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and I hauled my crops all into town.

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I got the money, bought clothes and groceries,

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fed the kids, and raised a family.

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Rain quit and the wind got high,

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and the black old dust storm filled the sky.

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And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,

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and I poured it full of this gas-o-line.

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And I started, rockin' an' a-rolling',

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over the mountains, out towards the old Peach Bowl.

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Way up yonder on a mountain road,

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I had a hot motor and a heavy load,

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Got- a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stopping',

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a-bouncing up and down, like popcorn popping'.

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Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous breakdown of some kind,

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there was a feller there, a mechanic feller, said it was engine trouble.

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Way up yonder on a mountain curve,

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a way up yonder in the piney wood,

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I gave that rolling Ford a shove,

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was a-gonna coast as far as I could.

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Commence coasting, pickin' up speed,

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was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it.

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Man alive, I'm a-tellin' you,

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the fiddles and the guitars really flew.

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That Ford took off like a flying squirrel

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and it flew halfway around the world,

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scattered wives and children

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all over the side of that mountain.

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We got out to the West Coast broke,

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so dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak,

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so I bummed up a spud or two,

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and my wife fixed up a tater stew.

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We poured the kids full of it, mighty thin stew, though,

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you could read a magazine right through it.

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Always have figured that if it'd been just a little bit thinner,

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some of these here politicians could of seen through it.