THE SUN NEVER SHINES ON THE POOR By Richard Thompson From the album "Hokey Pokey" THIS TRANSCRIPTION IS IN TWO MAIN PARTS ---------------------------------------------------- PART ONE Transcription by: Thomas LaBelle If you capo 3rd fret it's pretty close. If anyone has tabbed any of it I'd be glad to see it. F The urchins are writhing around in the mud F# Like eels playing tag in a barrel Bb Gm The old Sally Army plays mournful & sweet Dm Bb A As they play an old Christmasy carol F The world is as dark as a black night in hell F# What kind of place can this be? Bb Gm Oh! People like hermit crabs run into doorways Dm Fearing to say, Bb A7 "Do you feel as downtrodden as me?" CHORUS Dm Ting-a-ling ting-a-ling A7 The devil, he leans on your bell Bb Gm7 A7 The future looks black as before (A7) And the sun never shines, Dm The sun never shines on the poor! The rich man he dreams of his gold and his plate And his house and his car and his women The poor man he dreams of his one room estate And his pay packet short by one shilling The last penny falls through a hole in your jeans Now ain't that the way when you're down? Just walking in circles for the rest of your life And feeling so low that your chin scrapes along on the ground. Now some of the people are poor in the purse They don't have the cash at the ready And some of the people they're crippled and lame They can never stand up true and steady And some of the people are poor in the head Like the simpleton fools that you see But most of the people are poor in the heart That's the worst kind of poor, That's the worst kind of poor you can be! ------------------------------------------------------------- PART TWO-Additional playing notes Return-Path: Delivered-To: r.kendrick@netcom.co.uk From: WFerg424@AOL.COM Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 21:18:25 -0400 Subject: re SNSOTP chords Apparently-To: Arch Mott wrote: > Any of you guitarists out there know what the A-flat chord is in TSNSOTP? The chord occurs at 'Eels playing tag in a barrel' ^---here... I am attempting the song in a drop-D tuning. Is this wrong? If anyone has chord/tablature for the tune, I'd love to see it. Is TSNSOTP one of the tunes in the upcoming music book?< Try Tuning to DADGAD The verse at the point you're talking about is in Gaug, sort of... The weird dissonance is caused by a strum of some pattern on the upper four strings (DGAD) with the 2nd string fretted on the 4th fret (D#). This produces the marvelous DGD#D chord against a G bass, you get a G feeling (no major or minor modality) with a raised or augmented 5th! Just the thing for sliding into the Eygyptian Room! Walt "gotta love those chords" Ferguson From: David Thomas Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 09:28:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: r-thompson-digest V1 #942 I'd go with dropped D on this one, based on 1975 versions ( I haven't analysed more recent performances). I finger the opening chord with an F at the 3rd fret on both the 6th and 4th strings and an A on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string. Let the open 2nd string ring out too. It's a sort of inversion of Dmi6. Then slide the fingering up one fret and carry on using the open 2nd string too. Go now we've got a sort of F#sus4. (I don't sound the 5th or 1st strings at all during this, as I think it's more important to get the right hand picking pattern correct). Chord names are not particularly helpful in this case. My memory of the concert I attended on the 1975 Hokey Pokey tour is that this song got the most applause of the evening. Richard did have a bass pedal keyboard on stage, but I don't think he used it on this number.