Expecting Rain

I hate to be a big nitpicker, but a friend recently sent me the Robert Johnson song "They're Red Hot," and I got all spruced up when I heard (at about 0:15):

"I got a girl, she's long and tall,
She sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall"

I think it's possible to assume this is where the line from Workingman's Blues #2 comes from. This would also be a third place in the song (besides the G7 in-between the verses and the title, as Eyolf points out proudly) where this can actually resemble a blues song. I think it's interesting the way he takes the line and uses it perfectly in a totally different context.

big yes to that. turns out even the great robert johnson resorted to theft.

compliments of some energetic soul...

The list of songs mentioning a lady with an extenuated torso (or small dwelling) who SLEEPS IN THE KITCHEN WITH HER FEET IN THE HALL, requested by Jack Beard (v.49#4, v.50#1), is growing to a corresponding length. Teresa McNeil MacLean has been "singing these words in the song: 'Polly Wolly Doodle' [whose first known printing was in 1880] for at least 20 years," and wonders if Robert Johnson might have heard it there and included it in his "They're Red Hot." Steve Rosenberg adds to a previous mention of "Salty Dog" that it "appears in the Kingston Trio's version ... on their Back in Town album." I checked with Michael Taft, my esteemed successor as Head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, who in 1983 published a prodigious concordance and anthology of blues on race records, the latter of which has been reprinted as Talkin' to Myself: Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942 (New York: Routledge, 2005). He has three references: "Her feets in the kitchen: her head's in the hall" in "Take Your Fingers Off It" (Will Shade & Memphis Jug Band, 1934); "She sleeps in the kitchen: with her feets in the hall" in the aforementioned "They're Red Hot" (Robert Johnson, 1936); and "She sleeps in the kitchen: one foot in the hall" in "Callin' Corrine" (Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, 1939). Michael informs me that both of his books are now available online at <tinyurl.com/le432>. Finally, my apologies go to Deirdre Murtha for misstating the title of her group's CD and website designation in the last issue. These should read The Johnson Girls "with the subtitle or descriptor, Sea Chanteys and Maritime Music" and <www.thejohnsongirls.com>, respectively.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _n16689746

Nearly all songs Robert Johnson (and it's the same with many other artists from that genre) has recorded are derived from the works of other Blues artists (Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr, Skip James etc etc) and could easily be regarded as organized "theft".

haha wow I didn't think to think Dylan could pull off a tertiary steal!

Another line from Workingman's Blues #2 is "Listening to the steel rails hum"
which is a line from Woody Guthrie's "Hobo's Lullaby"

But this is a classic example of Dylan "appropriating" a line and completely transforming it. (By the way, the line was not original to Johnson, not in the least). Whereas the original line is generally used to illustrate a woman's height, Dylan's use of exactly the same phrase to illustrate crushing poverty - the guy lives in a place so small that he has to sleep it its kitchen, and the kitchen itself is so small that...

It's a brilliant moment, Chaplinesque in its pathos.

no.....dylan steal a line from some old blues singer? i just cannot believe that one

Heard a cover version of They're Red Hot on the radio today and the lines

"I got a girl, she's long and tall,
She sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall"

practically burst from air waves. Blew me away. I'd say this song is the source for the line from Workingman's Blues #2.

I am bothered by the constant use of the terms "theft" and "steal" in matters such as this. It implies that someone owns this stuff and is being permanently deprived of it, which just isn't the case.

Amen to that - people wonder what is wrong with art today, music or otherwise, and one of the primary reasons is that, in the advent of dominating capitalism and popular arts being turned into one of the biggest industries in the world in the last 50 years, lawyers have stepped in and convinced everyone that there is somehow some kind of ownership to the artistic process - despite such concepts being in complete contradiction with what made those financially valuable art forms exist in the first place (like the almighty sacred cash cow that is rock and roll for a kick off). As a result, only the rarest of the rare breed in the arts actually have the guts to "steal" and continue the process ... resulting in the vast majority thinking otherwise and creating rootsless, formless bullshit because they've been taught that whatever impression comes to you must be what is most valuable... as if artistic ability is born out of the random thoughts of any given half-wit who considers themselves an artist (also in part a legacy of the impact baby boomer / hippie culture gave birth to, whereby any random baked "thought" must be divine sacred creativity). Same goes with film, literature, visual arts, etc etc. Not enough people are influenced by traditions and history and far too many people are influenced by lawyers and CEOs.

How wise! This is also why "stealing" and "thieving" films and music using the internet should under no circumstances be considered a crime. You're very perceptive. What we need are more caveats! How many do we want? LOTS! When do we want them? ASAP!

Cue Long Johnny and his "DYLAN APOLOGISTS... ASSEMBLE!" Avengers graphic.

In art there is no such thing as parthenogenseis.Nobody steals,they are just inspired.

Pretty sure LJ's with me on this one, dude, though I'm sure he has no trouble speaking for himself if he cares to. And what I'm saying applies to a whole lot more than Dylan.

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

--Thomas Jefferson

I'll bet that line goes back to the ancient Greeks, at least.

Well said, O Mimian Simian!

I first know the phrase "I got a gal, six-feet tall, sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall" from mid-1950s UK skiffle bands - it was a popular insert in many a skiffle song.

Very well said, indeed.

The blues musicians of the 20s and 30s had a very different idea of what was meant when one "wrote" a song. Generally, writing a song involved borrowing the melody of a preexisting song and either writing new lyrics or rearranging existing lyrics. These are often called "floating lyrics" and they are common to the American folk tradition. You'll often hear lines like "gonna a build me a log cabin (or castle) / On a mountain so high / So I can see Willie / As he goes on by" in more than one song. That particular line turns up in Clarence Ashley's "The Coo-coo" and Uncle Dave Macon's "Down the Old Plank Road." Neither "stole" the line. They simply used it because it was a line that was around.

Dylan was hardly immune from this. He borrowed the melody of "Down on Penny's Farm" from "Hard Times In New York Town" (as well as the first few lines). He took the line "I'll give you sugar for sugar, let you get salt for salt" from "James Alley Blues" (recorded by Rabbit Brown) for "Crash on the Levee (Down In The Flood)." He took the line "I don't like a railroad man. He'll kill you when he can. Drink up your blood like wine" from Bascom Lamar Lunsford's "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground" and adapted it for "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again." There are other examples throughout Dylan's career. This doesn't make Dylan unoriginal or a thief. It makes him a participant in the folk process. Hell, people accused Led Zeppelin of ripping off Willie Dixon. You don't REALLY think that Willie Dixon came up with all of those blues songs himself? Most of them already existed, and versions can be found that date back to the 20s and 30s, if not further.

All of this has been described by anthropologist and semioticist Claude Levi-Strauss who describes man as a "bricklayer." We don't invent new things. We just rearrange the existing bricks...

Louis Jordan - Long Legged Lizzie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KbqX5dXRjA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bUwI820ntc

On hot nights I still do this, sleeping with my head in the vegetable crisper section of the refrigerator to keep cool.

in dylans song and others i take the line to mean that the person is poor. so their house is small. therefore where they are sleeping in one room they are actually half way sleeping in a kitchen. because yeah, the place is poor and small.

Maybe the person is just tall. I am 6"5 and when I lay down in the kitchen with my head in the vegetable crisper section of the refrigerator my feet stick into the laundry. I am not poor and my house is by no means small.

"You're just tall, that's all"

It could also have something to do with the placement of the refrigerator in the song.

That's a good interpretation, makes sense, though I always thought of it more as a passed-out-drunk-on-the-way-to-get-another-drink scenario, myself. A bit like "I don't even have the strength to get up and take another shot."