"Say you see that gal walkin down the street
Boom Boom - better leave her alone!"
Earliest I can recall hearing him singing was in the barn, doing chores, and I was already uncomfortable with the idea that boys had to be told to leave a girl alone. Maybe 4 or 5? I was allowed to roam freely as a toddler, and had overheard a lot, since adults assumed I wasn't paying attention.
"She got hair like a Jezebel, teeth like a pearl.
Oh my golly, she's a gift to the world!"
My dad & I had a pretty solid agreement to disagree on certain subjects; racist generalizations and stereotyping was one we both couldn't let go of, but fortunately still engaged cordially. I have no idea how many times I called him on this last part. There was a second verse when I was small, but he stopped singing that when he realized I had learned the first one.
"She's a one-black, a-two-black, a genuine shoe-black
Chocolate to the bone!
You better leave her alone."
A very catchy jazz melody, finger-snapping rhythm, immediately memorable - of course I learned it.
I didn't sing it for many years, because of the connections to my father's racism.
Then I sang it to Mikey Seeger one night, sat up and walked him through it so he could write it down and work out tab. (He was convinced that we were cousins, and often talked with me about my father's connections to the Adams', the Robertson's, Bascom Lamar, etc.) Mike also confirmed for me what I'd suspected, that the song had more in common with West African music than anything a white southerner might have created. It had never occurred to me to ask, since I assumed it was written and intended as a taunt, sung between white boys.
Another layer of memories arose about the conversations I had with Mikey - late at night at music festivals, once an all-night dance, I think even at Black Mountain. Always a fun waltz partner, always ready to dive into people's songs and stories, inquisitive about everyone. I can still see him; sliding onto a picnic table outside a dance hall, already lifting a borrowed uke onto his knee, eagerly studying hands, picking up the melody before he's fully seated. Once I commented that it was late & everyone else had gone, and he gently flirted for a moment, then laughed and said he didn't want me to be disappointed if he didn't put in the effort.
With a twinkle he said, "besides, we could be first cousins!" I miss Mikey.
My dad laughed at my theory that white boys had written this song, and said no, he'd learned it as a 7 or 8 year old, in the kitchen with his Mammy, the nameless black woman who actually raised him.
It was a warning. She was protecting her own.
Truth is, he didn't know her name, or even if the woman he recalls from age 7 was the same one who nursed him through pneumonia at 4 - "the one in the kitchen was called Mammy." He got really upset once when I asked him if she went home at night to her own little boy, and he didn't know.
It seems like whoever made up that song should be able to have it back, but I've never been sure how to do that. I wonder what other lyrics there were, and if anyone sings them now, or even recalls that melody, besides me.