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Blackberry Pickin’ Man
© 2004 James M. Quillen

Up tempo bluegrass song featuring the banjo:

(Verse 1) (a cappella...slow)
When it comes time
For them blackberries
To ripen on the vine,
I get out them
Gallon buckets of mine...(lift to chorus)

(Chorus...up tempo with music)
Lord, Lord, I’m a
Blackberry pickin’man;
I pick, pick, pick
Them blackberries when I can,
Yes, Lord, I’m a
Blackberry pickin’ man.
Lord, you know
Briars and chiggers I can’t stand,
But I pick, pick, pick
Them blackberries when I can,
Yes, Lord, I’m a
Blackberry pickin’ man.

(Verse 2...up tempo with music)
I pick them blackberies
In the hot sun all day,
Sweat a pourin’,
Swattin’ gnats away,
Gotta’ pick them blackberries
Come what may...
When my buckets are full,
The day is done,
Play my banjo,
Have a little fun,
Helps me forget
That pickin’ in the sun.

(Chorus...up tempo with music)

(Verse 3...up tempo with music)
Sun a risin’
Over the holler,
There goes my ol’ hound,
Soon I’ll foller,
Gonna pick more berries,
Earn a few more dollars...
Eat my lunch
From a brown paper sack,
Fresh blackberry jam
Twixt two flapjacks,
That’ll keep me pickin’
Till the cows come back.

(Chorus...up tempo with music)

(Verse 4...up tempo with music)
Sell my blackberries
At the general store,
Rich folk keep buyin’,
Keep askin’ for more,
Bring em’ three gallon,
They’re wantin’ four...
But berries on the vine
They’re dwinlin’ down,
See less and less
Each time I look around,
In a few more days
Not one will be found.

(Chorus...up tempo with music)

(Verse 5) (a cappella...slow)
When it comes time
For them blackberries
To shrivel on the vine,
I put away them
Gallon buckets of mine...(lift to chorus)

(Chorus...up tempo with music)
(Chorus...up tempo with music)

I like it...it helps that I love Blackberries.

Kathy

Mornin' James,

You got the chiggers, sweat and gnats right, but you left out the snakes. More people in the south are bitten by poisonous snakes while picking blackberries than any other activity. The heavy bodied snakes (copperheads and cottonmouths) lie in the berry briars and wait for the birds.<g>

Nicely descriptive.

dawg

James, I think it's outstanding. I have no clue about infiltrating the real bluegrass market but that looks very commercial. Good luck.

This is a great lyric, James. Practically sings itself. I'd love to hear this one.

Randy

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http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=RandyB

I know my uncle was bit by a copperhead snake when we were picking berries, arm swelled up had to rush him to the hospital. He was sick for a couple of days. Anyways, good lyric......

[This message has been edited by kyrksongs (edited 05-11-2004).]

Thanks Kathy, greydog, DukeWill, Randy B, and kyrksongs for your comments and kind words. Greydog and kyrksongs, you're absolutely right about snakes being a hazard to blackberry pickers, and I did try to include snakes in the lyric but couldn't get the words to flow right...however, I may revisit that idea and see what I can come up with. Fortunately for me as a kid picking blackberries in the hills and meadows of Eastern Kentucky, I only saw occasional blacksnakes and green snakes, although a big blacksnake coiled at one's feet can put quite a fright in a young kid. Had I picked blackberries where there were rattlers and copperheads, I probably would have kept one eye on the ground and one on those ripe, juicy blackberries. By the way, one other hazard to blackberry pickin' thats not been mentioned yet is ticks...Our folks always made us check for ticks when we came in from our blackberry pickin' trips.

Hey James,

At my age I thought that I knew all about berries withering on the vine Nice write.

Bill

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We too often throw the word "great" around like it was a frisbee, instead of the manhole cover it should be

Thanks for the read Bill and thanks for the word change idea...I'm seriously considering substituting "wither" for "shrivel" in verse 5...I'll have to think about that one for a while.

One eye for the berrys.
And one eye for the ground.
Just in case there's a snake or two.
Hanging around.

