niemiecki request for "Feather Bed"
Vasha
on 20 maj 2025 - 04:13 
Freigeist Wie man die klagende Laute "deutsch" schreiben soll, weiss ich nicht. Es war schon schwierig genug, im englischen Text davon eine Idee zu geben.
Feather Bed
- 1. the Civil War, so, before Emancipation
- 2. was happy to have even cornhusks and straw to sleep on
- 3. To be "plumb fool about" something means to be so enthusiastic about it that you make a fool of yourself
- 4. I'm going to be sent to prison.
- 5. going to
- 6. Compare commoner expressions such as "pitching a fit" and "rearing back" or "raring for a fight"
- 7. False start, as Cannon mistakenly begins the second half of a previous verse. He corrects himself halfway through the line and the band keeps right up.
- 8. The transcription of this phrase is very uncertain
- 9. Phrase from a dance song whose tune is similar to this one
Song details
Vasha
Gus Cannon, vocal, banjo, and jug; Noah Lewis, harmonica; Elijah Avery, guitar.
This recording gained fame in the mid-20th century by being included in the Anthology of American Folk Music that had an outsize influence on the folk revival.
"Feather Bed" is a song with a complicated history behind it, drawing on musical traditions back into the 19th century -- it is actually woven together from a variety of source material (at least three: the first verse, the last one, and the loose narrative in between). The same fluid compositional technique can be heard in some other recordings of rural Black musicians. I don't know of a scholarly article that's been written about "Feather Bed" but I bet there is one.
Lyrics transcription by me, with considerable help from the many other attempts that have been made to decipher it over the years.
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