Lyrics

"Hambone Says" Lyrics (with Ray's notes in parentheses)

(I scoured the internet for references to first usage of various derogatory terms used to describe Blacks - particularly in the U.S. - and listed them in chronological order. I then made a list of some of the atrocities suffered by Black Americans at the hands of White Americans in chronological order. The goal was to use the terms to reference the events in the context of popular music of their era. The song begins with a chain gang chant and transitions into gospel, Appalachian music, jazz, rock and roll, funk and rap. In the notes below I have included clarification of the references that are more than 50 years old.)

Dis Red Shirt
Don’t eat dirt
Do good work
My lord
Dis here gun
Hunt bluegum
Coon get some
My Lord

(The Red Shirts are white supremacist groups that originated in Mississippi in 1875.)

Up jump the jigaboo, dancin’ ‘round
Singin’ “I’m gonna lay my burdens down”
Powder burn, this keg soon will blow
And they’ll all find justice in the down below

The Good Book says we are the chosen race
If it weren’t so, we wouldn’t have his face
Some spade in Sumner didn’t know his place
To protect what’s ours, put the boys on the case

(The "spade in Sumner" is a reference to the Rosewood [FL] Massacre of 1923, which occurred after a white woman claimed a Black man had attacked her in her home.)

Dis Red Shirt
Don’t eat dirt
Do good work
My lord

Ain’t no spook I see ever gonna be clever
Not now, not tomorrow, not forever
From this moment on, gonna do all I can
No tyrant’s heel’ll fit the neck of this man

(The verse above is a paraphrasing of parts of George Wallace's 1963 Inaugural Address following his election as Governor of Alabama.)

Motor City madness, hot summer night
Best keep your pickaninnies hid far out of sight

("Motor City madness" is taken from the second line of Gordon Lightfoot's "Black Day in July," which he wrote in response to the 1967 Detroit Riot. During the riot, four-year-old Tanya Blanding was killed in her living room when Michigan Army National Guardsmen opened fire on her apartment.)

Dis Red Shirt
Don’t eat dirt
Do good work
My lord
Dis here gun
Hunt bluegum
Coon get some
My Lord

Been fighting jungle bunnies for years and years
Baby’s big blue eyes all covered with tears
Thank Dylann and Zimmerman and Soon Ja Du
Koreans can do the Lord’s work, too

Yo, I can’t be a racist if I can’t see colour
Your skin, his skin, mine’s just a bit duller
Everybody take a ride on the P.C. bus
Can’t pin that jail cell noose on us
Every little conflict, y’all lookin’ my way
People get robbed while running every day
Squabblin’ bout statues and pancake batter
“Knock, knock” “Who’s there?”
All lives matter

Dis Red Shirt
Don’t eat dirt
Do good work
My lord
Dis here gun
Hunt bluegum
Coon get some
My Lord

©2020 Amelia C. Ray, Jake Wood/Annabel Is Her Mother Today (ASCAP)