By David Dodd
Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)
Continuing the theme from last week of songs from the never-recorded post-American Beauty studio album, how about if we talk about “Brown-Eyed Women”?
I went to Terrapin Crossroads not too long ago with a whole bunch of friends, mostly librarians, to compete in the Trivia Night contest, up against Phil and his team, and about five other teams. We came in third, and actually beat Phil’s team, which was pretty good, I thought. The only Grateful Dead-related trivia was a fill-in-the-blank lyrics question: “Delilah Jones was the mother of twins, _____ times over, and the rest were sins…” I am happy to say our team got that one right.
“Brown-Eyed Women,” a Garcia-Hunter song, was first played on August 23, 1971 at The Auditorium Theater in Chicago, about a month before the release of the Grateful Dead double live album, aka Skull and Roses, among other monikers. (Hey, this is a family blog!) It was last played by the band on July 6, 1995 at the Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, Missouri, which made them miss playing it in Chicago by two days—that would have been an interesting symmetry. And it appeared on the Europe ’72 album, along with the most of the rest of the batch of new songs. It was incorrectly titled “Brown-Eyed Woman” on the album, a mistake which took awhile to rectify. It was played in concert 347 times.
Like “Jack Straw,” “Brown-Eyed Women” is set largely in the era of the Great Depression. It tells the story of a family living in a tumbledown shack in mythical Bigfoot County, somewhere back in the hills, it seems, where the family works the land and the father, Jack Jones, makes bootleg whisky. Jack was a ladies man in his youth, but those days are gone. It is a fairly straightforward tale of scraping by in hard times, where the mother, Delilah Jones, bears eight boys (no girls are mentioned, but an early version, on August 24, 1971 - the second performance of the song - mentions 13 children all told), of which four belong to two sets of twins. This is a couple whose attraction to each other is strong, clearly, and this is a woman who has done more than her share of childbearing and rearing. And when she dies, in the snowstorm that caves in the roof of the family home, Jack Jones is devastated - never the same again.
![](/sites/g/files/g2000007851/files/body-images/Moonshine-Whiskey.jpg)
There is something quietly powerful about the bridge that relates this tragedy, with the culminating line: “and the old man never was the same again.” It’s a feeling that resonates with any of us who have lost a loved one, and especially a life partner. Or with any of us who have seen a parent lose a partner, as I did when my mom died, and indeed, my old man never was the same again—he seemed broken by the loss, and I believe he welcomed his own death when it came. Perhaps this is too much a personal story, but it comes to mind when I think about this song: when my dad met with his pastor after my mom died, he asked how it worked, the going to heaven / resurrection thing. Would Mom be immediately in heaven, looking down, and waiting for Dad’s arrival, or would they both be resurrected together with all of the dead when the Resurrection happened? In other words, his only theological concern was—when will I see Suzy again? And is she in heaven now, or do we both arrive simultaneously later?
I think it is the fact that Jack was never the same again after losing Delilah that makes us most able to like him, to step into his shoes for a moment, and to be able because of that empathy or sympathy to understand something about the life Jack Jones led, making moonshine to make it through the Depression - or to get through his own personal depression following the loss of Delilah.
The lines in the song that place it squarely in chronological time are the references to the onset of Prohibition - “1920 when he stepped to the bar” - and to the Wall Street crash of late 1929 - “1930 when the Wall caved in.” (Which always makes me think of “Greatest Story Ever Told,” with the line: “You can’t close the door when the wall’s caved in.”) Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but the art of backwoods whisky making was well-established by then, and surely continues to this day.
There are many other Jacks, and one other Delilah (along with a Delia, which seems close) in the Grateful Dead song repertoire. I love this about Grateful Dead songs—all the names of all the characters. But Jack comes up repeatedly. Someday there should be a little essay just about all those Jacks, from Jack Straw to the Jack who is asked not to dominate the rap, to Jack of Jack and Jill, to Wolfman Jack, to Jack the Ripper, to Jack-a-Roe. More than four of a kind in a hand of jacks, for sure.
Another story, which again, given the all-ages nature of this blog, I must not relate in full, has to do with an occasion featuring a bottle of grenadine and one certain brown-eyed woman….
Over to you all: family stories from the Great Depression (or from today’s parallel Great Recession)? Coping with the loss of a partner? Making it through hard times by hook or by crook? Women with brown eyes? Looking forward to your stories and reflections.
dead comment
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Bigfoot County! I love the
Brown-eyed women...
I really love the Spartan
a fascinating story of...
several things about BEW
Pure Poetry
Coming on...
And he made it well...
Missing Bridge on Early Version
didn't get the lickins
The old man . . .
Would have to agree with Mr. Dodd's sentiment
one of my favorites
That thar's a fine lookin licker stil
@unklesam
Scattered like jewels from the hand of a conqueror
Amazed at the apathy
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Gone are the days.....
Always something new!
Bigfoot County
Lovely song
Amazing evocative imagery
Delilah's Son is the Narrator
Van Morrison influence?
