Small Business Blues

Small Business Blues
by Howard Bursen
© 1984 Thrushwood Press (BMI)

I had lunch at Zip’s diner the other day
Got a dollar bill for my change
And the words scribbled under old George’s picture
Well it made me feel sad and strange.
They said “Good Luck Joe” and written down low
They said: “We wish you all of the best,”
Now Joe’s out of luck and his very first buck
Has gone down the drain with the rest

First dollar on the wall
Make you feel like standing tall.
Got your future in your hands
Proud to be a citizen of this land.
Then they put in a mall selling cheap foreign junk
Like plastic Korean shoes.
And all the hardworking folk watch their business go broke
I got the small business blues

Don’t say America’s gone lazy,
It’s the economy gone crazy
If we don’t change we’re gonna lose
Got the small business blues.

I was working in a textile printing plant
Making lots of money back in ‘68
And by ’75 we’d doubled production
But the bank says “Too late!”
Three hundred families thrown out of work,
Shut down by a plant overseas.
Now who owns that foreign sweatshop? I don’t know
But the locks have American keys

First dollar on the wall
Make you feel like standing tall.
Got your future in your hands,
Proud to be a citizen of this land.
They’re squeezing the small folk right out of business
In the name of free enterprise
There’s ten million people out of work right now
While the corporate skyscrapers rise

Don’t say America’s gone lazy,
It’s the economy gone crazy
If we don’t change we’re gonna lose
Got the small business blues.

First dollar on the wall
Make you feel like standing tall.
Got your future in your hands,
Proud to be a citizen of this land.
We used to be farmers, mechanics and builders
Making houses out of local white pine.
Now we’re all sweeping floors in the shopping malls
Or standing on a food stamp line.

Don’t say America’s gone lazy,
It’s the economy gone crazy
If we don’t change we’re gonna lose
Got the small business blues.
If we don’t change we’re gonna lose
I got the small business blues.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's Let Me Back Into Your Life CD.

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