I was singing this song when I was old enough to speak. I grew up listening to blues and folk music like this. My mother also knew Arlo and a handful of other musicians of her time who studied at the Old Town School of Folk Music where she went to school in Chicago, Illinois. Hence, I feel the need to clarify that Arlo he did not write the lyrics to this song. The songwriter and musician, Steve Goodman, who died in November of 1984 of Leukemia (my mother remembers this vividly because she was four months pregnant with me), actually wrote the song, and Arlo first performed and made the song famous. When Steve Goodman began to make a name for himself, he sang his own song.