Dupree, we got hangin’ for you,
Sorry, Dupree, we got to hang po’ you.”
They try to take him to Milledgeville,
Lawd, tried to take him to Milledgeville,
Put him in a orphans’ home,
Lawd, to keep him out of jail.
A popular bad man song of many versions is the Travelin’ Man. No one has ever outdistanced him. A long story, rapidly moving, miraculously achieving, triumphantly ending, it represents jazz song, phonograph record, banjo ballad, quartet favorite, although it is not easy to capture. Three versions have been found in the actual singing, one by a quartet which came to Dayton, Tennessee, to help entertain the evolution mongers; another by Kid Ellis, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, himself a professed traveling man; a third by a North Carolina Negro youth who had, however, migrated to Pennsylvania and returned after traveling in seven or eight other states of the union. The South Carolina version, which is given here, is of the Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ type of vaudeville and ballad mixture.
Travelin’ Man
Now I jus’ wanna tell you ’bout travelin’ man,
His home was in Tennessee;