CABBAGE HEAD

Created on 10/12/2005
Latest update on 16/11/2023

Artist: Rabbit Foot Minstrels
Author: traditional
Year: 1920

Child ballad #274. European origin, somewhere between Scotland and Germany, why not from the lowlands. The man coming home every evening, drunk as drunk can be, only half aware he's no longer the only man around. Who drank from my cup? Who's sleeping in my bed? That's no head, says his wife, that's a cabbage. Relates with both Seven Drunken Nights and Snowy White & the Seven Dwarfs.

Covers:

1920s:

Al G. Fields Minstrels

1927:

Earl Johnson & his Dixie Entertainers [as Three Night]

1928:

Lena & Sylvester Kimbrough [as Cabbage Head Blues]

1929:

Coley Jones [as Drunkard's Special on the Anthology of American Folk Music]

1937:

E.C. Ball & Orna [as Three Nights Drunk]

1940s:

Sam & Kirk McGee

1948:

Tom Archia

1955:

Oscar Brand [as Our Goodman]

1956:

Ed McCurdy [as The Good Man]

1956:

Ewan MacColl [als Our Goodman]

1960:

Weavers [as You Old Fool]

1961:

Pete Seeger [as Four Nights Drunk]

1961:

Harry Cox [as Our Goodman]

1965:

John Jacob Niles [idem]

1966:

A.L. Lloyd [as Shickered As He Could Be]

1967:

Dubliners [as Seven Drunken Nights, more or less banned in Ireland, top 5 UK; learned it from sean nos singer Joe Heaney, a regular drinking partner in O'Donaghue's Pub in Merrion Row]

1967:

Cisco Houston [idem]

1967:

Doc Watson [idem]

1968:

Seeger Sisters [as Five Nights Drunk]

1968:

New Lost City Ramblers [as Four Nights Drunk]

1968:

Brook Benton [as Intoxicated Rat]

1971:

Professor Longhair

1971:

Steeleye Span [lyrical elements in Four Nights Drunk]

1974:

Udo Jürgens [as Du Trinkst zuviel]

1992:

Dr. John

1999:

Ruth Brown

2003:

Kate Rusby [as Goodman]

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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