Real good read.
I'm writing bluegrass right now, so was right in the mood for this one.
Like it.
Graham

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http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/grahamhendersonmusic.htm

Hi James,

Real nice

Hope to be able to hear it soon?

Regards
Bill

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The best things in life wind-up_ LostNTexas

Thanks Graham and Lost for your kind words and encouragement. Graham, you're definitely right about "one eye for the berrys and one eye for the ground just in case there's a snake or two hanging around" especially in poisonous snake country. As for the music, Lost, I'm looking for a banjo pickin', bluegrass singin' co-writer...if you know of any, please let me know.

Nicely done James,
great descriptions.
Guess it shows the regional differences. and reminds me again of why I still miss Washington state.
Our blackberry pickin "hazards" were much more limited.
Mosquitos were a major concern. And oft-times yellow jackets.
Had a small patch start growing on my property one year. The next year I watched a bumper crop of flowers develop into a fairly nice volume of berries well away from the road dust. But when it came time to try pickin them, the yellow jackets were already quite busy consuming them...and wouldn't let me get near. grrrrrr...
absolutely NO snakes outside of garters.


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Harriet
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/9/harrietamesmusic.htm

Thanks for your comments Harriet and for sharing your blackberry picking experiences in Washington state. No doubt each region of the U.S. has its own particular blackberry picking hazard, but what we also might want to keep in mind are the rewards from filling a gallon bucket with those plump, juicy, delicious, wild blackberries. I still have fond childhood memories of a dish of hot blackberry cobbler right out of the oven topped with a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream...sure made me quickly forget all the hazards and nuisances involved in the picking of the berries.

Blackberry cobbler...mmmm. I can't remember the last time I had one of those. My mom could "cobble" with the best of 'em, though. I think I'll be talking to the wife about this tonight.

Randy

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http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=RandyB

Hey James. Being you don't have noise for this, and being I love the wy it goes, and in spite of the fact, I don't sing prety, and being pretty sure, I can knock out a not too bad bluegrass backing on Hit Jammer with it, do you mind if I give it a stab, and throw it up on my Me and Friends Soundclick site so you can grab it?
You say yep, and like it, I can replace the me sing take with just a backing in any key if you want to sing it yourself.
No big deal one way or the other James.
Just thought it would be a bit of fun to do.
Toward strange thing about blackberries.
A relitive bought a blackbery infested bush block dirt cheap one time.
The dirt cheap was because it was blackberry infested and very run down.
Suited them as they were mustering feral goats and taming them to sell not so dirt cheap to the then new and luritive Mohair goat breeing trade.
Goats seem to do a very good job of clearing up blackberry infestations.
All was going well and they noticed the goats were using one particularly big patch as a prefered night camp rother than the shelter they had built them.
Goats had tunneled into the centre and seemed to prefer to sleep there.
One morning the owners heard a goat yelling for its kid, and heard the kid answering from in the depths of the blackbery patch.
On crawling through the tunnen the goats had made to the middle, they were staggered to find an old settlewrs hut in there.
They fid a drag chain through the patch as close to the hut as they could get and put a tractor on each end and used that to drag the patch down enough so they could get to the hut.
When they got in theyb found the goats had indeed been camping in the hut, and the bleating kid had somhome managed to get traped in the second room.
I guess the goats going i and out had managed to drag the connecting door shut enough that the kid couldn't figure enough to get out.
The hut was past restoration stage, and enquiries to two of the previous owners of the block found neither had known the hut was there.
The things you find in bl;ackbery patches.
Graham


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http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/grahamhendersonmusic.htm

Hello James,

This is really good! I liked all the stories about blackberry pickin' too! I could do without the snakes though....

Fun song and well written. Good luck with it!

