Revisit Ole Dixie

Words and Music: Tom Lehrer
Artist: Tom Lehrer
Song: I Wanna Go Back to Dixie
Albums: Songs by Tom Lehrer, Revisited

Dixie is where we like to go then and again, be it in a good or be it in a bad mood. New Yorkers like to write songs about the southland. We have more examples at hand. This one is a wonderful illustration, a poetic tool that we here thoroughly approve of.

In Lehrer's own words (you'll hear them in the video so you can skip this part if you'll watch):
Well, what I like to do on formal occasions like this is to take some of the various types of songs that we all know and presumably love, and, as it were, to kick them when they're down.

I find if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene, or - as they say in New York - sophisticated.

I'd like to Illustrate this with several hundred examples for you this evening, first of all, the southern type song about the wonders of the American south. It always seemed to me that most of these songs don't go far enough. The following song, on the other hand, goes too far. It's called "I Wanna Go Back To Dixie.

I Wanna Go Back To Dixie
Take me back to dear ol' Dixie
That's the only li'l ol' place for li'l ol' me.
Ol' times there are not forgotten
Whoppin' slaves and sellin' cotton
And waitin' for the Robert E. Lee
(It was never there on time).

I'll go back to the Swanee
Where pellagra makes you scrawny
And the Honeysuckle clutters up the vine.
I really am a-fixin'
To go home and start a-mixin'
Down below that Mason-Dixon line.
Oh, poll tax, how I love ya, how I love ya
My dear old poll tax.

Won'tcha come with me to Alabammy
Back to the arms of my dear ol' Mammy
Her cookin's lousy and her hands are clammy
But what the hell, it's home.

Yes, for paradise the Southland is my nominee
Jes' give me a ham hock and a grit of hominy
I wanna go back to Dixie
I wanna be a dixie pixie
And eat cornpone 'til it's comin' outta my ears.

I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen
And put my white sheet on again,
I ain't seen one good lynchin' in years.

The land of the bols evil
Where the laws are medieval
Is callin' me to come and nevermore roam.

I wanna go back to the Southland
That „ye'all" and „shut-my-mouth" land
Be it ever so decadent
There's no place like home.

 
last updated: 20.01.25, 23:52
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