• Track: Brown-Eyed Handsome Man
• Artist: Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins
• Album: Unearthed
• Year: 2003

Lyrics:

Arrested on charges of unemployment,
He was sitting in the witness stand
The judge’s wife called up the district attorney
Said you free that brown-eyed man
You want your job you better free that brown-eyed man
Flying across the desert in a TWA,
I saw a woman walking across the sand
She been a-walkin’ thirty miles en route to Bombay.
To get a brown-eyed handsome man
Her destination was a brown-eyed handsome man
Way back in history three thousand years
Back ever since the world began
There’s been a whole lot of good women shed a tear
For a brown-eyed handsome man
That’s what the trouble was brown-eyed handsome man
Beautiful daughter couldn’t make up her mind
Between a doctor and a lawyer man
Her mother told her daughter go out and find yourself
A brown-eyed handsome man
That’s what your daddy is a brown-eyed handsome man
Milo Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To get brown-eyed handsome man
She fought and won herself a brown-eyed handsome man
Two, three count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
It was a brown-eyed handsome man
That won the game; it was a brown-eyed handsome man

This cover of Chuck Berry’s 1957 song was performed by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins in 1998. It would be one of the final recordings of Perkins’ career.

Unearthed is a five-disc compilation of outtakes, alternate versions and much more from Cash’s long career.

The phrase, brown-eyed handsome man,” is a tongue-in-cheek reference to black men—specifically to black men who dated white women. When Berry penned this song, he was playing on the irrational fears of whites in the burgeoning era of civil rights. The phrase is used in a number of tracks since being introduced by Berry, including this line from Led Zeppelin’s 1969 hit, Good Times Bad Times:

“Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share; when my woman left home for a brown-eyed man, well, I still don’t seem to care.”

Some have said that Van Morrison was singing about a black woman in his 1967 hit, “Brown Eyed Girl,” though Van Morrison has never publicly confirmed that.

In any event, this cover of Berry’s hit is a regular flyer here at Dances with Bass radio. Give it a spin and see if it makes your cut, too.

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