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Untitled Lyrics
There's a shanty in a town on a little plot of ground
where the green grass grows all around, all around,
and the roof's so torn so badly worn
it touches to the ground.
Just a tumbledown shack that sits way back
about twenty-five feet from the railroad track;
hanging on the line most all the time
keeps calling me back to my little grass shack.
I'd be just as sassy as Haile Selassie,
if I were a king it wouldn't mean a thing.
Put my boots on tall, read the writing on the wall,
and it wouldn't mean a thing, not a doggone thing.
There's a queen waiting there in a rocking chair,
just blowing her stack on Raineer beer,
and I'm looking all around and I'm trucking on down
'cause I gotta get back to my shanty town.
I'd be just as sassy as Haile Selassie,
if I were a king it wouldn't mean a thing.
Put my boots on tall, read the writing on the wall,
and it wouldn't mean a thing, not a doggone thing.
There's a queen waiting there in a rocking chair,
just blowing her stack on Raineer beer,
and I'm looking all around and I'm trucking on down
'cause I gotta get back to my shanty town,
I gotta get back to my shanty town.
where the green grass grows all around, all around,
and the roof's so torn so badly worn
it touches to the ground.
Just a tumbledown shack that sits way back
about twenty-five feet from the railroad track;
hanging on the line most all the time
keeps calling me back to my little grass shack.
if I were a king it wouldn't mean a thing.
Put my boots on tall, read the writing on the wall,
and it wouldn't mean a thing, not a doggone thing.
There's a queen waiting there in a rocking chair,
just blowing her stack on Raineer beer,
and I'm looking all around and I'm trucking on down
'cause I gotta get back to my shanty town.
if I were a king it wouldn't mean a thing.
Put my boots on tall, read the writing on the wall,
and it wouldn't mean a thing, not a doggone thing.
There's a queen waiting there in a rocking chair,
just blowing her stack on Raineer beer,
and I'm looking all around and I'm trucking on down
'cause I gotta get back to my shanty town,
I gotta get back to my shanty town.
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I heard this lyric at a Montreal club in 1954. It was a regular in the act of a black singer named Clarence ..... It was in the nature of a vocalese uptempo reprise of a standard ballad, "It's only a shanty in old shantytown". It was pretty common back then to sing a ballad, then repeat it up-tempo. In this case the lyric was also 'scatted' making it vocalese. It was 'happy as Haile', not 'sassy'.