From the recording Wall Dogs
Arnold’s Trip
Thomm remembered John Hartford talking about an annual trip Arnold Schultz would take to winter in New Orleans sometime after the turn of the century; Erika Brady characterizes this trip as most likely apocryphal in her article “Contested Origins: Arnold Schultz and the Music of Western Kentucky” in Diane Pecknold’s Hidden in the Mix: The African-American Presence in Country Music (2013), but the thought of one of the most celebrated musicians of the foggy early years of Country Music making such a journey was enough to produce this song.
Lyrics
Arnold’s Trip
(© 2024, Tim Stafford, Thomm Jutz, Daniel House Music, BMI; Thommsongs SESAC admin. Blue Water)
Walking down the streets of Rosine
Humming a little tune
Tipping his hat to the ladies
Knowing he'll be playing soon
For a dance beneath the harvest moon
Folks all a-hooting and hollering
Sitting on the window sills
Drinking in the women and whiskey
Living for the high of the thrill
Couldn’t hardly get their fill
Steaming down the old Ohio
On a riverboat to New Orleans
Coming ashore in Memphis
Finest place you've ever seen
cigarettes and Dixie peach pomade
Smelling like the sweetest sin
Nothing like Ohio county
everybody looked like him
Arnold knew he fit right in
That piano player's striding so easy
And he never says a doggone word
Connecting all the chords together
Sounding like a beautiful bird
Like nothing that he’d ever heard
The Jug bands all were marching
playing down in Handy Park
Following the hoodoo doctor
Man, those guys were groovin’ hard
Lady grabbed him by the neck and
Said honey won’t you come on now?
He didn’t know just what to say but
It beat the hell out of a mule and plow
Headed back north up the river
playing on the deck all day
Augmented chords then diminished
Runnin up the neck all the way
A brand new style to play
They heard his guitar a-coming
A way out among the trees
Sounds like Arnold's on his way now
Playing with the greatest of ease
Soon he's gone like the summer breeze