Take a Drink on Me

DESCRIPTION: Chorus "Take a drink on me/All you rounders, take a drink on me...." Verses float: "What did you do with that gun in your hand You give it to a rounder and he shot a good man", "If you keep on stalling, you'll make me think... your daddy was a monkey..."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (recording, Charlie Poole)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Floating verses, linked by chorus "Take a drink on me/All you rounders, take a drink on me/Oh, Lord, honey take a drink on me." Verses include "What did you do with that gun in your hand/You give it to a rounder and he shot a good man", "If you keep on stalling, you'll make me think/That your daddy was a monkey and your mama was an ape"; "You see that gal with a hobble on/She's good looking just as sure as you're born"
KEYWORDS: crime drink nonballad floatingverses
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Cohen/Seeger/Wood-NewLostCityRamblersSongbook, pp. 156-157, "Take a Drink on Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 77, "Take a Drink on Me" (1 text)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, p. 289, "Take a Drink on Me" (1 text)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, p. 239, (no title) (1 fragment, in which the listener is urged to "take a one on me!"; it seems more likely that it's this than "take a whiff")
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 28, "Take A Whiff On Me" (1 text); p. 235, "Take A Drink On Me" (2 texts)
DT, DRNKONME*
Roud #10062
RECORDINGS:
New Lost City Ramblers, "Take a Drink on Me" (on NLCR01)
Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "Take a Drink on Me" (Columbia 15193-D, 1927; on CPoole01, CPoole05)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Take a Whiff on Me" (tune, words)
cf. "Coney Isle" (lyrics)
SAME TUNE:
Take Your Leg Off Mine (listed by Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 77, as a bawdy version of the above)
NOTES [88 words]: This is a problem in classification. On the one hand, it's clearly a version of "Take a Whiff on Me." On the other, none of the verses of the latter show up in this song. So I call them siblings but, since we're being splitters here, different songs.
[The version on page 28 of the Folksinger's Wordbook], although it uses the "whiff" chorus, consists entirely of floating verses -- none of them the same as the verses in the Cohen/Seeger/Wood-NewLostCityRamblersSongbook version, but many shared with common fiddle tunes. - PJS
File: CSW156

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