Dead Songs in Depth

    
Alligator 
w: Hunter, McKernan m: Lesh, McKernan
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/alligato.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/ALLIGATO.HTM
  

    
Alligator 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter, Ron McKernan (Pigpen)
Music: Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan (Pigpen)

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Sleepy alligator in the noonday sun
Lying by the river just like he usually done
Call for his whiskey, he can call for his tea
Call all he wants to but he can't call me
Oh no, I've been there before
And I ain't coming back around there no more

Creepy alligator coming all around the bend
Shouting 'bout the time when we was mutual friends
I checked my memory and I checked it quick, yes I will
I checked it running some old kind of trick
Oh no, I've been there before
And I ain't coming back around there no more

Hung up waiting for a windy day
Hung up waiting for a windy day
Burn down the Fillmore, gas the Avalon

Sailing down the river in an old canoe
A bunch of bugs and an old tennis shoe
Out of the river all ugly and green
Came the biggest old alligator that I've ever seen
Teeth big and pointed and his eyes were bugging out
Contacted the union, put the beggars to rout
Screaming and yelling, he was picking his chops
He never runs, he just stumbles and hops
Just out of prison on six dollar's bail
Mumbling at bitches and a-wagging his tail

Alligator running round my door
Alligator running round my door
Alligator running round my door
Alligator running round my door

Alligator creeping round the corner of my cabin door
He's coming round to bother me some more
  

    


  http://www.flickr.com/photos/unkljohn/154150719/
  

    
Hmmmmm, lived in that fellah's neighborhood for a good long while.
Didn't know his image could be captured on film nor reflected in
mirrors.

What a fine, messy piece of music that is!
  

    
Once listening to an  r&b set on a jazz station (possibly KCSM), I
heard a song with a chorus that went "Alligator... meat! Alligator...
meat" with a pause after the word 'Alligator.' A cursory web search
shows that the Johnny Otis Band recorded a song by that name with Joe
Swift on vocals in 1948 and that Ray Charles possibly also recorded a
song by that name.

It definitely reminded me, a bit, of our Alligator and made me wonder
if Pig or Hunter knew it. Could easily have been the sort of song Pig
Pen's dad would have played on the radio.
  

    
And the "meat" part could relate to another notorious tune..."Barbed Wire
Whipping Party." I can just hear the evolution in a jam session...!