The Blue-Tail Fly

(a.k.a Jimmy Crack Corn)

Words & Music:

Traditional American

 

     F                              C               G       G7

When I was young, I used to wait on master and hand him his plate.

    F                                   G7             C

And pass the bottle when he got dry and brush away the blue-tail fly.

 

CHORUS:

C                    G7

Jimmy crack corn and I don't  care.

                     C

Jimmy crack corn and I don't  care.

C7                   F

Jimmy crack corn and I don't  care.

   G7             C

My master's gone away.

 

And when he'd ride in the afternoon,

I'd follow after with a hickory broom.

The pony being rather shy when bitten by the blue-tail fly.

 

CHORUS:

 

One day he rode around the farm, the flies so numerous they did swarm.

One chanced to bite him on the thigh, the devil take the blue-tail fly.

 

CHORUS:

 

The pony run, he jump, he pitch; he threw my master in a ditch.

He died and the jury wondered why; the verdict was the blue-tail fly.

 

CHORUS:

 

They buried him 'neath a 'simmon tree, his epitaph is there to see,

Beneath this stone he's forced to lie, a victim of the blue-tail fly.

 

CHORUS: