This is me, Jack Elliott here,
picking my guitar.
Guitar and me,
just the two of us.
And then there's two more,
a banjo and my wife.
And we're kind of singing our way around the world.
And
I'll be singing a couple of songs to you
while we'll be passing through here.
This is the Talkin' Columbia Blues and Woody Guthrie wrote it.
Woody Guthrie,
America's greatest contemporary folk ballad writer,
composer,
and singer and player.
I was down along the river just sitting on a
rock looking at the boats in the Bonneville
Lock and the gate swings open,
the boat sails in,
toots the whistles,
he's gone again,
gasoline
going up and wheat coming down.
Filled up my half-broom,
drunk a little taste,
I thought about a river just going away,
still
thought about the dust,
thought about the sand,
I thought about the people and thought
about the land.
Running around all over creation,
just looking for some kind of a little place.
Pulled out my pencil and I scribbled this song,
I figured all them salmon just couldn't
be wrong,
them salmon fished are mighty shrewd,
they got senators and politicians too,
just
like a president.
Run every four years.
One of them folks back east are doing a lot of talking,
some of them's walking and some
of them's squawking,
but they just didn't know they were all synapse.
Salmon,
that's
a good river.
You just watch this river and pretty
soon everybody's gonna be changing
their tune,
the big Grand Coulee and the Bonneville Dam
and around a thousand factories for Uncle
Sam and everybody else in the world.
Making everything from sewing machines to atomic
bedrooms and plastic,
everything's gonna be made out of plastic.
Uncle Sam needs wool,
Uncle Sam needs wheat,
Uncle Sam needs houses and stuff to eat,
Uncle Sam needs water and power dams,
Uncle Sam needs people and the people
need land.
Don't like dictators,
none much myself,
but I think the whole country ought
to be run by electricity.