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Peacock Street

from Bring Me Home by Peggy Seeger

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NOTE BY ELISABETH HIGGINS NULL:


"Peacock Street" is Peggy's title for "Crossbone Skully," a song by Aunt Molly Jackson (1880-1960). Jackson was a midwife, a labor activist, and a singer, as well as the wife and daughter of eastern Kentucky coal-mining men. When Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos "discovered" her during a fact-finding tour of the region, she was encouraged to come north in 1931 to write and perform her songs. Along with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and her half-siblings: Jim Garland and Sara Ogan Gunning, Jackson performed regularly for union rallies and radical gatherings. According to Shelly Romalis in Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999) Jackson was a "culture broker," who linked poor, rural workers with the left-wing movements of America's urban centers. "Crossbone Skully" also links the past with the thirties, building on traditional thematic structures and images and using the old tune, "Cumberland Gap," to deliver a social critique as timely during the depression as it previously had been through generations of oral tradition. Woody Guthrie created the notes to "Crossbone Skully" in Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (New York: Oak Publications, 1967, a compendium of folk-based protest songs by Alan Lomax with notes by Guthrie and transcriptions by Pete Seeger). In it, he shines his own inimitable light on the lyrics:

This is about an actual feller named Bascom Skully that kept a getting' in jail for holding up people. Well, looks like most of the jails are full running over. Looks like they make up more silly laws every day to get you in. You break the law and you don't know it, cause they pass 'em so fast you can't keep up with 'em.

All I got to say is this, if it keeps up, keeps a goin' that a way, the day and time will soon come when we'll just have to build a big cement wall around the world and all of us go and get in it. Dam' near it that a way now. (p. 70)

Peggy sings "Peacock Street" very much in the singing style Aunt Molly Jackson used when recording "Crossbone Skully" for Mary Elisabeth Barnicle and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress (1930s). This song and others were eventually released on Aunt Molly Jackson, Library of Congress Recordings (Rounder Records 1002, 1972).

lyrics

PEACOCK STREET

(words, music, ©: Aunt Molly Jackson)

As I was a-walking down Peacock Street
No clothes on my back, no shoes on my feet.
I was cold, I was hungry, it was late in the fall
I knocked down some old big shot, took his money, clothes and all.

Yeah, I took everything that old big shot had
And they called me a robber, they called me bad.
They called me a robber, they called me bad
But misery and starvation done drove me mad.

Chorus
Tell me how long must I look for a job?
I don't want to have to steal,
I don't want to have to rob.

They put me in jail for a year and a day
For taking all that ol' big shot's money and clothes away.
They turned me loose 'bout a hour ago
To walk these ol' streets again in the rain and snow.
I got no money for room rent, I got nothing to eat
You just can't live by walking the street. (Chorus)

credits

from Bring Me Home, released January 22, 2008

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Peggy Seeger Oxford, UK

Peggy is one of the most influential folk singers on either side of the Atlantic. She is Pete Seeger’s half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s daughter; her first life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her. She has made more than 22 solo recordings to date. Please check ewanmaccoll.bandcamp.com for other albums featuring Peggy. ... more

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