Oh! Didn't He Ramble Lyrics

Didn’t he ramble, he rambled,
Rambled all around, in and out the town,
Didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled till the butchers cut him down.

The band would start playing.

Didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled all around, in and out the town,
Oh, didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled till the butchers cut him down.

That would be the last of the dead man, he’s gone. And
everybody came back home and they believed truly to
stick right close to the Bible. That means rejoice at
the death and cry at the birth. New Orleans sticks
close to the — to the Scripture.

What would happen on the way home, though, with those
baseball bats?

Well, on the way home, everything was sad when they’d
be playing the dead march. There would be no fights, no
trouble. But on the way back, they had boundary lines.
The boys had knives, baseball bats, pickaxes, shovel
handles, axe handles — everything in the form that they
was supposed to try to win a battle. When they got to
a, a dividing line, which was not supposed to be their
district, they’d better not cross. If they do, they
would be beaten up. And sometimes they were beaten up
so bad that they had to go into the hospital. That’s
the way it always ended in New Orleans.

Now the boys from then on — the band would always figure on a big night, because they had some money. It
wasn’t very much, ‘cause the band men didn’t make very
much in New Orleans. The only musicians that made real
money was the piano players. The other fellows, they —
a lot of times, they’d work for a dollar a night. Maybe
a funeral pr . . . procession like that would, would
maybe be two dollars or two dollars and a half. So they
had to make the best of it that way. So that was always
the end of a perfect death.

[clears throat]

It must . . .

Er, jazz started in New Orleans. And this, er, “Tiger
Rag” happened to be transformed from an old quadrille
that was in many different tempos. And I’ll, no doubt,
give you an idea how it went. This was the
introduction, meaning that everyone was supposed to get
their partners.

Tiger Rag [introduction]

“Get your partners, everybody, get your partners.” And
people would be rushing around the hall getting their
partners. It maybe — have maybe five minutes lapsed
between that time — and, of course, they’d start it
over again and that was the first part of it.

And the next strain would be a waltz strain, I believe.

That would be the waltz strain.

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