Chorus:
Corrina . . . Wake it up baby1
Corrina . . . Shake it on down
Corrina . . . Corrina . . .
Hog of a Sunday
Dog of a Monday
Get it back some day
What’d I say?
Movin’ in closer
Cut from a long shot
Fade on a down beat
Ready or not
(Chorus)
Cruise thru a stop sign
Loggin’ up short time
Bird on a phone line2
Soakin’ up sun
Salt on the crowtail3
What can I do?
I’m down by law
But true to you
(Chorus)
If, what, where, and when
Told at the proper time
Big black wings beat at the wind
But they don’t hardly climb
There’s a silver ocean
A bird on the horizon
Silver wingin’ back to me
(Chorus)
Wake it up baby
Shake it down easy
Bring it back someday
What’d I say?
Movin’ in closer
Cut from a long shot
Fade on a downbeat
Ready or not
(Chorus)
Corrina/wake it up baby
Corrina/Shake it down easy
Corrina/Shake it on up now
Corrina/Shake it back down Corrina . . .
If, who, how and why
don’t mean that much to me
long as it don’t hurt too much
believe we’ll let it be
Outside major darkness
where the circle is complete
there is no fear that lovers born
will ever fail to meet4
[Addendum: Ways in which it might be shaken]
Corrina/Wake it up baby
Corrina/Shake it down easy
Corrina/Shake it on up now
Corrina/Shake it back down
Corrina/Makin’ me crazy
Corrina/C’mon baby
Corrina/Shake it all day
Corrina/Tell me what’d I say
Corrina/Shake it up closer
Corrina/Shake it away
Corrina/Shake it in the shadow
Corrina/Shake it in the shade
Corrina/Shake it on the shakedown
Corrina/Shake it uptown
Corrina/Shake it in the short haul
Corrina/Shake it around
Corrina/Shake it at the window
Corrina/Shake it at the door
Corrina/Shake it on the stairwell
Corrina/Shake it on the floor
Corrina/Shake it in the mornin’
Corrina/Shake it in the dawn
Corrina/Shake it all night babe
Corrina/Shake it on down
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Bob Weir and Mickey Hart
The most familiar reference, for American listeners, is the folk blues “Corinna, Corinna,” sung and recorded by innumerable performers.
Corinna, Corinna, where’d you stay last night? (2x)
Your shoes ain’t buttoned, girl, don’t fit you right.
Corinna, Corinna, where you been so long? (2x)
Ain’t had no lovin’ since you been gone.
Corinna, Corinna, what’s the matter now? (2x)
You done gone bad, babe, ain’t no good nohow.
Corinna, Corinna, way cross the sea, (2x)
Ain’t done no good, babe, since you left me.
I love Corinna, God know I do, (2x)
And I hope some day, she come to love me, too.
The version by the Blue Sky Boys includes the first verse from “Midnight Special” as well.
A tune called “Corrine, Corrina” (1932) by Bo Chatman, Mitchell Parish (Grateful Dead roadie Steve Parish’s uncle), and J. M. Williams was popularly revived in 1961.
The original Corinna was a Greek lyric poetess, ca. 200 B.C.E. or possibly ca. 500 B.C.E. Little is known about her, but some fragments of her poetry have survived:
According to an ancient anecdote, Corinna criticized the absence of myth from one of Pindar’s poems; when he thereupon went to the other extreme, she remarked that one should “sow by handfuls, not with the whole sack,” an expression which became proverbial. (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature)
Ovid, the Roman poet, wrote numerous poems about a Corinna.
Jonathan Swift wrote a poem titled “Corinna” (ca. 1711), which was probably about either a Mrs. Manley or Mrs. Eliza Haywood—there seems to be some dispute. Swift, as evidenced by his other poems to “Stella,” was fond of assigning pseudonyms to women of his acquaintance.
One of Robert Herrick’s two poems about a Corinna is “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” (1648). After berating his beloved for staying in bed too long on a beautiful spring day, the poet concludes:
Come, let us go, while we are in our prime;
And take the harmless folly of the time.
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun;
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne’er be found again,
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown’d with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.
The other Herrick poem is “Upon the Loss of His Mistresses,” in which he laments a series of names, Corinna and Electra (see “Mountains of the Moon”) among others.
Compare with the line in “Loose Lucy.”
Children wishing to catch a bird are advised to put salt on its tail. While this may be a commonsense piece of advice (if you can get that close to a bird, you can probably catch it), it may also reflect some more ancient belief in the magical powers of salt.
Jonathan Swift: “As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.” (A Tale of a Tub, 1704)
In the Swedish folktale “Salt on a Magpie’s Tail,” a young boy is told by a wise old man that he will get his wish if he sprinkles salt on the tailfeathers of a magpie. After going through a great deal of work to be able to communicate with a magpie and sprinkle the salt, he finds that he is in need of nothing, and the salt falls off the bird’s tail before he can think of something he needs, so he loses his wish. The magpie is a member of the crow family.
Hunter notes in A Box of Rain that these two lines were lifted from the portion of the “Terrapin Station” suite that was never set to music, as he despaired of otherwise hearing them sung.
No official Grateful Dead recording.
First performance: February 23, 1992, at the Oakland Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California. “Corrina” remained in the repertoire thereafter.