Wall Street Banker Blues

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The folk song, John Hardy, is a description of a temperament more suited to 2009's breed of corporate gangsters. My song is a parable set inside a New Orleans street band, about a greedy banker who doesn't realize what life or death really means. There were those who could not believe the criminal blindness of the upper classes of that time. Death often sets the record straight.

Wall Street Banker Blues

When a bad man is a rich man
Death is a ball and chain.
When a greedy man's a rich man
Death can be a ball and chain.
You might think you did for others,
What you didn't do's a bigger shame.

That American dream,
I wanted to climb so high.
That great American dream,
all that money got me high.
All I had to do was snap my fingers
and somebody somewhere died.

When my earthly time was over
I was thinking cold hard cash.
Are those Pearly Gates for sale, St. Peter?
I'll give you all I have.
St. Peter blinked and rubbed his eyes,
then he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Said, "For you, we got a mansion
Right under the Gates of Hell
A mansion made of paper money,
Down below the Gates of Hell.
He say, "This is what you worked for,
Now let me know if I can help."

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