AGAIN I die!

In My Room

In my room, way at the end of the hall
I sit and stare at the wall
Thinking how lonesome I've grown, all alone
In my room

In my room, where every night is the same
I play a dangerous game
I keep pretending he's late
So I sit, and I wait

Over there is the picture we took when he made me his bride
Over there is the chair where he held me whenever I cried
Over there by the window, the flowers he left - have all died

In my room, way at the end of the hall
I sit and stare at the wall
Thinking how lonely I've grown, all alone
In my room

So why would I feature such a morbid little ditty on a normal, dull Tuesday afternoon? It popped into my head for no known reason today, and I assumed finding it on YouTube would be the usual breeze. It wasn't. At all. when I tried to find some, ANY recording of it, by anyone, all I could find was the Beach Boys singing:

. . . THAT song, also called In My Room. The one covered by dozens of bands, badly, because no matter how odd and strange Brian Wilson was, he sure wrote beautiful songs. 

But there HAD to be a song like the one I remembered! I heard it on the radio all the time, on CKLW ("Windsor and Detroit know/It's Radio Eight-Oh!"). I started googling "songs titled In My Room," "covers of In My Room", and finally, I got a bingo: a song by some boy group called the Walker Brothers. They had a few minor hits which I am too lazy to dig up. It was definitely the right song, but I wasn't able to listen to it all the way through because it just wasn't a guy song. It didn't sound right. The one I remembered was sung by a woman. So I had to keep digging. 

I dredged it up finally on one of those lists-of-songs pages, and even found some Youtube videos. Someone named Verdelle Smith had a modest hit with it, though I think it was the B-side of a record called Tar and Cement (which, in turn, was a knockoff of the Shangri La's You Can Never Go Home Any More).

Connie Stevens

Nancy Sinatra

Verdelle Smith

I prefer the Julie Rogers version, if only for the giant spider web on the wall and the elegant way she's dressed. I love '60s videos, usually filmed for TV variety shows (of which there were many). The song must have made some sort of minor splash for these high-end performers to do covers. But now and forever, the lyrics will bring to mind that godawful Vikki Carr song of howling female rage and loss.  

 

I tell myself what's done is done
I tell myself don't be a fool
Play the field have a lot of fun
It's easy when you play it cool

I tell myself don't be a chump
Who cares, let him stay away
That's when the phone rings and I jump
And as I grab the phone I pray

Let it please be him, oh dear God
It must be him or I shall die
Or I shall die

Oh hello, hello my dear God
It must be him but it's not him
And then I die
That's when I die

After a while, I'm myself again
I take the pieces off the floor
Put my heart on the shelf again
You'll never hurt me anymore

I'm not a puppet on a string
I'll find somebody else someday
That's when the phone rings, and once again
I start to pray


Let it please be him, oh dear God

must be him , it must be him

or I shall die, 

Or I shall die

Oh hello, hello my dear God
It must be him but it's not him
And then I die
Again I die

Southern Gothic: the news about Billie Joe

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day

I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay

And at dinner time we stopped and we walked back to the house to eat

And mama hollered at the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet"

And then she said she got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge

Today Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Papa said to mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas

"Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please

There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"

And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow

Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge

And now Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe

Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show

And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?

"I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know it just don't seem right

I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge

And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?

I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite

That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today

Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way

He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge

And she and Billie Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billie Joe

Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo

There was a virus going 'round, papa caught it and he died last Spring

And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything

And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge

And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

I think  more deep psychological meaning has been assigned to this song than (even) MacArthur Park or Inna Gadda Da Vida. I confess here and now that I like it, and that, upon reflection, it's not as schmaltzy as it may appear on the surface.

In only five spare verses, Bobbie Gentry opens up a world. That world is wounded, disaffected, and achingly lonely. The story is about a suicide, but it's also about the callousness of adults casually discussing a young man's death while they scarf down a typical Southern meal ("Pass the biscuits, please").

