Talk To Me Fiddle

(album: Fiddle Fire - 25 Years Of The Charlie Daniels Band - 1998)

Well if this old fiddle could talk
If this old fiddle could sing
Man if this old fiddle could only talk
It could tell you some wondrous things
Talk to me fiddle

Tell me about when you came across the sea
In the hands of a Jewish immigrant who was longing to be free
And you were part of his life for forty years
Through times both lean and fat
As he raised his family and lived out his days
In a New York tenement flat
Talk to me fiddle

Tell me about how that Cajun fiddling man
Found you in a pawn shop and took you back down
To the Louisiana bayou land
You knew his wife and you knew his kids
And you watched his family grow
And you played your heart out Cajun style
At the Louisiana Fais Do Do
Well talk to me fiddle

Then a big shot Yankee gambler found you down in New Orleans
And took you up the river on the Mississippi Queen
Then there came the day that you were all
That he had left to lose
And a black man won you in a poker game
And taught you how to play the blues
Cry for me fiddle

The a young man from the mountains of Kentucky came along
And he bought you for a dollar
And took you all the way back home
He gave you to his grandpa on his golden wedding day
And the people would come from miles around just to hear the old man play
Dance for me fiddle

Then a hobo from Biloxi found you living in the rain
And he got himself a free ride on a west-bound cattle train
And you got off in Texas
Where they play that western swing
Where the people do the two-step
And old Bob Wills was the king
Swing for me fiddle

If this old fiddle could talk
If this old fiddle could sing
Man if this old fiddle could only talk
It could tell you some wondrous things
You've been bouncing around America from sea to shining sea
Now your traveling days are over fiddle 'cause you belong to me