That Little Old Shack Out Back




That Little Old Shack Out Back as performed by Billy Ed Wheeler at the West Virginia Folk Festival in the late 60's Listen to Billy Ed Wheeler sing the song

T hey passed an ordinance in the town:
they said we'd have to tear it down,
That little old shack out back so dear to me,
Though the Health department said,
"Its day was over and dead"
It will stand forever in my memory.

C horus:
Don't let em tear that little brown building down,
Don't let em tear that precious building down,
Don't let em tear that little brown building down,
For there's not another like it in the country or the town.

I t was not so long ago that I went trippin' through the snow
Out to that house behind my old hound dog
Where I would sit me down to rest like a snowbird on his nest
and read the Sears and Roebuck catalog

I would hum a happy tune,
Peepin' through the quarter-Moon,
As my daddy's kin had done before;
It was in that quiet spot,
That daily cares could be forgot...
It gave the same relief to rich and poor.

C horus:
Don't let em tear that little brown building down,
Don't let em tear that precious building down,
Don't let em tear that little old building down,
For there's not another like it in the country or the town.

N ow it was not a castle fair
But I could build my future there,
an' build my castles to the yellow jacket's drone:
I could orbit round the Sun,
Fight with General Washington,
Or be a King upon his golden throne.

I t wasn't fancy built at all.
It had newspapers on the wall
It was air-conditioned in the wintertime;
It was just a humble hut but its door would never shut,
And a man could get inside without a dime.

C horus:
Don't let em tear that little brown buildin' down,
Don't let em tear that precious buildin' down,
Don't let em tear that dear old buildin' down,
For there is not another like it in the country or the town.

F rom time to time I get comments from people with memories of outhouses. Here is one such instance of memories of not only outhouses, but Billy's song...

I was 12 in 1963, the year of the W. Va. state centennial celebration, an age when one is especially fond of titillating songs about unmentionable subjects. It was also the "age of Aquarius", a time to reconsider the mores of society. It was good (for a closet hippie like me, living a clean, short haired, traditional West Virginia family life) to have a hero like Billy Ed do his part to question the way we look at our little part of society in a clean fun way.
They sponsored a high profile art contest in Charleston that year. The art was to depict W.Va. culture or history. The first place winner was titled "the West Virginia Moon" or something like that. I saw fuzzy pictures in the newspaper and once saw the piece at an exhibit, but remember, I was a 12 year old kid with only marginal interest in high-brow things like "modern" art. As I recall, the "Moon" was a large piece of weathered board with a blue crescent moon painted on it, and maybe a crescent cutout. It was clearly intended to depict an outhouse door in an "artistic" way. This was a big scandal around Charleston. The newspapers discussed it for weeks. Some "outsiders" had infiltrated the judging committee and brought disrespect to a major cultural event.
Billy Ed Wheeler was one of my favorite artists. I remember his outhouse song playing on the radio and remember seeing him perform, sometime in that same decade, at the annual West Virginia arts and crafts festival held at Cedar Lakes. (This large event is still going strong. Held usually during the July 4th week. There's usually plenty of outhouse art there.)
Billy Ed became a folk hero of sorts around those parts for a few years and then he seemed to disappear. I've occasionally wondered what happened to him and his music. I never was one to be a music groupie, buy music or seriously follow any particular style of music. I've only recently had access to the internet. Some subliminal influence caused me to think of Billy Ed Wheeler's song today and it occurred to me to type his name into a search engine. That brought me to your very impressive site. Thanks for your part in documenting this vital part of our vanishing culture.
I went on from being a kid in Charleston WV, to get a B.S. in Civil Engineering from W. Va. Tech and an MS in Civil (Sanitary) Engineering from WVU. I'm now an environmental consulting engineer living, working and raising a family in Lakeland, Florida. (home of the other fly-in, another suppressed, unrealized passion of mine) After a short job at the W.Va. Department of Natural Resources, I worked for 8 years for a large sanitary engineering consulting firm in Charleston (we now call ourselves environmental engineers, its politically correct). There I met Mr. Harry Gidley, PE, one of the firms founders who was retired but hung around all the time until his health failed. Mr. Gidley often grumbled about the EPA and government bureaucracy in general. "Sanitary engineering was fun in the old days when you could practice creatively". He told me that the most fulfilling part of his long and illustrious career was the first job he got after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1920's. He went to work with the newly created W.Va. Department of Public Health. His assignment for the first few years was to develop and implement an outhouse education and construction program. The program taught people the proper way to construct outhouses and encouraged their use. He felt that the program was instrumental in a dramatic drop and virtual elimination of serious water borne diseases like cholera in the state during the late '30s.

