CABBAGE HEAD
Created on 10/12/2005Latest update on 23/07/2024
Artist: Rabbit Foot Minstrels
Author: traditional
Year: 1920
Child ballad #274 (Our Goodman). 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:
- 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:
- 1948:
- 1955:
Oscar Brand [as Our Goodman]
- 1956:
Ed McCurdy [as The Good Man]
- 1956:
Ewan MacColl [als Our Goodman]
- 1959:
J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers [as Three Nights Drunk; Lomax recording]
- 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]
- 1966:
Bob Gibson [as Our Goodman]
- 1966:
Joe Heaney & Liam Clancy [as Our Goodman at Newport Folk]
- 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:
- 1971:
Steeleye Span [lyrical elements in Four Nights Drunk]
- 1974:
Udo Jürgens [as Du Trinkst zuviel]
- 1992:
- 1999:
- 2003:
Kate Rusby [as Goodman]
The Rabbit's Foot Company was the biggest tent show cruising the southern US between 1900 and the late fifties (lead by F.S. Wolcott since 1911). Their contribution to the popularity of the blues has been blues-marked near their former HQ in Port Gibson, MS for hosting all the big pioneer names (Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Bessie Smith and Stovepipe #1). In later years names like Big Joe Williams, Louis Jordan, Brownie McGhee, Rufus Thomas and Charles Neville from The Neville Brothers also took part.