The food obviously means more to them than the boy, with one exception: a girl sitting at table unable to eat, trying to absorb the shock. Though she narrates the story, she is never named. The trauma and horror of the details accumulate bit by bit, along with her family's indifference towards the  tragedy. And then, of course, there are all those mysteries: who was Billie Joe McAllister, what relationship did he have with the girl, was he black, was he gay, did he make her pregnant? And (most importantly), what were she and Billie Joe throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Gentry, a Southerner from Mississippi who rebaptised  herself from her birth name Streeter (perhaps to distance herself from her po'-white-trash roots), doesn't explain a lot of things, and has even admitted she doesn't know all the details herself. Storytelling is the art of implication, leaving lots of space for the listener's interpretation.

A movie was later made about the story, solidifying some of the myths, and I think that spoiled it. Of course, in the movie it's all spelled out: Billie Joe was gay and jumped off the bridge out of sexual guilt. I hate it when someone comes along and plugs all the holes and spaces, usually with the most trite possibilities.

And then there are the "mystery verses". As I began to dig into the enigmatic, brilliantly-written lyrics, I discovered there was a so-called "seven-minute version" featuring only voice and acoustic guitar, which was later cut down to four minutes (still unprecedented in length, except perhaps for MacArthur Park) for radio play. Of course I couldn't find it, and it's doubtful it even exists. This version is tighter, and though the lines somehow fit into the sad, almost bluesy tune, many of them don't scan. This gives them a conversational rhythm that's eerily lifelike. It's one of those things that shouldn't work, but does. Obviously this song has been worked on and worked on, and yet the seams don't show.

I'm no Bobbie Gentry fan, and this genre doesn't interest me at all for the most part, but every time this song comes into my head it arrests my brain. So what was it: an aborted fetus, a wedding certificate, stolen cash, a Grammy award? This last tantalyzing detail is probably what secured the song as a timeless hit. (When asked what it was, Gentry was famously quoted as saying,"I don't know.")

There's a lot we don't know: if the family is black or white (unlikely they are black, because they seem to own their own spread and don't give the impression of being impoverished), whether or not the girl is pregnant (?) or just mad about the boy. Or if she even loves him. His supposed gayness comes out of left field: some say the ie spelling of his name (inexplicably changed for the movie) indicates his sexual orientation, though the fact it was recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a masculine name with an unconventional spelling, obscures that (rather stupid) possibility. Billie Jean King was yet to rise to ascendency, but Billie Joe, Betty Joe and Bobbie Joe were already fixtures on Petticoat Junction.The fact Gentry and one of the Bradley daughters have the same first name seems tremendously significant. (Just a coincidence? You decide.)

The song touches on various raw nerves of '60s pop culture: the angst and disaffection of youth (then called the "generation gap"), racial tension, poverty, social status, forbidden sexuality, and lyrics that you had to listen to over and over again and "figure out" (unlike Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Love in my Tummy and My Baby Does the Hanky Panky). Of course I looked for the seven-minute version with all those extra verses, and turned up only one image of a sheet of paper, a rough draft which may or may not be bona fide. Lots of old threads on message boards from 2007 ask the same questions and come up with all sorts of possibilities. Bobbie Gentry was smart not to answer them. Personally, I always thought Mama was trying to fix the girl up with that "that nice young preacher, Brother Taylor" - did she know more about her daughter's infatuation than she was letting on? Was she trying to get her mind off the whole sordid mess? At any rate, they've invited him for dinner, no doubt so they can throw pleasantries at each other with only passing reference to that unrepentent sinner, Billie Joe.

And that's all I have to say about it for this moment, but the more I listen to that lyric, the more I study it, the better it gets. You see, it shouldn't work - the lines have too many syllables - it's melodramatic and even depressing.  But as with Dionne Warwick's  Do You Know the Way to San Jose (which drew unprecedented numbers of people to the city, in spite of the fact that the song portrays it as a sinkhole of failed dreams), people thronged to Tallahatchie Bridge in the strangely-named town of Money, Mississippi. It was only a 20-foot drop, and I'm not at all sure that's enough to kill a person. But the bridge collapsed in 1972, an eerie thing. It had rotted away, obviously, or merely bucked under the weight of pop-culture legend.

Miscellany

Money Bridge Collapses, Greenwood Commonwealth, 06/20/1972

MONEY – The Tallahatchie River Bridge here collapsed between 11:30 and midnight Monday and presumably joined Billy Joe MacAllister in the muddy waters of the Tallahatchie.

