Operator, can you help me?1
Help me if you please.
Give me the right area code
and the number that I need.
My rider left upon the Midnight Flyer
singing like a summer breeze.
I think she’s somewhere down south,
down about Baton Rouge.
But I just can’t remember no number,
a number I can use.
Directory don’t have it, Central done forgot it;2
got to find a number to use.
Trying to check out her number,
trying to run down her line.
Operator said that’s privileged information
and it ain’t no business of mine.
It’s flooding down in Texas, the poles are down in Utah;3
got to find a private line.
She could be hanging round a steel mill,
working in a house of blue lights,4
riding a getaway bus out of Portland,
talking to the night
I don’t know where she’s going, I don’t care where she’s been,
long as she’s been doing it right,
long as she’s been doing it right
Words and music by Ron McKernan
An entire genre of American popular song might be called Telephone Songs. Lee Cooper, in his book Popular Music Perspectives, devotes an entire chapter to telephones in popular music and includes a huge list of songs. There are many songs; here’s a list that’s far from complete:
“Call Me”; words and music, Tony Hatch, 1967
“Call Me (Come Back Home)”; words and music, Al Green, Al Jackson Jr., 1973
“Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon”; words and music, Irving Berlin, 1910
“Hello, Central”; words and music, R. Ellen, recorded by Lightnin’ Hopkins on a single, ca. 1959
“Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven”; words, and music, Charles K. Harris, 1901
“Hello, Central, Give Me No-Man’s Land”; words, Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young, music, Jean Schwartz, 1918
“Hello, Frisco Hello”; words, Gene Buck, music, Louis A. Hirsch, 1915
“Memphis, Tennessee”; words and music, Chuck Berry; performed by Johnny Rivers, Sandy Denny, etc.
“Operator”; trad.? performed by Alexis Korner on Bootleg him!, ca. 1970
“Operator”; words and music, Len Bland, performed by him on a single, no date
“Operator”; words and music, J. Burks, rhythm-and-blues tune performed by Jewton Burks on a single, no date
“Operator”; words and music, Dupree-Smith, a blues tune performed by Bob Gaddy on a single, 1956
“Operator”; words and music, B. Elgin, K. Rogers, and R. Jones, performed by Gladys Knight on a single released in 1962
“Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)”; words and music, Jim Croce, 1972
“Operator”; words and music, William Spivey, performed by the Manhattan Transfer on the B side of a single, ca. 1975)
“Operator”; performed by DeDanann on 1/2 Set in Harlem
“Operator”; performed by Ken Nordine on Upper Limbo, 1994
From The Oxford English Dictionary:
central, sb. U.S. A central telephone exchange; hence, any telephone exchange. 1889 Mark Twain Conn. Yankee xv. 184, I used to wake . . . and say ‘Hello, Central!’ just to hear her dear voice.”
Compare Larry Davis and Joseph Scott’s “Texas Flood” (recorded by Stevie Ray Vaughn in 1983):
Well, there’s floodin’ down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
Well, there’s floodin’ down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
And I’ve been tryin’ to call my baby
Lord, and I can’t get a single sound 39
One particular establishment, the House of Blue Lights, was a Chicago after-hours club. It was connected to El Grotto (owned by Earl Hines) at the Pershing Hotel, in the mid-1940s.
The song “House of Blue Lights,” words and music by Freddie Slack and Don Raye (1947), gives some idea of what, generically, a house of blue lights is:
There’s fryers and broilers and Detroit barbecue ribs
But the treat of the treats is when they serve you all those fine eight beats
Studio recording: American Beauty (November 1970).
The Grateful Dead performed this song live four times. The first performance was August 18, 1970, in a show at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.