The Frozen Logger

Grateful Dead

No Grateful Dead recordings.

Others

Absolute Nonsense, Oscar Brand, 1948
Tin Angel, Odetta, 1954
Hard Travelin', Cisco Houston, 1954
American Northwest Ballads, Walt Robertson, 1955
At Home with Jimmie Rodgers: An Evening of Folk Songs, Jimmie Rodgers, 1960
The Best of Jimmie Rodgers Folk Songs, Jimmie Rodgers, 1961
At Town Hall, Odetta, 1963
Reunion at Carnegie Hall, The Weavers, 1963
Folk Song Hall Of Fame, Hank Hill And The Tennessee Folk Trio, 196?
Swing On A Star, Jim Kweskin, 1979
Everybody Sing, Vol. 1, Oscar Brand, 197?
The Best Of, The Weavers, 1987
The Folkway Years 1944-1961, Cisco Houston, 1994
Singing The New Tradition - Songs, Singers and Instrumentals of the Folk Revival - Riverside Folklore Series Vol. 3 :: Various Artists (Oscar Brand), 1996
Voices of Winter, Priscilla Heardman, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen, 19??

Notes

Song writing credits are uncertain. The text is from James Stevens Bunk Shanty Ballads and Tales;

As I set down one evening in a timber town café
A six foot-seven waitress, to me these words did say

"I see you are a logger and not a common bum
For no one but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb

"My lover was a logger, there's none like him today
If you'd sprinkle whisky on it, he'd eat a bale of hay

"He never shaved the whiskers from off his horny hide
But he'd pound 'em in with a hammer, then bite 'em off inside

"My lover came to see me one freezing winter day
He held me in a fond embrace that broke three vertebrae

"He kissed me when we parted so hard it broke my jaw
And I could not speak to tell him he'd forgot his mackinaw

"I watched my logger lover going through the snow
A sauntering gaily homeward at forty eight below

"The weather tried to freeze him, it tried it's level best
At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest

"It froze clean down to China, it froze to the stars above
At one thousand degrees below zero it froze my logger love

"They tried in vain to thaw him and if you'll believe me, sir
They made him into ax blades to chop the Douglas fir

"That's how I lost my lover and to this caffay I come
And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb

"And then I tell my story of my love they could not thaw
Who kissed me when we parted so hard he broke my jaw."