More Civil War-related:
(The melodies do a lot for all of them, but especially for the last one.)
Two Soldiers
He was just a blue-eyed Boston boy,
His voice was low with pain.
"I’ll do your bidding, comrade mine,
If I ride back again.
But if you ride back and I am dead,
You’ll do as much for me.
My mother, you know, must hear the news,
So write to her tenderly.
“She’s waiting at home like a patient saint,
Her fond face pale with woe.
Her heart will be broken when I am gone,
I’ll see her soon, I know.”
Just then the order came to charge,
For an instant hand touched hand.
They both said, “Aye,” then off they rode,
That brave and devoted band.
Straight was the course to the top of the hill,
The rebels they shot and shelled,
Plowed furrows of death through the toiling ranks,
And guarded them as they fell.
There soon came a horrible dying yell
From heights they could not gain,
And those whom doom and death had spared
Rode slowly back again.
But among the dead that were left on the hill
Was the boy with the curly hair.
The tall dark man who rode by his side
Lay dead beside him there.
There’s no one to write to the blue-eyed girl
The words that her lover had said.
And Mother, you know is a-waiting her boy,
And she’ll only know he’s dead.
She’ll only know he’s dead.
Atlanta is Burning
Two years we’ve been fighting, though it seems like a hundred
Away to the south there’s a home I once knew
Where my loved ones are waiting for a word from the Captain
That the battles have ended for the gray and the blue
I left dear old Georgia on the first day of April
The grass in the valley was just turning green
I married dear Sally just a week before leaving
We now have a baby that I’ve never seen
She wrote me a letter that told of our baby
He’s just like his daddy is the words that it said
That was so long now that is seems like forever
And Lord I’m so homesick I wish I was dead
Atlanta is burning, the horizon is flaming
The thunder of canons in the distance I hear
I think of my Sally and the son that she gave me
I wish I could see her and the baby so dear
A bullet has found me, and the darkness is falling
The pain is unreal and my body so weak
The Captain is calling, but I cannot answer
My thoughts wander southward as I go to sleep
Greycoat Soldiers (Norman Blake)
Where the cold, clear mountain spring did roll
The green beech tree hung 'cross the road
Iron-rimmed wagons caught the sun
Back in the year of '61
Now Sherman’s army marched around
In '64 they burned Georgia down
Setting wings to the feet
Of every living soul they’d meet
Chorus
Greycoat Soldiers have gone
Marching in a ragged war
Young wives and babies cry alone
For fathers, that come no more.
Well, they tore up rails, and they wrecked the bridge
By that hill called Mission Ridge
Hell it raged for days and nights
An end it seemed was not in sight
Well, they loaded up a cannon with nails and chains
The noise would drive a man insane.
Rifles rang sharp and loud
In that battle up above the clouds
Chorus
Now they’re all gone the the rocks and the rills
And the green graveyard up on the hill
And no one does recall the day
Corporal Johnson rode away
And the cast iron markers they stand there
Guarding the battleground with care
Cannons rest all in a row
Prepared to meet some ghostly foe
Chorus
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis may be the saddest song I’ve ever heard. “Charlie I’m pregnant. . .” is the first line of the song. A soldier’s things; Heart of Saturday night; Better off without a wife; the list goes on and on. As one of the kids from Popcorn Behavior said, “Tom Waits has made an art of making beautiful music from ugly parts.”