Gone are the days when the ox fall down
he’d take up the yoke and plow the fields around
Gone are the days when the ladies said: “Please,
gently, Jack Jones, won’t you come to me?”
Chorus:
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man’s getting on
In 1920 when he stepped to the bar1
he drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar
In 1930 when the Wall caved in2
he paid his way selling red-eye gin3
(Chorus)
Delilah Jones was the mother of twins
two times over and the rest was sins
Raised eight boys, only I turned bad
Didn’t get the lickings that the other ones had
(Chorus)
Tumble down shack in Bigfoot County4
Snowed so hard that the roof caved in
Delilah Jones went to meet her God
and the old man never was the same again
(Chorus)
Daddy made whiskey and he made it well
Cost two dollars and it burned like hell5
I cut hick’ry just to fire the still
Drink down a bottle and you’re ready to kill
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man’s getting on
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Prohibition lasted from the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 to the passage of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th, in 1933.
Wall Street crashed in 1929, setting off the Great Depression.
Redeye: n. 1. Whisky of very poor quality. In full redeye whisky. . . . 1819 QUITMAN in Claiborne Life Quitman I. 42 Whiting and I had a treat to ‘red-eye,’ or ‘rot-gut,’ as whiskey is here [Ky.] called. (Dictionary of Americanisms)
There is no Bigfoot County in the United States. The closest is a town named Bigfoot, in Texas, but given the line about snow, a Texas setting seems unlikely.
Compare the folk song “Moonshiner,” which has the line “I’ll make you one gallon for a two-dollar bill.”
Recording: Europe ’72 (November 1972).
First performance: August 23, 1971, at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.
There has long been confusion over the song’s title. Hunter, in A Box of Rain, titles it “Brown-Eyed Women,” while the listing on the cover of Europe ’72 calls it “Brown-Eyed Woman.” According to DeadBase VIII:
Willy Legate of the Grateful Dead Archives kindly informed us that although the title was copyrighted as “Brown-Eyed Woman” (that’s how it appears on the album and/or song-book), Robert Hunter actually wrote and intended it to be “Brown-Eyed Women,” the way Jerry Garcia really sings it. This is a classic case of a typographical error.