Story Behind The Song

My grandmother, who lived in northeast Arkansas, began sending me stories in the local paper, about folks losing their family farms, once the casinos opened in Tunica, Mississippi.

Song Description

The song deals with the kind of hard scrabble, hard drinking and religious people who settled the Delta. It has a twist in the end, as generations later, some of these people are still gambling on the future, but they are doing it in the casinos and losing the family farms.

Lyrics

The Delta Deals in Dreams by Scott Aycock, copyright 12-7-2000

My ancestors came to furrow the fields
Where the ground gave up it's yield
A harvest of the cotton and the soybean
where the delta deals in dreams,
for the proud and the lean -REPEAT

It was a land untamed and wild
mean and wicked as an unruly child,
but still they came with their crosses and saws,
cleared the land, made their own laws,
determined to have it all... Repeat

They came in flat-bottomed boats and hip high boots
and every child, woman, and man could shoot
and blood would run, and the whiskey too
and everyone among them paid their dues..repeat

They were God-fearing people in a God forsaken land
and to those in need they'd lend a helping hand,
but don't you cross them or steal their hounds,
you'd likely end up six feet underground
in an unmarked grave outside of town
there was no foolin' around.

When the rains would come and the waters rise,
they prayed to God for the sun to dry
the land in time to plant their seeds
or in harvest time, to reap enough to feed
their families in time of need
all in God's speed...repeat

Today the levee keeps back the river
most folks have learned to forgive her
these days the delta deals in cards
and dreams die slow, and dreams die hard
and life stays hard....repeat

These days folks gather at the river bank
not to be baptized in the muddy river
but to find salvation at the black jack table
spend what little the got on a black water fable.
Every generation has a Cain and Abel.. repeat 4x's.