Tag: Jim Stafford

Jim Stafford – Swamp Witch

Since it is Halloween I thought I would post this song by Jim Stafford. It reached #39 in the Billboard 100 and #46 in Canada in 1973. My sister had this single but to this six-year-old it was scary. The song described a town by the bayou with an uneasy relationship with the local Witch…which seems to be a prerequisite of a town near the bayou.

The town gets hit with a plague and the Witch (Hattie) helps the town out but not before they all thought Hattie caused the plague to begin with… She cures them and after that, they decide to fetch her from the woods…bad idea.

I think the lesson here is…leave well enough alone.

Swamp Witch

Black water Hattie lived back in the swamp
Where the strange green reptiles crawl
Snakes hang thick from the cypress trees
Like sausage on a smokehouse wall
Where the swamp is alive with a thousand eyes
An’ all of them watching you
Stay off the track to Hattie’s Shack in the back of the Black Bayou

Way up the road from Hattie’s Shack
Lies a sleepy little Okeechobee town
Talk of swamp witch Hattie lock you in when the sun go down
Rumors of what she’d done, rumors of what she’d do
Kept folks off the track of hattie’s shack
In the back of the Black Bayou

One day brought the rain and the rain stayed on
And the swamp water overflowed
Mosquitoes and the fever grabbed the town like a fist
Doctor Jackson was the first to go
Some say the plague was brought by Hattie
There was talk of a hang’n too
But the talk got shackled by the howls and the cackles
From the bowels of the Black bayou

Early one morn ‘tween dark and dawn when shadows filled the sky
There came an unseen caller on a town where hope run dry
In the square there was found a big black round
Vat full of gurgling brew
Whispering sounds as the folk gathered round
“It came from the Black Bayou”

There ain’t much pride when you’re trapped inside
A slowly sink’n ship
Scooped up the liquid deep and green
And the whole town took a sip
Fever went away and the very next day the skies again were blue
Let’s thank old Hattie for sav’n our town
We’ll fetch her from the Black Bayou

Party of ten of the town’s best men headed for Hattie’s Shack
Said Swamp Witch magic was useful and good
And they’re gonna bring Hattie back
Never found Hattie and they never found the shack
And they never made a trip back in
‘Twas a parchment note they found tacked to a stump
Said don’t come look’n again

A Novelty Song from the 70s – Wildwood Weed

I usually don’t post novelty songs, but I grew up with this one. It still makes me laugh to this day and contains one of my favorite lines, Take a trip and never leave the farm.

This song made me laugh as a kid. It’s about as corny as you can get but fun all the same. Jim Stafford had some novelty hits. His prime was 1973-1974. I had in my possession (from my sister) three of his hits. The Wildwood Weed, Swamp Witch, and his biggest hit, “Spiders and Snakes.”

It was a left-field slice of Southern-fried pop comedy that somehow crashed the charts in the middle of an era dominated by singer-songwriters and serious rock men. Now let’s be clear: “Wildwood Weed” isn’t a song so much as a story, a little slice of country funk narrated by a hayseed philosopher who sounds like he might’ve just rolled off the porch with a mason jar in hand. Over a shuffling, easygoing country-blues vamp, Stafford drawls out the tale of two good ol’ boys who discover a mysterious plant growing in the fields. They dry it, smoke it, and before long they’re laughing, dancing, and finding themselves “sittin’ on that sack of seeds.”

Jim has a sense of humor.

It didn’t take a genius to know what Wildwood Weed was about but the first time I heard it as an eight-year-old, an older neighbor had to tell me about it. It peaked at #7 on the Billboard charts. It actually made it to #57 on the country charts, which surprises me, knowing how conservative country was at that time.

Wildwood Weed
Jim Stafford

The wildwood flower grew wild on the farm,
And we never knowed what it was called.
Some said it was a flower and some said it was weed,
I never gave it much thought ……
One day I was out there talking to my brother,
Reached down for a weed to chew on,
Things got fuzzy and things got blurry,
And then everything was gone!
Didn’t know what happened,
But I knew it beat the hell out of sniffin’ burlap.

I come to and my brother was there,
And he said, What’s wrong with your eyes?
I said, I don’t know, I was chewing on a weed.
He said, Let me give it a try.
We spent the rest of that day and most of that night,
Trying to find my brother, Bill.
Caught up with him, ’bout six o’clock the next morning,
Naked, swinging on the wind mill!
He said he flew up there.
I had to fly up there and bring him down,
He was about half crazy …..

The very next day we picked a bunch of them weeds,
And put ’em in the sun to dry.
Then we mashed ’em up and chopped ’em up,
And put ’em in the corncob pipe.
Smokin’ that wildwood flower got to be a habit,
We didn’t see no harm.
We thought it was kind of handy,
Take a trip and never leave the farm!

All good things gotta come to an end,
And it’s the same with the wildwood weed.
One day this feller from Washington came by,
And he spied it and turned white as a sheet.
Then they dug and they burned,
And they burned and they dug,
And they killed all our cute little weeds.
Then they drove away,
We just smiled and waved ……….
Sittin’ there on that sack of seeds!

Y’all come back now, hear?