I Don't Care If I Never Wake Up (My Money Never Gives Out )

DESCRIPTION: Two nearly-identical minstrel songs about imagined wealth
AUTHOR: "I Don't Care If I Never Wake Up": Paul J. Knox / "My Money Never Gives Out": Irving Jones
EARLIEST DATE: "I Don't Care If I Never Wake Up": 1899 (sheet music) / "My Money Never Gives Out": 1900 (sheet music)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Two nearly-identical minstrel songs containing successive surreal images of imagined wealth: "There's a certain yellow joker lives around this town/Just as lazy as lazy can be." Early one morning he takes a pipe of dope, says, "I'm known as the ragtime millionaire ... I'll go back to bed ... I don't care if I never wake up ... There's nothing like livin' like a moneyed king, drinkin' from a silver cup ... I am worth a million in my dreams... I'm always flush, and My money never runs out/Rich food is a-makin' me stout." "I'm a-livin' good all the time/I don't drink no cheap wine." "When you got money it's a pleasant treat/Your only occupation is to sleep and eat." "I got everything that a king could wish, on-a-Fridays I eat fried goldfish.... I cleans my teeth with diamond dust/It wouldn't jar me if all he banks went bust."
KEYWORDS: drugs money
FOUND IN: US
RECORDINGS:
Banjo Joe (pseud. For Gus Cannon), "My Money Never Runs Out" (Paramount 12604, c. 1927)
Arthur Collins, "My Money Never Gives Out" (CYL: Edison 7607, 1901)
Dom Flemons & Guy Davis, "My Money Never Gives Out" DixieFrog DFGCD 8771; on Protobilly) [Note: This is mostly drawn from the Cannon recording.]
Silas Leachman, "I Don't Care if I Never Wake Up" (Victor 795, 1901; on Protobilly)
NOTES [51 words]: "Protobilly" credits Gus Cannon with blending these two 1901 minstrel songs of "financial fantasy." They already overlapped so much that one is invariably tempted to imagine plagiarism, or "folk process" if you prefer. The result, in all the versions reissued on "Protobilly," is imagistic and surreal. - PJS
Last updated in version 5.1
File: RcIDCINW

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