Leflore County Deputy Sheriff Ricky Banks said he received a call from Sheriff Rufus Freeman about 12:15 a.m. today telling him the bridge had collapsed.

Leflore County Second District Supervisor Ray Tribble had called Sheriff Freeman earlier when two boys who had been fishing discovered the bridge had collapsed.

The two boys reportedly had gone upstream to fish and upon returning to Money found they couldn’t get over the collapsed span in the Tallahatchie River.

Tribble and his county road foreman Homer Hawkins then blocked the bridge off at the approaches on each side to prevent anyone from driving into the river.”

[Caption under photos]  BRIDGE OUT AT MONEY – The middle section of the Tallahatchie river bridge at Money tilted towards its upstream side as it collapsed Monday night. The steel suspension bridge was built in 1927. Staff Photos by Steve Bailey.

(Post-script. This now strikes me as a total crock. I mean  - look at the names! Sherriff Rufus Freeman is straight out of The Dukes of Hazzard. Ray Tribble - ? What can I say? Then we get to Homer Hawkins, and we KNOW we are in the territory of satire.)

Biographical tidbit about B. G. :

Of Portuguese descent, Gentry was born Roberta Streeter in Chickasaw County, MS, on July 27, 1944; her parents divorced shortly after her birth and she was raised in poverty on her grandparents' farm. After her grandmother traded one of the family's milk cows for a neighbor's piano, seven-year-old Bobbie composed her first song, "My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog," years later self-deprecatingly reprised in her nightclub act; at 13, she moved to Arcadia, CA, to live with her mother, soon beginning her performing career in local country clubs. The 1952 film Ruby Gentry lent the singer her stage surname.

POST-THOUGHTS: This post may have quite a few add-ons, despite the deceptively simple subject matter. I wrote earlier that the girl in the song sits there looking ghostly with shock. But how do we know how she looks? There is no mention at all of how she feels or reacts until the FOURTH verse, and even then, all we know is that she has no appetite. Her mother chides her for it, not so much because her child isn't eating but because all her cooking efforts are going to waste. And that is all we know about her reaction. There is no mention of grief. There is no mention of tears. Nothing! Just a mother getting on her kid's case for wasting food. It's shocking, when you really look at it, because all the rest of it, the assumption of a grief-stricken girl listening to the adults expressing their callous indifference to a tragedy, is imagined, inferred. It's what we don't know about her and about her relationship with Billie Joe that makes the song so compelling.

So how do we even know she loved him?

It's everything that is going on around the subject. Of course the adults aren't as indifferent as they may appear. They're keeping the subject at a distance because it's so horrific. When her brother starts to reminisce about Billie Joe and the playful, if rather disgusting incident at the Carrell County picture show, it's obvious the girl knew him, and her parents knew that she knew him.

Another layer? The stigma of suicide: "well, he done it to himself, didn't he?" is the unspoken subtext as they stuff themselves with cornbread and black-eyed peas. He should've acted like a man, faced up to his troubles, whatever they were.

The end of the song is so heartbreaking that I haven't even touched on it. It's the most masterful verse because of its Southern Gothic melancholy, worthy of passage in a  Tennessee Williams play. By the end of it, the girl is completely alone, idly tossing flowers over the side of that fatal bridge. Ironically, the last verse somehow echoes the terseness of her parents in its lack of emotion. She is simply stating the facts.

AND THIS IS THE LAST THING I WILL SAY. (Promise!) I found out in all my meanderings through the song and the history of the bridge that Money, Mississippi is where Emmett Till was brutally murdered, inspiring Bob Dylan to write one of his fieriest songs when he was only 20 years old. I can't quote it here because it's a subject unto itself. But Money, Mississippi strikes me as a bubbling, seething cauldron, a place where ignorance and evil ruled, and perhaps still rule. I would like to think we are making progress, that all the hard work of the '60s paid off. But these days, as we slouch toward Bethlehem or slide toward oblivion, I have so many doubts that I wonder if we're going to make it at all.

