Steve Russell
2 min readMay 28, 2021

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Not being familiar with Bread, I was going to ask if the song was related to the Elvis tune of the same name

Then I hit the button at the bottom of the short part of your writing and I had two....thank youl

Well, I quit my job down at the car wash

Left my mama a goodbye note

By sundown I'd left Kingston

With my guitar under my coat

I hitchhiked all the way down to Memphis

Got a room at the YMCA

For the next three weeks I went huntin' them nights

Just lookin' for a place to play

Well, I thought my pickin' would set 'em on fire

But nobody wanted to hire a guitar man

Well, I nearly 'bout starved to death down in Memphis

I run outta money and luck

So I bought me a ride down to Macon, Georgia

On a overloaded poultry truck

I thumbed on down to Panama City

Started pickin' out some o' them all night bars

Hopin' I could make myself a dollar

Makin' music on my guitar

I got the same old story at them all night piers

There ain't no room around here for a guitar man

We don't need a guitar man, son

So I slept in the hobo jungles

Roamed a thousand miles of track

Till I found myself in Mobile Alabama

At a club they call Big Jack's

A little four-piece band was jammin'

So I took my guitar and I sat in

I showed 'em what a band would sound like

With a swingin' little guitar man

Show 'em, son

If you ever take a trip down to the ocean

Find yourself down around Mobile

Make it on out to a club called Jack's

If you got a little time to kill

Just follow that crowd of people

You'll wind up out on his dance floor

Diggin' the finest little five piece group

Up and down the Gulf of Mexico

Guess who's leadin' that five-piece band

Well, wouldn't ya know, it's that swingin' little guitar man, yeah yeah

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Jerry Reed Hubbard

Guitar man lyrics © Hori Pro Entertainment Group

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Steve Russell
Steve Russell

Written by Steve Russell

Enrolled Cherokee, 9th grade dropout, retired judge, associate professor emeritus, and (so far) cancer survivor. Memoir: Lighting the Fire (Miniver Press 2020)

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