I always felt that this song
Bigfoot County
Hickory
Jack is not the old man's name (opinion).
The bottle was dusty - - -
Back to the Future
GONE ARE THE DAYS & PALM SUNDAY?!
PORTAL ENTRY #8 from the FB page:
' MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL '
~One nite, several years ago, at the terrifying risk of extreme embarrassment at an Open Mic., I finally decided to walk the tightrope to play one song while singing another! How do one do this, you ask?
First, get out the ALTERNATE version of PALM SUNDAY from the Cats CD, and during the instrumental intro/verse where there's no singing, where the verse would typically start "THE RIVER SO WIDE, THE MOUNTAIN SO RED....."
start signing along with "GONE ARE THE DAYS WHEN THE OX FALL DOWN.....", and sing it all the way through, leaving out the line "Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down",, & go right to
"and IT LOOKS LIKE the old man's getting on"! Kinda neat, eh?,,,,
Then, when it comes time to sing along with PS's 1st verse you get:
"The river so white, THE MOUNTAIN so red, and with the sunshine over my head, The HONKY-TONKS are all (the bottle was) 'CLOSED' and 'HUSHED' (pause PS & insert) 'SOUND OF THE THUNDER with the rain falling down," then resume w/
"IT LOOKS LIKE PALM SUNDAY AGAIN,,,,,IT LOOKS LIKE PALM SUNDAY AGAIN..."
(sung with)
"Gone are the days when the ox fall down, take up the yoke and plow
THE FIELDS around,".....
" 'BROWN EYED WOMEN AND RED GRENADINE' the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean, 'and 'IT LOOKS LIKE' the old man's getting on,,,,, and
'IT LOOKS LIKE' THE OLD MAN's GETTING ON
~Fields//Mountain
(compositely you get some wordplay)>
~Brown Eyed Women & red grenadine///the Honky-Tonks
~The bottle was closed, the liquor was
clean....
~Closed and 'HUSHED'/'SOUND' of the thunder....
~and 'IT LOOKS LIKE' the old man's.....
'IT LOOKS LIKE' Palm Sunday.....
getting on.
again.
-----------------
So, there we have it folks, one more from 'MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL' , 'Palm Sunday' & a song that will always be known to me as 'Gone Are The Days'!! And the open mic was quite the success, albeit with a little head scratching from the crowd!!
It may seem a little out there, but stick with it and follow my lead, & you will soon begin to make sense of this new dimension~~
From MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL
to your living room~
peace ya'll~
🕉✨
kenji at kslewitt@gmail.com
PORTAL ENTRY #8 from the FB page:
' MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL '
~One nite, several years ago, at the terrifying risk of extreme embarrassment at an Open Mic., I finally decided to walk the tightrope to play one song while singing another! How do one do this, you ask?
First, get out the ALTERNATE version of PALM SUNDAY from the Cats CD, and during the instrumental intro/verse where there's no singing, where the verse would typically start "THE RIVER SO WIDE, THE MOUNTAIN SO RED....."
start signing along with "GONE ARE THE DAYS WHEN THE OX FALL DOWN.....", and sing it all the way through, leaving out the line "Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down",, & go right to
"and IT LOOKS LIKE the old man's getting on"! Kinda neat, eh?,,,,
Then, when it comes time to sing along with PS's 1st verse you get:
"The river so white, THE MOUNTAIN so red, and with the sunshine over my head, The HONKY-TONKS are all (the bottle was) 'CLOSED' and 'HUSHED' (pause PS & insert) 'SOUND OF THE THUNDER with the rain falling down," then resume w/
"IT LOOKS LIKE PALM SUNDAY AGAIN,,,,,IT LOOKS LIKE PALM SUNDAY AGAIN..."
(sung with)
"Gone are the days when the ox fall down, take up the yoke and plow
THE FIELDS around,".....
" 'BROWN EYED WOMEN AND RED GRENADINE' the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean, 'and 'IT LOOKS LIKE' the old man's getting on,,,,, and
'IT LOOKS LIKE' THE OLD MAN's GETTING ON
~Fields//Mountain
(compositely you get some wordplay)>
~Brown Eyed Women & red grenadine///the Honky-Tonks
~The bottle was closed, the liquor was
clean....
~Closed and 'HUSHED'/'SOUND' of the thunder....
~and 'IT LOOKS LIKE' the old man's.....
'IT LOOKS LIKE' Palm Sunday.....
getting on.
again.
-----------------
So, there we have it folks, one more from 'MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL' , 'Palm Sunday' & a song that will always be known to me as 'Gone Are The Days'!! And the open mic was quite the success, albeit with a little head scratching from the crowd!!
It may seem a little out there, but stick with it and follow my lead, & you will soon begin to make sense of this new dimension~~
From MY G.D. FRIENDS PORTAL
to your living room~
peace ya'll~
🕉✨
kenji at kslewitt@gmail.com