POST-POST. This is a summer rerun, but one that I like. Hell, I put hours into this thing, and did more than four people read it? Never mind. If I weren't in this to amuse myself, I would've been long gone by now. It's the laziest dank ditch days of summer, inescapably close and sticky, and while we're far from the fly-buzzing steaminess of Money, Mississippi, the house feels like it's underwater from humidity. A lawnmower leaked in the night, filling the house with toxic fumes that rose like a mushroom cloud to the upstairs bedrooms. Right now I am sticking to my chair. No matter how much summer may suck, and it sucks big-time, there's something that sucks even more: you know that all too soon it'll be over and you'll slide down the other side. So I thought this long, not-so-lazy piece might be appropriate.

Jacques Brel - "Le Moribond": or, lost in translation

Goodbye Emilio I like you very much
Goodbye Emilio I like you very much you know
We have sung about the same wine
We have sung of the same women
We have sung about the same miseries

Goodbye Emile I am going to die
It is hard to die in the springtime you know
But I leave the flowers and peace in my soul
And because I know you are as good as white bread
I know that you will take care of my wife

Chorus:

I want them to laugh, I want them to dance
I want them to have fun like crazy people
I want them to laugh I want them to dance
To amuse themselves like crazy when they put me in the hole

Goodbye priest I like you very much
Goodbye priest I like you very well you know
We did not always agree about views and we were not on the same path
But we were searching for the same port
Goodbye priest I am going to die
It is hard to die in the spring you know
I leave the flowers and the beauty, peace in my soul
And knowing that you are her confidant
I know that you will take care of my wife

Goodbye Antoine I did not like you very much
Goodbye Antwon I do not like you very much you know
And it’s killing me to die today knowing that you are still so alive
And yet still as solid as boredom
Goodbye Antoine I’m going to die
It’s hard to die in the spring you know
I leave the flowers and the beautiful peace in my soul
And because I know that you were her lover
I know that you will take care of my wife

Chorus

Goodbye my wife I love you very much
Goodbye my wife I love you very much you know
I must take the train for the good God
I’m taking the train that leaves before yours
But we all must take the trains that we can
Goodbye my wife I’m going to die
It is hard to die in the springtime you know
But I’m leaving flowers and my eyes are shut, my wife
And because I realize that they were shut often
I know that you will take care of my soul

"Seasons In The Sun"
(originally by Jacques Brel)

Goodbye to you my trusted friend
We've known each other since we were nine or ten
Together we've climbed hills and trees
Learned of love and ABCs
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees

Goodbye my friend, it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
Pretty girls are everywhere
Think of me and I'll be there

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the hills that we climbed
Were just seasons out of time

Goodbye papa, please pray for me
I was the black sheep of the family
You tried to teach me right from wrong
Too much wine and too much song
Wonder how I got along

Goodbye papa, it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
Little children everywhere
When you see them, I'll be there

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the wine and the song
Like the seasons, have all gone

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the wine and the song
Like the seasons, have all gone

Goodbye Michelle, my little one
You gave me love and helped me find the sun
And every time that I was down
You would always come around
And get my feet back on the ground

Goodbye Michelle, it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
With the flowers everywhere
I wish that we could both be there

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the stars we could reach
Were just starfish on the beach

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the stars we could reach
Were just starfish on the beach

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the wine and the song
Like the seasons, have all gone

All our lives we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the hills that we climbed
Were just seasons out of time

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun

And I would walk 500 miles

It took me a while to track this down. There's a story behind it. I first heard the song at the end of a movie called Benny and Joon. Though I had mixed feelings about the movie (in spite of Johnny Depp's shabby cuteness as a sort of faux silent movie mime), the song grabbed me, as how could it not? It's that kind of song.

But I didn't hear it much at all until a couple weeks ago, when I was at a dance recital. Well, all right, my granddaughter's dance recital. And this was the music to one of the dances, and for some reason, slam. Right in the gut. I just cried and blubbered through the whole thing.

I'm not sure what it is. I originally thought the singer was a woman. I know almost nothing about this group. I don't know if I want to compare this version with the original, or not.

Oh, all right.

