Copper Kettle
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Mandolin Tablature
legacy / lyric song
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Standard Notation
Mandolin Tablature
Song Sheet
Albert Beddoe
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
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Lyrics:
Get you a copper kettle,
Get you a copper coil,
Cover with new-made corn mash
And never more you'll toil.
Chorus
You'll just lay there by the juniper
While the moon is bright,
Watch them jugs a-fillin'
In the pale moonlight.
Get you a fire of hickory.
Get you a fire of oak.
Don't use no green or rotten wood
They'll find you by the smoke.
Chorus
My grandpappy he made whiskey,
My daddy he made it too.
We ain't paid no whiskey tax
Since 1792.
Chorus
Get you a copper kettle
Get you a copper coil
Cover with new-made corn mash
And never more you will toil
Chorus
"Copper Kettle", also known as "Get you a Copper Kettle" or "In the pale moonlight"<br> is a song composed by Albert Frank Beddoe and made popular by Joan Baez.<br> Pete Seeger dates the song to 1946, mentioning its probable folk origin.<br> In a 1962 Time readers column A. F. Beddoe says that the song was written<br> by him in 1953 as part of the folk opera Go Lightly, Stranger. The song praises<br> the good aspects of moonshining as told to the listener by a man whose "daddy<br> made whiskey, and granddaddy did too". The line "We ain't paid no whiskey tax<br> since 1792" alludes to an unpopular tax imposed in 1791 by the fledgling U.S.<br> Federal Government. The levy provoked the Whiskey Rebellion and generally had a<br> short life, barely lasting until 1803.<br> It was recorded by<br> Joan Baez on Joan Baez in Concert (1962),<br> Two Tones (a duet including Gordon Lightfoot) on Two Tones at the Village<br> Corner(1962),<br> The Country Gentlemen (1963),<br> Chet Atkins on Guitar Country (1964),<br> Bob Dylan on Self Portrait (1970) and Another Self Portrait (2013),<br> and others.<br> It was printed in The Joan Baez Songbook (1964).<br>
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