Two different songs
Well read Dylan fans have known this since 1992 or earlier.
Dopefiend Robber / Woody Guthrie
The very different song by Woody Guthrie available as track 7 on Disc 2 on the album New Multitudes (2012) :
Dopefiend Robber
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Anders Parker and Jay Farrar
I’m just a dopefiend robber you read and hear about
I’ve kick a million joints I to grab my swag and go
I’ve pushed a million drugstores with my pistol in my hand
I’m just a dopefiend robber and dope robbing is my game.
I doubled my haul in old St. Paul and I spun to New Orleans
Met a Cajun girl that loved stuff while I was in the green.
I showed her how to hold my gat and go break my drugstore
After I showed her a dozen or so she broke ‘em bettern I could
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Seen my town of Reno we grabbed our biggest haul
Some heads around the town said you’re in my territore
Just fork me over your take friend and walk away in peace
My girl put nine holes in him before he spoke his piece.
She runoff down blind alley where his whoremob shot her down
I counted thirty-two blasts they fired to keep her on that ground
I run and jumped me a fast boxcar down Reno’s hill
My clothes pokedfull of good hot money from heroin till and kill
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
I buy your bestole finest wine, I buy it by the barrel.
I pour it down my prettiest whores, my street hustling girls
I buy my greenystamp whisky, I buy it by the case
I get myself drunk and have a little fuckin race
One seventeen year old bitch tells me, now you’ve knocked me up
You’ll havta fork me a thousand to pay my knocker doc.
Here take this gun and come with me tonight,
I’ll teach ya how to rob and you can payoff your doc.
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
I kicked my bell and run like hell and left her here alone
My trolyboys drilled her sixteen holes because she had my gun
She laid with a hundred and sixty men and told me such lies
I celebrated with four more whores the night I heard she died.
I’m just your dopefiend robber you read and hear about
I’ve kicked a million joints in to grab my swag and drag
My coffeepot is whistling me, I’d better be hittin my trail
My bluecoat boys are here to haul my ashes off ta jail.
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dopefiend robber
Dope Fiend Robber / Bob Dylan
McKenzie manuscripts, Summer 1961
first transcribed by Chris C. in "Isis", No. 44, Aug-Sep 1992.
Back in 1941
I got shot from gattling gun,
Defending your land,
I was doing nothing else but fighting for Uncle Sam.
They took me to the commissary room,
They had to give me something to ease the pain.
It was morphine, morphine
I was doing nothing else but fighting for Uncle Sam.
I left the Hospital in '45
Quite lucky to be alive.
I'm a going home...
Now you fixed my wounds and I am glad,
But you didn't fix the habit I had.
White gold -- morphine.
It caused me ruin, it caused me shame.
My wife don't even want my name.
I was buying high day by day
All I do is pay and pay.
Now I don't mean to harm no man,
I just hope that you all understand,
That I'm a dope fiend robber
Now you need food to get along,
But I need dust inside my bones,
Cause I'm a dope fiend robber.
I had to rob the jewellery store,
But the cops they grabbed me at the door.
They soon found out I took morphine,
The papers said I was a dope fiend.
Now there's a gang t' me.
Nobody would go my bail,
I had to break out of the jail.
I didn't mean to kill your man,
But he held the keys in his hand.
When you picked me up on the street that day,
You beat me up an' I was in a daze.
I saw the headlines on the Morning Star,
Mad dope fiend killer behind the bars.
I was found guilty at the trail [sic],
Judge said I'm condemned to die.
Now I'm not asking for sympathy,
From anybody in your society,
Cause.
There's a man that keeps on pushing me,
You'll take my life and he goes free.
==========
As Manfred says in his site:
"These (possibly original) lyrics (about a World War II veteran whose morphine habit turns him into a robber) remind me (in parts) of Dylan's "The Ballad of Donald White" ("Now I'm not asking for sympathy, from anybody in your society..."
.
For another songwriter's treatment of a similar subject (from the Vietnam War era), cf. John Prine's "Sam Stone""
Manfred Helfert
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