Sweet America

Well I think it's time I'm leaving Oklahoma

There's 49 more ways to live my life

America, I'm sure that I don't know you

And I do believe you're worth another try

Sweet America, eulogize America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

Sweet America, sing about America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

Some of you say you're fourth generation

Some of you say you're part Cherokee

America, to me I see you naked

While others see just what they want to see

Sweet America, eulogize America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

Sweet America, sing about America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

I love California

But I'm watching it die

I'm watching it die

Sweet America, eulogize America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

Sweet America, sing about America

Then fall down on your knees and cry

Sweet America, eulogize America

Sing about America, sweet America

Sweet America, eulogize America

Sing about America, sweet America

This isn't the version I wanted to post, but the one I heard in my head simply wasn't available. It was by Barry Greenfield, but a much more luxe version with the first few notes of the American national anthem played on chimes. I woke up this morning with these lines in my head:

I love California

But I'm watching it die

I'm watching it die

Then I realized that, like Save the Country by Laura Nyro/The Fifth Dimension, it was a perfect anthem for these times. These melancholy, frightening times. This was written by an Englishman, I think - haven't had time to research it, there are so many miseries to attend to! So much trauma. This morning I asked myself, why do I feel this weird elation, almost euphoria sometimes? Then it came to me: I'm in crisis mode. I do great in a crisis, lousy all the rest of the time. Adrenaline mobilizes, "fight" supercedes "flight" - but only for a while. Those resources are only to be pulled out and used when they absolutely must.

I've never loved America, but I AM watching it die. And there does not seem to be one damn thing I can do about it. 

Niki Hoeky: get hip to the cogitation, ASSHOLES!

Way down Louisiana

Down in Cajun land

Folks got something goin'

Goes something like

Care folk a-t-tootsie

I wants to t'tie ya puppe'tame me

Dim ya on a scoobydoo

I dig you on'a scuba-die
I oh boo-ga-foo you

You ooh boog-a-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

Golly, squally miss Molly

Everything's copesetic now

Loog-a-boo, look at you

What I'd like to do to you girl

You woka-b-boo-you

You oh boog-a-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee
Mmmmm

Niki, Niki, Niki Hoeky

Pappy's doing time in the pokey

Your sister's on a trip

Your momma got hip

Little girl you're lookin' ok

You ooh boog-a-boo you

You ooh boog-a-boo you

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

(musical interlude with humming)

You oh boo-ka-boo you

You oh boo-ka-boo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

Listen to me now
Niki, Niki, Niki Hoeky

Your pappy's doing time in the pokey

Your sister's on a trip

Your momma got hip

Little girl you're lookin' ok

You oh boog-a-boo you

You oh boog-a-foo you, little girl

Get hip to the cogitation of the boolawee

I talk about you boo-la
(mm-mm-mm)
Come on I talk about you wisssh.
I talk about you boo-la
Talk about you wisssh.

NOTE. I sort of get this. And I'm sort of upset about it. It's the usual thing. When I try to find the lyrics to any popular song, then compare it to the actual (recorded) song, the internet version is always wildly wrong.

Well, no. Lamely wrong. The most unimaginitive reduction of a spicy pun into a plodding non-metaphor, because, gee, we just don't GET what he was trying to say here! It doesn't make sense, see. So this is sort of what he might of/ought to have said.

The weird thing is, these mondegreens (misheard lyrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen) are exactly the same on every lyric site. They do not come from the original, published sheet music. They can't. Someone listens to the song and transcribes it and writes down what they think it might be. If it doesn't make sense to them, they make something up.

This dulls down the brilliance or at least the spark of the original song, irons out any irony and removes all those pesky puns.

How this-all started was with something I saw on Facebook - I barely pay attention on Facebook any more, it's like filing my nails or eating a Popsicle, just something to do. It was a post that was sort of  like "do you like new ideas? Do you love baking, walking dogs, picking your nose?" It was supposed to be a satiric take on those old ads to recruit dazzling original thinkers. A line jumped into my head, something I had not thought about since I was thirteen years old:

Get hip to the cogitation.

It came from a song, of course. From way back. But I could only remember bits of it, and not the title.

I followed it backwards by googling just that line, and got nothing at first. Then I added "your father's doing time in the pokey." Slowly it began to resolve into a recognizable song.

I found the lyrics on umpteen lyric sites, in fact, and they all said the same thing.

Niki, niki, niki, hoeky. Pappy's doing time in the pokey. Your mama died hip, your sister's on a trip.

Etc. etc., then the line:

Get hip to the CONSULTATION.

I couldn't believe it was consultation. Had I been wrong all those years? I found the original recording by P. J. Proby on YouTube, and listened for it.

