Cold iron shackles and a ball and chain2
Listen to the whistle of the evening train
You know you bound to wind up dead
if you don’t head back to Tennessee, Jed
Rich man step on my poor head
When you get up you better butter my bread
Well, you know it’s like I said
You better head back to Tennessee, Jed
Chorus:
Tennessee, Tennessee
There ain’t no place I’d rather be
Baby, won’t you carry me
Back to Tennessee3
Drink all day and rock all night
Law come to get you if you don’t walk right
Got a letter this morning and all it read:
You better head back to Tennessee, Jed
I dropped four flights and cracked my spine
Honey, come quick with the iodine
Catch a few winks down under the bed
Then head back to Tennessee, Jed
(Chorus)
I ran into Charley Phogg
He blacked my eye and he kicked my dog
My dog he turned to me and he said:
Let’s head back to Tennessee, Jed
I woke up a-feeling mean
Went down to play the slot machine
The wheels turned ’round and the letters read:
Better head back to Tennessee, Jed
(Chorus)
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Tennessee Jed was the title character of a radio show that ran from 1945 to 1947. The show was carried on ABC and was sponsored by Tip-Top Bread (as in “when you get up you better butter my. . . .”)
Uncle Dave Macon and, later, the New Lost City Ramblers recorded a song called “Old Plank Road,” which refers to wearing a ball and chain and wanting to get back to Tennessee, or, to be more specific, to “Chattanoogie”:
Rather be in Richmond with all the hail and rain
Than to be in Georgia, boys, wearin’ that ball and chain
Won’t get drunk no more (3x)
Way down the Old Plank Road
I went down to Mobile, but I got on the gravel train
Very next thing they heard of me, had on that ball and chain
Doney, oh, dear Doney, what makes you treat me so
Caused me to wear that ball and chain, now my ankle’s sore
Knoxville is a pretty place, Memphis is a beauty
Wanta see them pretty girls, hop to Chattanoogie
I’m going to build me a scaffold on some mountain high
So I can see my Doney girl as she goes riding by
My wife died on Friday night, Saturday she was buried
Sunday was my courtin’ day, Monday I got married
Eighteen pounds of meat a week, whiskey here to sell
How can a young man stay at home, pretty girls look so well
This line recalls the A. P. Carter song “Clinch Mountain Home,” with its chorus:
Carry me back to old Virginia,
Back to my Clinch Mountain home
Carry me back to old Virginia,
Back to my old mountain home.
Recording: Europe ’72 (November 1972).
First performance: October 19, 1971, at Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The song remained in the repertoire from then on.
Hunter, in A Box of Rain, says:
“Tennessee Jed” originated in Barcelona, Spain. Topped up on vino tinto, I composed it aloud to the sound of a jaw harp twanged between echoing building faces by someone strolling half a block ahead of me in the late summer twilight. 47