Just like jack the ripper, just like mojo hand,
Just like billy Sunday, in a shotgun ragtime band,
Just like New York city, just like Jericho,
Pace the halls and climb the walls and get out when they blow.

Did you say your name was ramblin' rose?
Ramble on baby, settle down easy
Ramble on rose.

Just like Jack and Jill, mama told the jailer
One hear up, and one cool down, leave nothin' for the tailor.
Just like Jack and Jill, papa told the jailer
One go up, and one go down, do yourself a favor.

Did you say your name was ramblin' rose?
Ramble on baby, settle down easy
Ramble on rose.

I'm gonna to sing you a hundred verses in ragtime,
I know this song it ain't never gonna end.
I'm gonna march you up and down along the county line,
Take you to the leader of a band.

Just like crazy Otto, just like wolfman jack,
Sittin' plush with a royal flush, aces back to back.
Just like Mary Shelly, just like Frankenstein,
Clank your chains and count your change and try to walk the line.

Did you say your name was ramblin' rose?
Ramble on baby, settle down easy
Ramble on rose.

I'm gonna to sing you a hundred verses in ragtime,
I know this song it ain't never gonna end.
I'm gonna march you up and down along the county line,
Take you to the leader of a band.

Good-bye mama and papa
Good-bye Jack and Jill
The grass ain't greener
The wine ain't sweeter
Either side of the hill.

Did you say your name was ramblin' rose?
Ramble on baby, settle down easy
Ramble on rose.


Lyrics submitted by itsmyownmind

Ramble on Rose Lyrics as written by Robert C. Hunter Jerome J. Garcia

Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Lyrics powered by LyricFind

Ramble On Rose song meanings
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5 Comments

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  • +2
    General Comment

    Americana at it's best.......enough cultural references to choke a horse.....a shuffling trip through the american experience. puts the listener right in the song!

    hohw89on February 15, 2018   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    its about moving away from your problems, but still once u get away the grass still isn't greener and the wine still isn't sweeter.

    bimOliciouson May 29, 2004   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Regardless of what it's about it's a lovely song

    Thegodofhatson May 01, 2007   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Rose is born to ramble. She is chasing down a destination unknown. The grass is always greener on the other side until you get there, but the urge to keep moving is always there.

    Event_Horizonon June 04, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    I have to agree with hohw89: This song is about what Bob Dylan used to call "the old, weird America." As far as I know, no other white American popular music act of the latter half of the 20th century, outside of Dylan himself (and perhaps the late, great John Prine, whose emphasis was more contemporary) captured that vanished America better than the Grateful Dead. The America of patent-medicine con artists traveling town to town, leaving before the locals discover that their cure-all elixirs are worthless. The America of traveling carny shows, of women on the run from checkered pasts and abusive men, hoping to find just one man good and true. The America of Indigenous nations shattered by white greed and violence, of down-and-outers, rural and urban, of every race, color, and background, of desperadoes escaped from prison or the latest heist-gone-wrong, hoping for one decent night's sleep in a barn or a rain-drenched back alley before heading out on the run again, one step ahead of the law. The America always on the run from its past, much of it evil and indefensible (250+ years of slavery), hoping for redemption and a newfound, or made-up, innocence.

    The picaresques and shady but charismatic characters depicted in "Ramble On Rose"- Shelley and her Frankenstein, Crazy Otto, the gladhanding evangelist Billy Sunday, the enigmatic Rose herself, rambling on but looking for some place, any place, she might finally settle down, and all the others- all belong in this tradition. And no other band has evoked the horror, the beauty, the despair, and the hope of these characters as The Dead did. Will they find what they're looking for? Will they ever settle down easy? "The grass ain't greener, the wine ain't sweeter, either side of the hill"- pretty fatalistic at first. But still they ramble, never giving up.

    mbrachmanon September 17, 2021   Link

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