MY OKLAHOMA HOME^©

Album's version

When they opened up the strip I was young and full of zip
I wanted some place to call my home
And so I made the race and I staked me out a place
And settled down along the Cimarron

It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away)
My Oklahoma home, it blown away
Well it looked so green and fair when I built my shanty there
My Oklahoma home, it blown away

Well I planted wheats and oats, got some chickens and some shoats
Aimed to have some ham and eggs to feed my face
Got a mule to pull the plow, I got an old red muley cow
And I also got a fancy mortgage on this place

Well it blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away)
All the crops that I've planted blown away
Well you can't grow any grain if you ain't got any rain
Everything except my mortgage blown away

Come on!

Well it looked so green and fair when I built my shanty there
I figured I was all set for life
I put on my Sunday best with my fancy scalloped vest
Then I went to town to pick me out a wife

She blowed away (blown away), she blowed away (blown away)
My Oklahoma woman blown away
Mr as I bent to kiss her, she was picked up by a twister
My Oklahoma woman blown away

Well then I was left alone just listening to the moan
Of the wind around the corners of my shack
So I took off down the road, yeah, when the south wind blowed
I traveled with the wind upon my back

I blowed away (blown away), I blowed away (blown away)
Chasin' that dust cloud up ahead
Well once it looked so green and fair and now it's up in the air
My Oklahoma farm is over head

Come on!

And now I'm always close to home, it don't matter where I roam
For Oklahoma dust is everywhere
Makes no difference where I'm walkin', I can hear my chickens squawkin'
I can hear my wife a-talking in the air

It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away)
Yeah my Oklahoma home is blown away
But my home Sir, is always near, it's up here in the atmosphere
My Oklahoma home is blown away

Come on!

Well I'm a roam'n Oklahoman but I'm always close to home
And I'll never get homesick until I die
'Cause no matter where I'm found, my home's all around
My Oklahoma home is in the sky

It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blownd away)
And my farm down on Cimarron
But now all around the world wherever the dust is swirled
There is some from my Oklahoma home

It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away)
Yeah my Oklahoma home is blown away
Yeah it's up there in the sky in that dust cloud over n' by
My Oklahoma home is blown away

Yeah!

Let me see that horn now, thank you!

Come on one more time!

Well it's blown away (blown away), blown away (blown away)
Oh my Oklahoma home is blown away
Yeah it's up there in the sky in that dust cloud over n' by
My Oklahoma home is the sky

Yeah!

Bruce Springsteen recorded this traditional song with The Seeger Sessions Band on 02 Nov 1997 during the first of the 3 "Seeger Sessions". The song is included on Bruce's 2006 cover album, We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions.

The Seeger Sessions consist of three recording sessions (a 2-days session on 01 and 02 Nov 1997, a 1-day session in Dec 2005, and a 1-day session in Jan 2006), during which all the album's songs were cut live in the living room of Bruce's New Jersey farmhouse. The songs were not rehearsed and all arrangements were conducted as Bruce and the band played.

The above lyrics refer to Bruce's version from the We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions album.

Jeff Calaway wrote about the DualDisc DVD side preview in Austin, TX: "The DVD ended with a country romp of "My Oklahoma Home" over the credits."

This song was reported to be rehearsed for the Seeger Sessions tour by Bruce Springsteen with his Seeger Sessions Band on 20 and 21 Mar and 06 Apr 2006 at the Paramount Theater, Asbury Park, NJ, and 12 Apr 2006 at the Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ. Some comments from the people who listened to the rehearsals:

• "Nice Ed Manion sax solo." [20 Mar]
• "Some pedal steel guitar and violin. A real 'hoe-down' song. They worked at the ending a few times and then Bruce gave a big Woooh!" [12 Apr]

Played during all 4 public rehearsal shows for The Seeger Sessions tour -- 20, 24, 25, and 26 Apr 2006 at the Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ.

The song was also played on 30 Apr 2006 at New Orleans Fair Grounds, New Orleans, LA, when Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band closed the first weekend of the New Orelans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Pete Seeger, to whom the above album is dedicated, has recorded MY OKLAHOMA HOME around 1967. The song was released commercially for the first time in 1996, when it was included on the Seeger anthology, A Link In The Chain (1996 - Columbia/Legacy C2K 64772A).

The newest composition on We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions, this ballad was written in 1965 by Agnes Sis Cunningham and her brother Bill Cunningham for Broadside Magazine. It was recorded shortly after by their friend and fellow Broadside founder Pete Seeger. This track is also known as "My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away)". Check out Dave Marsh's liner notes below for more details.

Dave Marsh's liner notes about MY OKLAHOMA HOME:

Written with her brother Bill by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, Dust Bowl refugee, organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, member of the Almanac Singers, co-editor of Broadside magazine, and herself a Dust Bowl refugee.

"My Oklahoma Home" is one of the most neglected contemporary folk songs. Prior to this recording, only Pete Seeger (on the 1996 anthology, Link in the Chain) recorded it commercially. According to the information reprinted in the notes to The Best of Broadside: 1962-1988, Bill wrote the lyrics around 1965. Sis Cunningham published it in 1967, a few months after her brother's death, in Broadside issue in #80, with a fascinating opening that essentially places the whole song in quotation marks.

Sis and her brother, as well as Sis's husband, Gordon Freisen, experienced the Oklahoma Dust Bowl first-hand. Bill Cunningham led the Federal Writers' Project in the state during the 1930s. After the family lost its farm in Watongo, Sis moved to Oklahoma City and married Friesen. Both openly belonged to and agitated for the Communist Party. In 1941, Sis Cunningham and Freisen were basically run out of town in a vicious Red scare. They joined up with the Almanac Singers in New York City and Sis sometimes toured with Woody Guthrie, who esteemed her song, "How Can You Keep on Movin' Unless You Migrate." But after World War II, the couple were blacklisted and unable to find jobs, became virtually destitute. Sis worked for a time in the 1960s as Pete Seeger's secretary.

Broadside, whose founders were Seeger, songwriter Malvina Reynolds and Cunningham, was hardly a business. The editors focused on songs about political topics, material that the leading folk music journal, Sing Out, almost always ignored. Broadside became the place where many important singer-songwriters, most notably Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, first published their material. The Best of Broadside, a 5 CD box set, is the best place to hear and read about the magazine. Sis Cunningham told her story in Red Dust and Broadsides, published in 1999.

Michael from Paradise Valley, AZ, wrote:

There is another verse of My Oklahoma Home that I used to sing. I remember finding it in Broadside back in l967:

It blowed away my rooster and it blowed away my hens
The pigs and cattle went astray
All the crops that I sowed went a foggin down the road
My Oklahoma farm it blowed away.

It blowed away, it blowed away
Everything I owned blowed away
I hollered and I cussed when my land went up in dust
When my Oklahoma farm it blowed away