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We come on the sloop John B,
My Grandfather and me.
Around Nassau town we did roam.
Drinkin' all night. Got into a fight.
Well, I feel so break up, I want to go home.
(I want to go home. So now...)
Hoist up the John B's sails.
See how the main sails set.
Call for the captain ashore,
Let me go home. (Let me go home.)
Let me go home. (I want to go home.)
I want to go home. (Why don't you let me go home?)
Well, I feel so break up, I want to go home.
(I want to go home.)
First mate, he got drunk.
Broke up the people's trunk.
Constable had to come and take him away.
Sheriff John Stone (Sheriff John Stone),
Why don't you leave me alone?
(Why don't you leave me alone?)
Well, I feel so break up, I want to go home.
(I want to go home. So, now...)
Hoist up the John B's sails.
See how the main sails set.
Call for the captain ashore,
Let me go home. (Let me go home.)
Let me go home. (I want to go home.)
I want to go home. (Why don't you let me go home?)
Well, I feel so break up, I want to go home.
(I want to go home.)
Well, the poor cook he caught the fits.
Throw away all of my grits.
Then he took and he ate up all of my corn.
Let me go home. (I want to go home.)
I want to go home. (Why don't you let me go home?)
This is the worst trip since I've been born.
(Since I have been born. So, now...)
Hoist up the John B's sails.
See how the main sails set.
Call for the captain ashore,
Let me go home. (Let me go home.)
Let me go home. (I want to go home.)
I want to go home. (Why don't you let me go home?)
Well, I feel so break up, I want to go home.
(I want to go home.)
Originally collected and published by Carl Sandburg as The John B. Sails in The American Songbag, pp.22-23 (1927). In a preface to this song Carl Sandburg noted:
John T. McCutcheon, cartoonist and kindly philosopher, and his wife Eveleyn Shaw McCutcheon, mother and poet, learned to sing this song on their Treasure Island in the West Indies. They tell of it, "Time and usage have given this song almost the dignity of a national anthem around Nassau. The weathered ribs of the historic craft lie embedded in the sand at Governor's Harbour, when an expedition, especially set up for the purpose in 1926, extracted a knee of horseflesh and a ring-bolt. These relics are now preserved and built into the Watch Tower, designed by Mr. Howard Shaw and built on our southern coast a couple of points east by north of the star Canopus."
A variant was arranged and recorded by Anchors Aweigh of Rocky Harbour, NL (Stay The Course, trk#6, 1999, produced by Big Bully Productions, Corner Brook, NL).
