The Father Of The Boy Named Sue
Shel Silverstein

[Silverstein's speaking voice:] ”Okay… now years ago, I wrote a song named “A Boy Named Sue”, and that was okay and everything, except then I started to think about it, and I thought, “It is unfair. I am looking at the whole thing from the poor kid’s point of view. And as I get more older and more fatherly, I begin to look at things from an old man’s point of view. So… I decided to give the old man equal time. Okay. Here we go.”

Yeah, I lef’ home when the kid was three.
It sure felt good to be fancy free
Tho I knew it wasn’t quite the fatherly thing to do.
But that kid kept screamin’ and throwin’ up
And pissin’ in his pants til I had enough
So just for revenge I went and named him Sue.

It was Gatlinberg in mid July
I was gettin' drunk but gettin' by
Gettin' old and going from bad to worse
When thru the door with an awful scream
Comes the ugliest queen I’ve ever seen
He says my name is Sue. How do you do?
Then he hits me with his purse.

Now this ain’t the way he tells the tale
But he scratched my face with his fingernails
And then he bit my thumb
and kicked me with his high-heeled shoe.
So I hit him in the nose, and he started to cry
And he threw some perfume in my eye
And it sure ain’t easy fightin with a boy named Sue.

So I hit him in the head with a caned-back chair
And he screamed, “Hey Dad, you mussed my hair!”
And he hit me in the navel and knocked out a piece of my lint.
He was spittin' blood. I was spittin teeth.
And we crashed through the wall and out into the street
A-kickin and gougin' in the mud and the blood and the crème de menth.

Then out of his garter he pulls a gun.
I’m about to get shot by my very own son.
He’s screamin' about Sigmond Freud and lookin' grim.
So I thought fast and I told him some stuff
How I named him Sue just to make him tough.
And I guess he bought it, cuz now I’m livin' with him.
Yeah, he cooks and sews and cleans up the place.
He cuts my hair and shaves my face.
And irons my shirts better than a daughter could do.
And on the nights that I can’t score,
Well, I can’t tell you anymore.
Sure is a joy to have a boy named Sue.
Yeah, a son is fun,
But it’s a joy to have a boy named Sue.


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Lyrics by Shel Silverstein

  (Pour Me Another) Tequila Sheila   $100,000 in Pennies   25 Minutes To Go   A Couple More Years   A Front Row Seat To Hear Ole Johnny Sing   A Front Row Seat to Hear Ole Johnny Sing [*]   Acapulco Goldie   Alimoney (Also recorded as "Alimony")   All About You   All The Time In The World   Aphrodisiac   Back Home In Huntsville Again   Beans Taste Fine   Better Not Ask Me   Beware Of Lovers   Bigtime   Blue Eyes   Boa Constrictor   Bottomless Well   Boy Named Sue   Bread Upon The Waters   Bury Me In My Shades   Carry Me, Carrie   Centaur   Changing of the Seasons   Civil War Song   Cloudy Sky   Cornflakes With Sugar And Teardrops   Cover Of The Rolling Stone   Daddy, What If?   Dance To It   Date In Dallas   Daylight Dreamer   Diet Song   Dirty Feet   Drain My Brain   Drop The Bomb   Drunk And Crazy   Everybody Got Some But Me (Rauncy Playboy Version)   Everybody Got Some But Me (Tame Recorded Version)   Father Of A Boy Named Sue   February Snow   First Battalion   Floobie Doobie Doo   Food Blues   Get Away   Get My Rocks Off   Go Back, Learn To Use That Thing   Goodnight Little House Plant   Goodnight, Little Houseplant   Gotta Get Rid Of This Band   Greasy Grit Gravy   Grizzly Bear   Hamlet As Told On The Street   Handy Man   Have Another Espresso   Help Me, Mama   Hey Nelly Nelly!   Hey, Lady Godiva   Hoodoo Voodoo Lady   I Call That True Love   I Gave Her Comfort   I Got Stoned and I Missed It   I Hear America Singing   I Never Got To Know Her   I Once Knew A Woman   In The Hills of Shiloh   Inside A Lion   It Does Not Pay To Be Hip   Jaded   Jennifer Johnson and Me   Judy   June 25th At The 4th Of July   Jungle To The Zoo   Just Came Down For The Weekend   Kick It Again   Killed By A Coconut   Kiss It Away   Liberated Lady 1999   Little Green Buttons   Living Legend   Liz   Lullabys, Legends And Lies   Marie Laveaux   Masochistic Baby   Me And Jimmie Rodgers   Mermaid   Michaelangelo   Midnight Sunshine   Modern Talk   Monterey Jack   More Like The Movies   Mountain Mary   My Next Impersonation   Never Be This Young Again   Never Bite A Married Woman On The Thigh   Numbers   Oh, You Engineer   On The Way To The Bottom   Paranoid   Pathetic Way Of Getting Over Me   Paul   Peanut Butter Sandwich   Peanut-Butter Sandwich   Penicillin Penny   Perfect High (Or The Quest For Gimmesome Roy)   Plastic   Polly In A Porny   Put A Little Bit On Me   Put Another Log On The Fire   Quaaludes Again   Queen Of The Silver Dollar   Raquel Welch   Red-Neck Hippie Romance   Rest Awhile   Rings Of Grass   Rock & Roll Hotel   Roland The Roadie And Gertrude The Groupie   Row, Row, Row   Sahra Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garb...   Sausalito Witch   Scum Of The Earth   Show It At The Beach   Sing Me A Rainbow   Sing Us Some Of The Old Songs   Six Days Back At Home   So Good To So Bad   Somebody Stole My Rig   Someone Ate The Baby (Dreadful)   Stacy Brown Got Two   Standing On The Outside Of Your Shelter   Still Gonna Die   Sweetest Of All   Testing The Bomb   That Plane   The Avocado Tree   The Ballad of Lucy Jordan   The Clam   The Danger Of A Stranger   The Devil And Billy Markham   The Diet   The Diet Song   The Giving Tree   The Golden Kiss   The Great Conch Train Robbery   The Great Lakes Song   The Lady With The Torch   The Man Who Got No Sign   The Man Who Turns The Damn Thing Off And On   The Mermaid   The Mermaid Of Ontario   The Monkey And The Elephant   The Peace Proposal   The Perfect Wave   The Radio   The Slitheree-Dee   The Smoke Off   The Ugliest Man in Town   The Unemployment Line   The Winner   The Wonderful Soup Stone   They Held Me Down   Thirteen Tons of Ice Cream   This Guitar Is For Sale   Three-Legged Man   Thumbsucker   Time   Truck Driver, Truck Driver   True Story   True Story [#][*]   Turn On The World   Ugliest Man In Town   Uncle Don   Up On The Mountain   Vanilla   Vegas   Vegematic   Warm And Free   What Have You Dont For Me Lately?   When She Cries   Whiplash Will   Whistlers And Jugglers   With His Mouth Full Of Food   Yellow-Haired Woman   Yes, Mr. Rodgers   Yowzah!

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