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The Late John Garfield Blues Lyrics
Black faces pressed against the glass
Where rain has pressed it's weight
Wind blown scarves in top down cars
All share one western trait
Sadness leaks through tear-stained cheeks
From winos to dime-store Jews
Probably don't know they give me
These late John Garfield blues
Midnight fell on Franklin Street
And the lamppost bulbs were broke
For the life of me, I could not see
But I heard a brand new joke
Two men were standing upon a bridge
One jumped and screamed you lose
And just left the odd man holding
Those late John Garfield blues
An old man sleeps with his conscience at night
Young kids sleep with their dreams
While the mentally ill sit perfectly still
And live through life's in-betweens
I'm going away to the last resort
In week or two real soon
Where the fish don't bite but once a night
By the cold light of the moon
The horses scream- the nightmares dream
And the dead men all wear shoes
'Cause everybody's dancin'
Those late John Garfield blues
Where rain has pressed it's weight
Wind blown scarves in top down cars
All share one western trait
Sadness leaks through tear-stained cheeks
From winos to dime-store Jews
Probably don't know they give me
These late John Garfield blues
And the lamppost bulbs were broke
For the life of me, I could not see
But I heard a brand new joke
Two men were standing upon a bridge
One jumped and screamed you lose
And just left the odd man holding
Those late John Garfield blues
Young kids sleep with their dreams
While the mentally ill sit perfectly still
And live through life's in-betweens
In week or two real soon
Where the fish don't bite but once a night
By the cold light of the moon
The horses scream- the nightmares dream
And the dead men all wear shoes
'Cause everybody's dancin'
Those late John Garfield blues
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John Garfield was a prolific actor acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. John Prine mentioned him both in this song as well as “Picture Show”. However, Prine states that really, the song is not so much about John Garfield. What Kris Kristofferson said about the song is neat after hearing what John Prine said about it:
"What I was writing about was how late Sunday night going into Monday morning was always a weird period of time. Whether you were apprehensive about work or school, it was like the twilight zone. At first, the song was called "The Late Sunday, Early Monday Morning Blues." I finally decided to make it like the kind of movie that would be on TV at that hour, a John Garfield movie. It's not so much about him, the actor; I used this character to get into something else.
When Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge got together, they moved into this house on Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. They had an acetate of the record, and when they played that song, the electricity went out in the house. The next day, they found out that John Garfield used to own the place. It's a good thing it wasn't a song about John Garfield, or he'd have been turning my lights out."
~John Prine
John Garfield was a big movie star in the old school sense, and he died at the age of 39. Like the funerals of Rudolf Valentino and Princess Diana, the funeral was a big cultural event where people expressed huge sadness over an early death. So the late John Garfield Blues are the kind of blues that you feel in relation to something ending way too soon, leaving you with a sense that there could have been much more but now it has all ended suddenly and you are left alone.
I think a combination of two of the previous comments gives a more accurate impression of the mood and meaning of the song. It's certainly about the sadness of a bleak existence, even in forced gaiety (windblown scarves in top down cars), and death and paints a stark, barren landscape, brooding and tough, like John Garfield's film persona and his films. Garfield's early life was difficult and acting became his way out of poverty and the 'hood. He generally played tough guys struggling to make it. He was blacklisted after refusing to testify against others during the McCarthy era and died young, some think from the stress of persecution. As was mentioned in a previous comment, his death was mourned by thousands. In the song, the narrator also views his imminent death (going to the last resort) and has no pretensions about his afterlife which will just be a continuation of his forlorn existence. One way of summing it up might be: life sucks and then you die so you might as well sing and dance, the blues, of course.
John Garfield was a movie director who had alot of crappy films later in his career. I heard this song is about late Sunday blues as in the feeling you get late on a Sunday.
John Garfield (March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class characters.--Wikipedia TLJG blues would be the feeling you get while watching his films.
John Garfield was a big movie star in the old school sense, and he died at the age of 39. Like the funerals of Rudolf Valentino and Princess Diana, the funeral was a big cultural event where people expressed huge sadness over an early death. So the late John Garfield Blues are the kind of blues that you feel in relation to something ending way too soon, leaving you with a sense that there could have been much more but now it has all ended suddenly and you are left alone.