Thirty-two teeth in a jawbone1
Alabama’s tryin’ for none2
Before I have to hit him
I hope he’s got the sense to run
Reason the poor girls love him
Promise them everything
Why they all believe him?
He wears a big diamond ring
Alabama getaway, getaway
Alabama getaway, getaway
Only way to please me
Just get down and leave and walk away
Majordomo Billy Bojangles3
Sat down and had a drink with me
Said what about Alabama
That keeps a-coming back to me?
I heard your plea in the courthouse
Witness box began to rock and rise
Forty-nine sister states
Had Alabama in their eyes
Alabama getaway, getaway
Alabama getaway, getaway
Only way to please me
Just get down and leave and walk away
Major said why don’t we give him
Rope enough to hang himself?
No need to worry the jury
They’ll probably take care of themselves
Twenty-third Psalm Majordomo4
Reserve me a table for three
Down in the Valley of the Shadow
Just you, Alabama and me
Alabama getaway, getaway
Alabama getaway, getaway
Only way to please me
Just get down and leave and walk away
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
This number includes the wisdom teeth.
The name seems to be used here as both a personal name and the name of the state—see the line “Forty-nine sister states / Had Alabama in their eyes.” This is reminiscent of the line in Neil Young’s song “Alabama”: “You’ve got the rest of the Union to help you along.” This song provoked the wonderful response from Lynyrd Skynyrd in “Sweet Home Alabama,” in which the band tells off Neil Young:
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around any how.
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, May 25, 1878–November 25, 1949. Excerpts from his entry in The Dictionary of American Biography:
The publicity that gradually came to surround him included the creation of his famous “stair dance,” his successful gambling exploits, his prodigious charity, his ability to run backward at great speed and to consume ice cream by the quart, his argot—most notably the neologism copacetic [used so nicely in “West L.A. Fadeaway”]—and such stunts as dancing down Broadway in 1939 from Columbus Circle to 44th Street in celebration of his sixty-first birthday.
. . . blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname “Bojangles” meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for “squabbler.”
Robinson died of a chronic heart condition, . . . His body lay in state at an armory in Harlem, schools were closed, thousands lined the streets waiting for a glimpse of his bier, and he was eulogized by politicians, black and white—perhaps more lavishly than any other Afro-American of his time. 85
The line that refers to “Majordomo Billy Bojangles” may be alluding to the role Robinson often played in films, as the head of staff for antebellum estates, particularly in Shirley Temple movies.
Many of us know the name from the famed 1968 song by Jerry Jeff Walker, “Mr. BoJangles.”
Jerry Garcia’s namesake, Jerome Kern, also wrote a song, with Dorothy Fields, titled “Bojangles of Harlem,” for the 1936 Fred Astaire movie, Swing Time. (Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip verifies that Garcia was named for the composer, a favorite of his mother’s.)
Two references to the Twenty-third Psalm. See note under “Ripple.”
Also compare “John Silver,” from Hunter’s Eagle Mall Suite: “Through the Valley of the Shadow ran he.”
Studio recording: Go to Heaven (April 28, 1980).
First performance: November 4, 1979, at the Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island. It remained in the repertoire through June 1989, then revived in 1995 for several shows.