Grateful Dead Music Forum

this is an interesting story

It has the familiar(typical) randomness that only Hunter can come up with that leaves you wanting to know more but somehow gives you all that you need to know...Stubborn masculine innocence.

Mr. Charlie is a railroad foreman from the early 20th Century, and if he catches any of you hobos sleepin in his box cars, he'll pop a salt cap in your ass from his shotgun.

Coincidentally, my great-granddad was a freekin U.P. rail foreman who was killed by a train in the Oakland yard in 1904! My dad has a little 5-shot revolver he used to carry.

The Dead always had a thing for early 20th century stuff, and cowboys, didnt they?

makes 'em that much cooler.

Hmmm, I always thought it was about cocaine...

For another point of view:

http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/charlie.html

"Mr. Charlie" is the bad-ass challenge of a wronged rounder finally doing out his revenge. In the blues idiom Mr. Charlie is a common character, usually taken to mean the field foreman who keeps the plantation slaves in line-sort of the blues song equivalant of an Uncle Tom.
-dead encyclopedia

if you're interested in meanings of the dead's songs, you can check out the website jck_strw linked to...and there is also a bitchin book that the author of the website put out called the annotated grateful dead lyrics. the book is alot of fun to read, and its packed full of old time wisdom. i'd highly recommend it.

abspatz wrote:if you're interested in meanings of the dead's songs, you can check out the website jck_strw linked to...and there is also a bitchin book that the author of the website put out called the annotated grateful dead lyrics. the book is alot of fun to read, and its packed full of old time wisdom. i'd highly recommend it.

absolutely!!! David Dodd is the author and the book is just fantastic. It has so much good info. I highly recommend it as well.

For those interested..

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics