Name: Tell Old Bill
Duration: P00H02M47S
Description: This one has been covered by a lot of people, most notably Joni Mitchell and the Chad Mitchell Trio (no relation). From the first time I heard Chad, Joe, and Mike sing it, I loved it. And, let me tell you, I worked hard on those harmonies.

Tell Old Bill

by Tom Smith

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about

This one has been covered by a lot of people, most notably Joni Mitchell and the Chad Mitchell Trio (no relation). From the first time I heard Chad, Joe, and Mike sing it, I loved it. And, let me tell you, I worked hard on those harmonies.

lyrics

Tell old Bill when he gets home this morning
Tell old Bill when he gets home this evening
Tell old Bill when he gets home
To leave those downtown women alone
This morning, this evening, so soon

Bill's woman was bakin' bread this morning
Bill's woman was bakin' bread this evening
Bill's woman was bakin' bread
When they brought her the news that her Bill was dead
This morning, this evening, so soon

"Oh no, it can't be so this morning
Oh no, it can't be so this evening
Oh no, it can't be so
I saw my Bill about an hour ago
This morning, this evening, so soon"

They're bringin' Bill home in the hurry-up wagon this morning
They're bringin' Bill home in the hurry-up wagon this evening
They're bringin' Bill home in the hurry-up wagon
Can't you see how his shoes are draggin'?
This morning, this evening, so soon

credits

released September 1, 2023
Nicked from jonimitchell.com:

This song was copyrighted by Carl Sandburg as "Dis Mornin' An' Dis Evenin' So Soon." The song is clearly an African-American country blues number that may have originated from an older song in Georgia in the mid-nineteenth century. Sandburg told of hearing it in St. Louis in 1922 from a Nancy Barnhart, and it was roughly her arrangement he published. Sometime in the 30s, the recently-deceased Sam Hinton heard another version in Texas and recorded it. Sandburg's later editions of Song Bag reflect some of the elements of Hinton's song, and it is through that latter arrangement that most of us have come to know the number, courtesy of Sandburg's fellow Chicagoan Bob Gibson.

Image: "Happy Days" -- photograph of performers, from a review of Black America, in Illustrated American (June 29, 1895)

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about

Tom Smith Ann Arbor

Weird Al with more books, JoCo with more jokes, Carlin with more Cthulhu. Since 1985, Tom Smith has been breaking hearts, minds, and laws of propriety and physics with his insane blend of sf/fantasy, Life With Computers, pop culture, politics, and puns. More than twenty albums later, he maintains the best is yet to come. ... more