"...and it looks like the old man's getting on"

The Annotated "Brown-Eyed Women"

An installment in The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.
By David Dodd

Copyright notice
"Brown-Eyed Women"
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission

Gone are the days when the ox fall down
he'd take up the yoke and plow the fields around
Gone are the days when the ladies said "please,
gently Jack Jones won't you come to me?"

Brown eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man's getting on

In 1920 when he stepped to the bar
he drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar
In 1930 when the Wall caved in
he paid his way selling red eye gin

Brown eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man's getting on

Delilah Jones was the mother of twins
two times over and the rest was sins
Raised eight boys, only I turned bad
Didn't get the lickings that the other ones had

Brown eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man's getting on

Tumble down shack in Bigfoot County
Snowed so hard that the roof caved in
Delilah Jones went to meet her God
and the old man never was the same again

Brown eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man's getting on

Daddy made whiskey and he made it well
Cost two dollars and it burned like hell
I cut hick'ry to fire the still
Drink down a bottle and you're ready to kill

Brown eyed women and red grenadine
the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down
and it looks like the old man's getting on


"Brown-Eyed Women"

Musical details: Recorded on

First performance: August 23, 1971 at the Auditorium Theater, Chicago. It appeared in the first set, between "Beat It On Down the Line" and "Me and My Uncle." It's been a regular in the repertoire ever since.

There has long been confusion over the song's title. Hunter, in A Box of Rain, titles it "Brown-Eyed Women," while the listing on the cover of Europe '72 calls it "Brown-Eyed Woman." According to DeadBase VIII:

"Willy Legate of the Grateful Dead Archives kindly informed us that although the title was copyrighted as Brown-eyed Woman (that's how it appears on the album and/or songbook), Robert Hunter actually wrote and intended it to be Brown-eyed Women, the way Jerry Garcia really sings it. This is a classic case of a typographical error."--p. vii.

1920 when he stepped to the bar

A reference to Prohibition, which lasted from the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 to the passage of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th, in 1933.

1930 when the Wall caved in

A reference to the Wall St. crash of 1929.

Red-eye

"Redeye: n. 1. Whisky of very poor quality. In full redeye whisky. ... 1819 QUITMAN in Claiborne Life Quitman I. 42 Whiting and I had a treat to 'red-eye,' or 'rot-gut,' as whiskey is here [Ky.] called." -- Dictionary of Americanisms.

Bigfoot County

There is no Bigfoot County in the United States. The closest is a town named Bigfoot in Texas.

Follow this link for more information about the mythical Bigfoot.

And here's a note from a reader:

Subject: brown-eyed women-bigfoot county
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 20:45:42 -0800
From: doug shipley

Hello David,

A fellow traveler turned me on to this cool project and I thought I'd send you my interpretation of the line "tumbledown shack in Bigfoot County". I've always taken that to be the nick name of the county just south of my own Jackson Co. on the California/Oregon border- Del Norte or Humbolt County being popular places where Bigfoot was seen in the early days of timber and mining activity . Plus when it snows there it dumps.

Brown-eyed Women is one of my favorite songs, it reminds me of my father, I tend to cry every time I hear it.

Doug


Cost two dollars

Compare the folksong "Moonshiner", which has the line:
"I'll make you one gallon for a two-dollar bill."
--Folksinger's Wordbook, p. 229.
keywords: @whiskey, @God
DeadBase code: [BEWO]
First posted: May 10, 1995
Last revised: September 17, 2003