Blue-Eyed Girl: Rufus Crisp (KY) 1946 REC
[From a 1946 recording titled Rufus Crisp on Folkways Records FA 2342 released in 1972. Liner notes follow. Crisp of Allen, Floyd County was born was born Nov. 17, 1880 and died in 1956.
R. Matteson 2018]
"Blue-Eyed Girl," "Ball and Chain" and "Shady Grove," different as they may seem, have much in common. All are based on five-note scales, with "Blue-Eyed Girl" and "Ball and Chain" being pentatonic. All three are play-party songs and dance
tunes. Verses in all three are found in "Old Joe Clark," "Cindy" and "Liza Jane." Compare the verses in "Blue-Eyed Girl" with
those found in "I Built My Love a Big Fine House" in The Swapping song Book. See, also, "Swing a Lady" English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Vol. 11.
Space does not permit a detailed comparison of the three related songs in this album, but the books listed below can serve as a bibliography for all three.
Blue-Eyed Girl: Rufus Crisp of Allen KY, vocal and banjo, 1946 recording
Refrain: Fare you well, my blue-eyed girl,
Fare you well, my daisy,
Fare you well, my blue-eyed girl,
You almost run me crazy.
Apples in the summertime,
Peaches in the fall,
If I don't git the girl I want
Don't want none at all.
Fare you .. ell, my blue-eyed girl,
Fare you well, my dandy,
Fare you well, my blue-eyed girl,
Going up Big Sandy.
Blue-eyed girl is mad at me,
And black-eyed one won't have me,
If I don't get the girl I want
Single I will tarry.
(I won't neither)
Refrain:
Used to live on a mountain top
Now I live in town,
Boarding at the same hotel
Courting Betty Brown.
Refrain:
'Member what you told me last,
Remember what you said,
Said you wouldn't marry me
If all the rest was dead.
(repeat second verse)
When I was a single boy
Happy as could be,
Now I am a great big boy
So happy do I feel.
When she saw me coming
She wrung her hands and cried,
Yonder comes the ugliest thing
That ever lived or died."