Julie catch a rabbit by his hair
Come back step, like to walk on air
Get back home where you belong
and don’t you run off no more
Don’t hang your head let the two-time roll
Grass shack nailed to a pine wood floor
Ask the time? Baby, I don’t know
Come back later, gonna let it show
Chorus:
And I say row, Jimmy, row
Gonna get there?
I don’t know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row
Here’s a half a dollar if you dare1
double-twist when you hit the air
Look at Julie down below
the levee doin the do-pas-o2
(Chorus)
Broken heart don’t feel so bad
Ain’t got half a what you thought you had
Rock your baby to and fro
Not too fast and not too slow
(Chorus)
That’s the way it’s been in town
ever since they tore the jukebox down3
Two-bit piece don’t buy no more
not so much as it done before
And I say row, Jimmy, row
Gonna get there?
I don’t know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
row, row
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Compare the lines in the folk song “Sad Condition” (Sharp, #263):
Turn my elbow to my wrist,
I’ll turn back in a double twist.
Hunter says:
The main thrust of that is, do you dare jump in the air at all? And if you jump in the air, are you gonna have presence of mind enough to do a trick? (Gans: Conversations) 57
Compare Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy”:
Mama, Mama, Mama look at Sis’ She’s out on the levee doing the double twist I’m a Winin’ Boy, don’t deny my name
A square-dance step:
DO PASO
Starting formation—circle of two or more couples.
DEFINITION: Each dancer faces partner or directed dancer and does a left arm turn half (180°) to face in the opposite direction. Releasing arm-holds and moving forward, each dancer goes to the corner for a right arm turn half (180°). Each returns to the starting partner to courtesy turn to face the center of the set or to follow the next call.
STYLING: All dancers’ hands in position for forearm turns, alternating left and right. When the courtesy turn portion of the do paso is replaced by a different logical basic, then the styling reverts to that basic.
TIMING: SS from start to finish of courtesy turn, sixteen steps; to the next call, twelve (CALLERLAB) 58
juke — (via Gullah from Wolof dzug, to misbehave, lead a disorderly life . . .) 1936, a brothel, cheap tavern, or low dive. 1939—juke boxes. (Flexner)
Studio recording: Wake of the Flood (November 15, 1973).
First performance: February 9, 1973, at Roscoe Maples Pavilion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.
In an interview in Relix, Hunter said: “I really feel that ‘Row Jimmy’ is happening in New Mexico.”
Hunter says the title came from a line originally but no longer, in “Fair to Even Odds.”