Dawg! What you say is all too real! A few years ago, a young mother with about 5 under school age children stopped under an overpass of main highways, left those children in a closed car, walked over the fence and about two acres away to a bramble of blackberries....late midafternoon, state trooper comes back by and remembers seeing that car load of small children there earlier about 7:30 a.m. This time they were all 5 crying, over heated, he busted a window out to get to them for he knew that with the heat index above a hundred that some of them were probably already in crisis! The oldest was able to cry and point the direction his mother went, the trooper's buddy came by and went that direction....found the mother there, dead, with a copperhead still stuck in her upper lip and her hand lock around the viper's neck and it was dead....she had less then a quart of berries in her bucket! She hadn't been there very long at all....cool morning copperhead had crawled out on some of the larger vines looking for "live food" such as large bugs, frogs, etc. This one was large enough, but it killed him in her death grip! Five children, almost critically ill themselves and no mother...don't know who or where a daddy might be found! A very true and eery story....I don't do blackberries in the fields anymore. My husband and I had a row of thornless blackberries for many years...worked myself crazy just to keep those clean! And snakeless!
BTW, the lyric was understandable, but too much happiness there as Dawg kind of hinted at! LOL



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http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=Sharon

Randy, I too can't remember how long it's been since I've eaten any of that good ol' delicous blackberry cobbler...my mom "could 'cobble' with the best of 'em" too. Matter of fact she wrote a cook book entitled "Cooking In The Cumberlands" which went through several reprints before she decided to get out of the cookbook business. Another treat she made for us kids were fried apple pies. She made the dough from scratch, peeled and cooked the fresh apples, wrapped the cooked apples in the dough, and then fried them in a big ol' iron skillet...they were absolutely mouth watering.

Graham, thanks for sharing your goat story and from some of the blackberry thickets I was in during my childhood days, I can easily see how a hut could be hidden in a maze of blackberry vines. Sometimes the briars were so thick, we'd have to stomp us a path to get to the berries located in the interior sections.
When you get a chance, send me an email and let me know what you have in mind for the music for Blackberry Pickin' Man and we'll see what we can work out.

Songbird, I appreciate your encouraging comments and I'm glad you enjoyed the blackberry picking stories.

Sharon, after reading your copperhead story, I guess I was lucky to pick my blackberries where we didn't have to worry about poisonous snakes, just the aforementioned harmless blacksnakes and green snakes. The chiggers, briars, gnats, bumble bees, spider webs, and occasional hornet and yellow jacket nests were just minor nuisances to us kids because we were looking ahead to the blackberry cobblers and fresh blackberry jam. Since my childhood blackberry picking experiences were, for the most part, quite positive, I suppose that's why the lyric has such an upbeat theme to it.
BTW, I just happened to remember that the "old folks" used to tell us kids to put fingernail polish on the chigger bites, and when the polish hardened it would smother the chiggers...has anyone ever heard of that home remedy?

" just happened to remember that the "old folks" used to tell us kids to put fingernail polish on the chigger bites, and when the polish hardened it would smother the chiggers...has anyone ever heard of that home remedy?"

Yes! Or Hair Spray cause it would suffocate the devils also...supposedly breathe through the portion not stuck in mankind?! LOL Hair spray will, by the way, make most ticks back up and not "leave their heads" in the flesh!
As to the fresh blackberry cobblers? This time of year, we generally are pretty up on moisture, thus the berries tend to be so juicy that when the original blackberry cobbler and its lovely crusts are gone, there's a lot of blackberry juice in the bottom of the pan yet....I'd always throw another handful of blackberries in that in a stewpot on the stove at breakfast time and throw a couple, three homemade biscuits on top, cover and cook like dumplin's....dessert for dinner automatically made! Take every short cut known, when it's hot weather and there's more work outside, but inside work keeps hollerin' also. LOL

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http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=Sharon

[This message has been edited by Sharon Irene Wells (edited 05-13-2004).]

Was just planning a simple bluegrass backing like I do in Hit Jamer James.
Nothing eloborate.
I read it that you don't have music dfro this , and it reads about right to sing just for a fun thing so folks could hear it, or you could sing it if you don't do, or hadn't done, music,
I do mess on banjo, but play it to much like a guitar to ever bother recording it.
Hit Jammer Bluegrass does a not bad job though.
Graham

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http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/grahamhendersonmusic.htm