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---With Bruce Molsky (banjo)
I learned “Whiskey Seller” from Tom Paley’s 1962 recording with the New Lost City Ramblers. Tom thinks he learned the song from his late band-mate, Mike Seeger. Mike would have learned it from a Library of Congress field recording of southern-Indiana fiddler and singer John Collier, made by Alan Lomax in 1938.
Collier was an interesting character. Lomax described him in his notes as “a wizened fellow of about forty years” who had traveled professionally with an itinerant medicine show for most of his adult life. I mention him here because individuals like Collier, who never recorded commercially, had much to do with shifting tastes in rural America, away from the traditional ballads and age-old hymns that predominated when Cecil Sharpe combed the mountains for songs, a generation earlier. It is that mix of folk and cosmopolitan influences, which they helped to foster, that, in my mind, partly defines “old-time” music.
Though Collier had acquired “Whiskey Seller” as a child from his uncle, he had few real “folk” songs in his songbag, preferring either comic or sentimental numbers, better suited to his performing metier.
Tom stayed true to Collier’s version in his own recording with the Ramblers. My version follows Tom’s more than otherwise, with some mingling of words from a variant in Vance Randolph's Ozark Folk Songs (1946-1950).
Bruce Molsky accompanies me on banjo.
lyrics
Of all the crimes that ever has been,
Selling whiskey is the greatest sin.
It causes more misery, pain and woe
Than any other crime I know.
So, get out of the way you whiskey seller.
You’ve ruined many of a clever fellow.
It causes the rich man to lose his store.
It cause him to beg from door to door.
It causes his wife and children to moan,
Because they have no home of their own.
So, get out of the way….
It causes the strong man to lose his strength,
And throws him in the mud at length.
And there he’s left to curse and roll,
As if he cared not for his soul.
So, get out of the way….
It causes the statesman to lose his brain,
And fills his head with aching pain.
And ofttimes in the ruts is found,
A-feeling upward for the ground.
So, get out of the way….
It causes the children’s bitter cries,
And tears to gush from their mother’s eyes.
It causes them to cry for bread,
And hungry they are then to bed.
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