RFI lyrical antecedents thread

Post here when you find that some lyric you were familiar with has an earlier citation and you want to know how for back it goes. For instance I was already familiar with the Bob Marley lyric from “Talkin’ Blues: “Cold ground was my bed/ And rock (or rockstone) was my pillow, too” and just heard a blues on WKCR with the inverted formulation: “Rocks is my pillow/Cold ground is my bed.” Didn’t actually catch what song this was, and playlist is not showing for that show on the website, seems like there are multiple tunes with that lyric.

Perhaps this thread already exists but I didn’t know what to look for. Obviously there are a lot of examples involving Marley’s namesakes Dylan and Johnson.

Ha put this on the wrong board, meant to put it on l Love Music. Maybe I should ask mod to move or delete, or just let it sit here and sink.

This site is kind of cheesy but here is a discussion:
https://www.whosampled.com/Bob-Marley/Talkin%27-Blues/

I first heard Mudhoney's "Generation Spokesmodel" which contains the lyric "My daddy's rich and my momma's good lookin'/Hush little baby, so am I"

Then I heard Iggy Pop's "Girls" and thought that was where it came from and THEN I finally heard Gershwin's "Summertime".

Interestingly similar to yours where the version I was most familiar with is an inversion of the more famous original lyric.

Indeed.

Trying to remember how the “peaches” line from Steve Miller’s “The Joker” goes back to an R&B song for which Ahmet Ertegun has a writing credit.

Probably even later than the Mudhoney but Ricochet's "Daddy's Money" from 1996 also used a variation of that lyrical trope: "She's got her Daddy's money, Mama's good looks, and look who's lookin' at me". (I worked in Jasper that summer, where we only had two radio stations: CBC and country.)

you're thinking of "lovey dovey" by the clovers

xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmh2_y4b16k

Yes, exactly. There's also this stuff: http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/11/if-you-dont-want-my-peaches-in-irving.html. Think would recently led me to this was Ella Fitzgerald version of "St. Louis Blues" with a version of the peachtree lyrics.

Ah, this has a long discussion as well of how far back it goes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_on_Top_of_the_World.
Actually this came up before here: Steve Miller - C/D?

interesting reference to stephen calt in the first link. he wrote so many great liner notes for yazoo; i didn't realize he wrote a book.

am curious about the hampsterdance one using the roger miller song from the disney flick "robin hood" and whether that goes further back

the whole "floating lyrics" phenomenon is a real trip. it makes me think of those hyper-diligent ethnographers who find strange traces of elizabethan english in isolated appalachian communities or whatever.

Yes, exactly.

interesting reference to stephen calt in the first link. he wrote so many great liner notes for yazoo; i didn't realize he wrote a book.

It was on the Big Star thread, but don’t have time to find and link to the starting point of that sub discussion. Just read the whole thread, it’s worth it.

will do!

Okay, for convenience, first mention of Calt is here: Big Star

wow, thanks!

Speaking of Iggy Pop, his song "Loco Mosquito" (1980) starts off with

My mommy told me
If I were goody
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly

Years later I realized these lyrics are also in "The Clapping Song" by Shirley Ellis (1965).

And just recently I learned Ella Fitzgerald sang the same lyrics in her 1939 recording "My Wubba Dolly."

That's a children's song though, isn't it?

Stand By Me

"If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
And the mountain should crumble to the sea"

Psalm 46

"1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;"

been reading the Psalms lately, there's loads that have probably worked their way into popular music thru Gospel and Blues songs

That's a children's song though, isn't it?

So God knows when it dates from.

Benjamin Lee of New York is credited with making the first rubber doll in 1855, so we have a starting point

So “timeless flight” is a “Rocket Man” lyric, before that a Moody Blues album title and afterwards another album by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. B-b-but where does this phrase originate?

And don’t forget a book about The Byrds.

And not a star but shines too bright
On him who takes such timeless flight.

--Lord Byron, The Giaour

https://observer.com/2016/11/bernie-taupin-talks-art-and-the-stars-stripes/

What I had learned about art and literature came from my mother, from, for instance, seeing the works of JMW Turner and the writings of Tennyson and Lord Byron.

Thanks!