[click on title for Realplayer Audio access]

COTTON FIELDS

medium rocking country blues in G

NOW IF THAT COTTON STARTS TO FESTER, YOU CAN SWITCH OVER TO POLYESTER IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME / AND YOU KNOW YOU'LL FIND ME GRINNIN' IF YOU SQUEEZE A LIME IN MY COTTON GINNIN' / IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BITTY BABY / THEY PUT BOLL WEEVILS IN MY CRADLE / IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME / IT WAS DOWN IN LOUISIANA / DRINKIN' TANQUARAY AND TROPICANA / IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME

NOW IF THAT COTTON STARTS TO FESTER, YOU CAN SWITCH OVER TO POLYESTER IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME / AND YOU KNOW YOU'LL FIND ME GRINNIN' IF YOU SQUEEZE A LIME IN MY COTTON GINNIN' / IN THEM OLD COTTON FIELDS BACK HOME

Traditional wisdom states that picking cotton will give one the blues. My own experience verifies this. I put that cotton in a left foot sack / First grade teacher at my back one day on an elementary school field trip. We got to keep the cotton we'd picked, and I took mine next door to show it to my grandparents. Though we had no ginning equipment and no one bothered to pick the seeds out of the bolls, my grandmother made a pillow for me out of that cotton. Since she was my grandmother, I was obliged to sleep on the damn thing for years and, let me assure you, sleeping on a loosely stitched sack of seedy cotton, however well intended, will give you the blues.