Van Dyke Parks – By The People lyrics

Strike up the band brother
Hand me another bowl of your soul
Brother has a long way to go
Maybe baby should know
His cotton mouth is too slow
For the song of the forgotten South
Just don't hang us up here

Step by step by
Please though proletarian am I
By chance am you
Wine get out the way of the darkies
You'd better hustle up a storm
To sing this Caucasian lullaby
Sleep oh my darling now sleep
Draw freehand over Iron Curtain
Stalk up on the trim bamboo
To footridge the bullrushes
Certain to know law
American express

No Caucasian flair
For flim-flam will do
Step by please step by
Weigh the small advance
There is still a chance

Let's assume that we form a company men
No mention should the pass in revue of the show
Just understand that I prefer to be dead than red white
Or blue as I write sturdy crew
As you view these few Russians
Whose true dawn came to view long ago
So I think that you'd better strike up the band brother
Hand me another bowl of your soul
The song of the forgotten South
Just don't hang us up here

Here the unknown is at hand
And not far from my heel
A tarbaby feel for the Czar
For those who are lonely well
The Black sea is callin
Georgia's Stalin has fallen
So you all come here
We now are near to the end
If you stay with the show say
We all had to go to hasten to jar
The few nations too far gone to step by