Good night, I heard some singing, great singing, great singing, and there were voices ringing through the rows of the meadows. I heard some colored fellas, twelve fellas, four fellas, and I've seen some rascallers and entertaining croons. I might be nearly went insane when they started singing this refrain way down yonder in the old country.
You don't mean to tell me that you never met that Coontown Quartet. You don't mean to say you never heard them yet, that Coontown Quartet. Timmy the tenor, Billy the bass, Barry sings a baritone all around the place.
Most surprising, harmonizing, have you heard them? No. Go and hear them singing.
Swing me, swing me, swing me down to the bridge. Throw a nickel on the drum, boom, bop-a-dee-bum, to that Coontown Quartet. They sang a song so funny, so funny, so funny, I threw away my money.
It tickles me to death when Billy sang a ballad, sweet ballad, fine ballad. I choked on shake and salad until I lost my breath. And then, no sooner was the boy speaking, then I found myself adjoining him way down yonder in the old country.
You don't mean to tell me that you never met that Coontown Quartet. You don't mean to say you never heard them yet, that Coontown Quartet. Timmy the tenor, Billy the bass, Barry sings a baritone all around the place.
Most surprising, harmonizing, have you heard them? No. Go and hear them singing.
Swing me, swing me, swing me down to the bridge. Throw a nickel on the drum, boom, bop-a-dee-bum, to that Coontown, oh that Coontown, to that Coontown Quartet. Thank you.
Transcribed by AI from the recording above. These are noisy hundred-year-old cylinders, so expect misheard words and the occasional invented line — trust your ears over the text.
Audio public domain, courtesy of the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. Transcript CC BY 4.0. Free to reuse, including commercially, with credit.
Premier Quartet
A studio ensemble rather than a touring band. Record companies kept groups of session players on call and issued them under a rotating set of house names — the personnel overlapped heavily from one to the next, and the name on the label indicated the kind of music inside more than who was performing it. Individual players were rarely credited, and for most of these ensembles the membership is now unrecoverable.
Written from UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. Corrections welcome.