Lyrics Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks

By The People

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