Transcribed from vocals by Ethel Waters, recorded
3/1923.
From Ethel
Waters 1921 - 1923, The Chronogical Classics, vol. 796.
Spoken: Hello, folks, at last I'm back again!
I'm going back to a Tennessee town,
Back on a visit to my coffee brown,
'Way up the river
We will row,
Up and down the levee,
We will go!
I've got some baby waiting for me,
My brown baby in old Tennessee,
When he starts to loving,
That's when he finds,
I'm just crazy about that baby
of mine!
Do you suppose I ever will
know,
Brown baby!
What he has got
That makes me love him so?
Brown baby!
What about his smile
That almost gets me wild?
He makes a grown-up woman act just
like a child;
Brown baby,
Here in old Tennessee!
Now, he don't use no poor row [?]
No farmer's skin's so tan,
But what he's got is all his own,
And he's only got the best;
His eyes are just like midnight,
Best-looking man in town,
And I'll tell you why I'm crazy
About my country brown.
But, do you suppose I ever will
know,
Brown baby!
What he has got
That makes me love him so?
Oh, brown baby!
What about his smile
That almost gets me wild?
He makes a grown-up woman act just
like a child;
Brown baby, baby!
From old Tennessee.
Published 7/20/99.
Ethel Waters starred in both the stage and film version
of Cabin
in the Sky. The movie also starred Lena Horne and Eddie "Rochester"
Anderson. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington had minor roles. Waters commented
in her remarkable autobiography, His
Eye is on the Sparrow, that she didn't enjoy making the movie --
too much behind-the-scenes back-biting.
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