My name is Jed, and I’m ready to tell my story. Many years ago, I had just about the most gorgeous gal a man could ever dream of—my beautiful Sally May. I never even got into her petticoats, because we were real proper. But we was engaged to be married, and I could hardly wait for that magical moment when we would, as man and wife, knock boots.
But then this rapscallion Cotton Eyed Joe swept into town from God knows where like a rotted tumbleweed. He bewitched every woman. But especially my Sally May. She told me I had nothing to worry about, but I caught them out behind the barn acting how the cows and bulls do during mating season.
After that, I never saw him or my Sally May again.
Well, there was nothing left for an old country boy like me to do but pick up my gee-tar and sing the blues. It started real simple, with the truth: If it hadn’t been for Cotton Eyed Joe, I’d a’been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go?
I didn’t know if it was any good, I just knew it was what my soul needed. Once I was done, I wanted to sing my sorrow from the mountaintops.
But I settled for an open mic at a local hoedown.
Now, normally, when you tell your friends your woman has left you, they don’t start line dancing and hootin’ and hollerin’, but I am a simple man, and I have a lot of learning to do about this here modern world.
Pretty soon, I was shoved into a recording booth, and it was all over the place. Then even sooner, people who know a whole lot more about music than me were making what they call “covers.”
I expected that renditions of such a mournful ballad would honor the original pathos and take it to the next level, much like Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” Still, I had yet more to learn because that’s not what God and the world of Swedish Eurodance had planned for me.
I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that even if I can’t have my Sally May, my song has brought people’s crotches and butts together on the dance floor, and that might be a beautiful thing.
