Old man down
way down
down, down by the docks of the city,
Blind and dirty
asked me for a dime—
a dime for a cup of coffee2
I got no dime but
I got some time to hear his story:
My name is August West3
and I love my Pearly Baker best4
more than my wine
. . . more than my wine
more than my maker
though He’s no friend of mine
Everyone said
I’d come to no good
I knew I would
Pearly believed them
Half of my life
I spent doing time for
some other fucker’s crime
Other half found me stumbling around
drunk on burgundy wine
But I’ll get back
on my feet someday
the good Lord willing
if He says I may
I know that the life I’m
living’s no good
live the life I should
I’ll get up and fly away5
I’ll get up and
fly away . . .
. . . fly away
Pearly’s been true
true to me, true to my dying day he said
I said to him:
I’m sure she’s been
I said to him:
I’m sure she’s been true to you
I got up and wandered
Wandered downtown
nowhere to go
but just to hang around
I got a girl
named Bonny Lee
I know that girl’s been true to me
I know she’s been
I’m sure she’s been
true to me
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
From the Dictionary of Americanisms:
2. Wharf rat . . . one who is frequently found on or near wharves, esp. a vagrant or petty criminal who haunts wharves . . . 1836 Franklin Repository (Chambersburg, PA) 4 Oct 1/3 “I’ve an idea, my man, that you are one of the wharf rats; and, if so, the less lip you give me the better.”
Additionally, Wharf Rats is the name of a group of sober Deadheads who patterned themselves roughly on the Alcoholics Anonymous model of a twelve-step program to maintain sobriety in the often slippery atmosphere of a Grateful Dead concert. Their motto is “One show at a time.”
The lyrics bear a certain similarity in context to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Here are its final stanzas:
And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land;
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely ‘twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
’Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay!
And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
In the 1954 film On the Waterfront (starring Marlon Brando, directed by Elia Kazan), there is a scene where Terry Malloy, played by Brando, is walking from the church with Edie, played by Eva Marie Saint, after the union has come to break up a meeting of potential “rats.” An old bum in the park stops the couple and asks, “Can you spare a dime? Just a dime for a cup of coffee?”
Garcia’s only known artwork titled after a Grateful Dead song lyric was August West (Wharf Rat) measuring 8.5” by 5.75.” According to gallery owner Roberta Weir:
Jerry preferred to keep his art separate from his music. When August West was first exhibited, it was immediately sold. A disappointed fan then asked if Jerry would draw Annie Bonneau for him. Jerry said, “No. Absolutely not. The art and the music are two separate things in my head. They don’t connect at all.”
Purley Baker headed the Anti-Saloon League, a temperance organization, from 1903 to the early 1920s. In the song, of course, Pearly Baker, with the different spelling, becomes a woman.
Compare the folk song “I’ll Fly Away”:
One bright morning, when this life is o’er
I’ll fly away,
To that home on God’s celestial shore
I’ll fly away.
I’ll fly away (O glory)
I’ll fly away (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah bye and bye,
I’ll fly away, fly away.
When the shadows of this life have gone
Like a bird from prison bars has flown
Just a few more weary days and then
To a land where joys shall never end
Recording: Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) (October 1971).
First performance: February 18, 1971, at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.