A popular song from 1902
Words and music by Will Handy
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- Old Beebe had three full grown sons
Buster, Bill and Bee
And Buster was the black sheep
Of the Beebe family
They tried their best to break him
Of his rough and rowdy ways
At last they had to get a Judge
To give him ninety days
Chorus
Oh! didn’t he ramble, ramble?
He rambled all around
In and out the town
Oh! didn’t he ramble, ramble
He rambled till the butchers cut him down
- This black sheep was a terror, Oh!
And such a ram was he
That every “copper” knew by heart
His rambling pedigree
And when he took his ladder out
To go and paint the town
They had to take their megaphones
To call the rambler down
- He rambled in a swell hotel
His appetite was “stout”
When he refused to pay his bill
The landlord kicked him out
He reached to strike him with a brick
But when he went to stoop
The landlord kicked him in the pants
And made him loop the loop
- He rambled in a gambling house
To gamble on the green
But there they showed the ram a trick
That he had never seen
He lost his roll and jewelry
And nearly lost his life
He lost the car that took him home
And then he lost his wife
- He rambled through the tunnel once
On board a moving train
Another train came rumbling in
And rammed him out again
It rammed him just a block, and then
They caught him on the fly
And with a ton of dynamite
They rammed him to the sky
- He rambled to an Irish wake
On one St. Patrick’s night
They asked him what he’d like to drink
They meant to treat him right
But like the old Kilkenny cats
Their backs began to arch
When he called for orange phosphate
On the seventeenth of March
- He rambled to the races
To make a gallery bet
He backed a horse named Hydrant
And Hydrant’s running yet
He would have had to walk back home
His friends all from him hid
By luck he met old George Sedam
It’s a damn good thing he did
Sung here by Laurence Rubenstein: