Oh! Didn't He Ramble Lyrics
Jelly Roll Morton

Didn’t he ramble, he rambled,
Rambled all around, in and out the town,
Didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled till the butchers cut him down.

The band would start playing.

Didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled all around, in and out the town,
Oh, didn’t he ramble, ramble,
Rambled till the butchers cut him down.

That would be the last of the dead man, he’s gone. And everybody came back home and they believed truly to stick right close to the Bible. That means rejoice at the death and cry at the birth. New Orleans sticks close to the — to the Scripture.

What would happen on the way home, though, with those baseball bats?

Well, on the way home, everything was sad when they’d be playing the dead march. There would be no fights, no trouble. But on the way back, they had boundary lines. The boys had knives, baseball bats, pickaxes, shovel handles, axe handles — everything in the form that they was supposed to try to win a battle. When they got to a, a dividing line, which was not supposed to be their district, they’d better not cross. If they do, they would be beaten up. And sometimes they were beaten up so bad that they had to go into the hospital. That’s the way it always ended in New Orleans.

Now the boys from then on — the band would always figure on a big night, because they had some money. It wasn’t very much, ‘cause the band men didn’t make very much in New Orleans. The only musicians that made real money was the piano players. The other fellows, they — a lot of times, they’d work for a dollar a night. Maybe a funeral pr . . . procession like that would, would maybe be two dollars or two dollars and a half. So they had to make the best of it that way. So that was always the end of a perfect death.

[clears throat]

It must . . .

Er, jazz started in New Orleans. And this, er, “Tiger Rag” happened to be transformed from an old quadrille that was in many different tempos. And I’ll, no doubt, give you an idea how it went. This was the introduction, meaning that everyone was supposed to get their partners.

Tiger Rag [introduction]

“Get your partners, everybody, get your partners.” And people would be rushing around the hall getting their partners. It maybe — have maybe five minutes lapsed between that time — and, of course, they’d start it over again and that was the first part of it.

And the next strain would be a waltz strain, I believe.

That would be the waltz strain.