NO

NO

NO

NO, the word was not, never was, never would be, no matter WHO recorded it (and a lot of people did after P. J. Proby), "consultation". Though it was hard to make out, there was no "s" sound anywhere in the word. It was repeated several times. It was "cogitation". It was, and it is.

So why  -

Every site you go on will say the same thing. Consultation. These things multiply, they divide, they seethe like gunky slimy pools of frog's eggs. Identical, WRONG tadpoles hatch out and turn into WRONG frogs who then lay the WRONG eggs.

Wrong.

All I can think of is that someone mondegreened the lyrics decades ago, then they somehow got glommed on to everyone's lyric site so that they would all be wrong in exactly the same (obnoxious, insulting, STUPID) way.

But we fixed it, I think. Not that anybody cares! The transcribed lyric for this was just so riddled with mistakes that I had to go over it line by line, playing the recording 8 or 9 times to make "corrections" to some sort of unintelligible patios, and then giving up.

I can't find anything about the provenance of this song. I can't, and I don't want to look at it any more. These could be Cajun-isms, they could, because Cajun is a language unto itself, but if it were Cajun I think I'd see more French mixed in with it. It's not unlike Acadian, the Canadian version, and at one point Cajuns and Acadians were one people. One went north, one went south, one went over the cuckoo's nest.

But I happen to know - I'd stake my very life on it - that no one has ever been hip to the CONSULTATION. That idea is now gasping its last breath while it writhes in the dust.

POST-BLOG COGITATION (NOT consultation), or at least a comparison. I tried to find an "authentic Cajun song", that is, without knocking my brains out, and thought of Doug Kershaw, who really was (is?) Cajun and had a few hits. I don't remember much about those songs, so googled the lyrics for the best-known one, looking for either French or the sort of gibberish that appeared in Niki Niki Hoeky.

Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo
Fell in love at the Fais Do Do
The pop was cold and the coffee chaud
For Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo

Diggy Diggy La and Diggy Diggy Lo
Everyone knows he was her beau
No other girl could ever show
So much love for Diggy Diggy Lo

That's the place they find romance
Where they do the Cajun dance
Steal a kiss with every chance
Show their love with every glance

Ah, yeah, no, I don't see any. The only "Cajunisms" are Fais Do Do (which is literally translated, if I remember my Grade 7 French, as "go to sleep"), "chaud" to rhyme with "do do", and "pop", the Canadian version of "soda". This might have some dim, far-gone Acadian origin, but I doubt it because there was no pop back in 1743.

Not much frazzlin' Cajun spice THERE, is there, boys and girls?

So on to that other one, the one Hank Williams did:

Well, goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go to pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

Yeah, jambalaya and a crawfish pie and filé gumbo
'Cause tonight, I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
You pick guitar, you fill fruit jar and be gay-o
'Cause I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

Well, Thibadaux, well, Fontaineaux, the place is buzzin'
And kinfolks come to see Yvonne by the dozen
You dress in style, you go hog wild and be gay-o
'Cause I am a son of a gun, we gonna have big fun on the bayou

It's a little bit Cajun/Acadian. "Pole the pirogue" sounds like some Polish guy eating perogies, but then I could have my ethnicity wrong. More likely, it refers to a sort of pole barge, like a gondola. Yvonne, yeah, she's French. File gumbo, cher amio, all the other family names - and that's about it, no fancy stuff, no verbal yodelling or Golly, squally, miss Molly. So maybe Niki Hoeky is just a sort of nonsense rhyme, the sort of thing we clapped to in school, the cum-la, cum-la, cum-la feast-a that I was astonished to find on YouTube.

P. S. There are even more versions. I just found out. Burton Cummings pronounces it "condensation", whereas various Motown versions sound more like "conversation", and I've also heard "consolation". But NOBODY says "consultation".

(next day) OH WAIT! There's more.

Another contender for this mystery word is "conflagration", a supposed reference to lighting a joint. So now we've got it down to SIX choices, one of which is definitely wrong:

Cogitation
Condensation
Conversation
Consolation
Conflagration
(and, the ever-wrong) Consultation

Pick one. You might as well do it blindfolded. But when I hear it, I STILL hear "cogitation".

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