B ack to Billy Ed Wheeler's song. The verse of the song that sticks in the mind of this civil engineer, who appreciated the cultural impact of modern highway construction in W. Va., went something like:

Oh, the Interstate is coming through our outhouse,
They say that it's on their right-of-way,
They'll take a big steam roller, and flatten my two-holer,
I'm making my last visit there today.

It's my impression that Billy Ed was one of those sort of mountain folk-song artists that didn't get hung up on the exact wording of a song. I believe he made up verses and different versions of songs each time he performed them. I like both versions that you listed on the site. Maybe my recalled verse was from another similar song but I don't think so. Good luck in your search for the rest of the song. Thanks for confirming that my ancient memory was not a dream.

H ere's another comment...

Yo and Howdy.
FWIW, your first lyric set is *very* much as I heard the song on the radio in East Tennessee, circa Fall of 1964. And yes, I had reason to remember, as an actual outhouse was commandeered for use as a homecoming float that year, at Maryville College. More on that story if you're interested -- enough to say we were delighted to have a song on the radio like that at the same time.
In my never wrong (yeah, right) memory, the final stanza included *humble* hut, rather than *simple*. and the other difference was in the second verse, which began "Well, it was not so long ago...."
That last is probably unimportant, but the alliteration of the humble hut is, well, memorable... although, as one respondent suggested, there may have been several versions.
Thanks for recording the lyrics, that's what I went web-surfin' to find :-) I remembered most of it, but couldn't recall what led up to the golden throne.
Your 2nd set of lyrics is I believe, an incomplete and somewhat re-organized version of the first.

I later received another comment from the same person:

Further research turned up a missing stanza -- Here's the song as close as I'm able to get from several net sources and what remains of my memory.

Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back

They passed an ordinance in the town,
They said we'd have to tear it down,
That little brown shack out back, so dear to me;
Though the Health Department said
Its day was over and dead,
It will stand forever in my memory.

******************** REFRAIN ******************
Don't let 'em tear that little brown building down,
Don't let 'em tear that little brown building down,
Don't let 'em tear that little brown building down,
For there's not another like it,
in the country or the town.
*************************************************

Well, it was not so long ago,
That I went trippin' through the snow,
Out to that house, behind my old houn' dog;
There I'd set me down to rest,
Like a snowbird on her nest,
An' read the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

I would hum a happy tune,
Peepin' through the quarter-Moon,
Just like my daddy's kin had done before;
It was in that quiet spot,
That daily cares could be forgot...
It gave the same relief to rich and poor.

******************** REFRAIN ******************
Now, it was not a castle fair,
But I could build my future there,
an' build my castles to the yellow jacket's drone:
I could orbit round the Sun,
Fight with General Washington,
Or be a King upon his golden throne.

It wasn't fancy built at all,
It had newspapers on the wall,
It was air-conditioned in the wintertime;
It was just a humble hut,
But its door was never shut,
And a man could get inside without a dime.

******************** REFRAIN ******************

(sung twice at the end, 2nd & 3rd lines changed,last time)
Don't let 'em tear that little brown building down,
Don't let 'em tear that precious building down,
Don't let 'em tear that dear old building down,
For there's not another like it
In the country or the town.

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