Up On Cripple Creek The Band

"Up on Cripple Creek" is the fifth song on the Band's eponymous second album, The Band. It was released as an (edited) single on Capitol 2635 in November 1969 and reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Up on Cripple Creek" was written by Band guitarist Robbie Robertson, with drummer Levon Helm singing lead vocal.

A 1976 live performance of "Up on Cripple Creek" appears in the Band's concert film The Last Waltz, as well as on the accompanying soundtrack album. In addition, live performances of the song appear on Before the Flood, which records the Band's 1974 tour with Bob Dylan, as well as on the 2001 expanded edition of Rock of Ages, originally released in 1972.

The Band performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show in November 1969.

Robertson said of writing the song:

I had some ideas for ‘Up On Cripple Creek’ when we were still based in Woodstock making Music From Big Pink. Then after Woodstock, I went to Montreal and my daughter Alexandra was born. We had been snowed in at Woodstock and in Montreal it was freezing, so we went to Hawaii, really as some kind of a way to get some warmth, and to begin preparing for making our second album. I think it was really pieces and ideas coming on during that travelling process that sparked the idea about a man who just drives these trucks across the whole country. I don’t remember where I sat down and finished the song, though.

"Up on Cripple Creek" is notable as it is one of the first instances of a Hohner clavinet being played with a wah-wah pedal. The riff can be heard after each chorus of the song. The clavinet, especially in tandem with a wah-wah pedal, was a sound that became famous in the early to mid-1970s, especially in funk music.

Drawing upon the Band's musical roots—the American South, American rock and roll, and bluegrass/country—the song is sung from the point of view of a truck driver who goes to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to stay with a local girl, Bessie, with whom he has a history. In the song, he gambles, drinks, listens to music, and spends time with "little Bessie," who takes an active role in the goings-on, while expressing her opinions, further endearing herself to the narrator. At the end of the song, after exhausting himself on the road, he talks about going home to his woman, "big mama," but is tempted to return to Bessie again. Or he may not be cheating. Truckers also use the term "Big Mama" to refer to their dispatcher over CB radio. Concerns about the weather in other parts of the country and the line "this life of living on the road" suggest over-the-road trucking. At the start of the song he's hauling logs off a mountain and at the end he may be weighing options: "rolling in" to home base for a new cargo or seeing his Bessie again.

Up On Cripple Creek
The Band
released 1969
Written by: Robbie Robertson

When I get off of this mountain
You know where I want to go
Straight down the Mississippi river
To the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles Louisiana
Little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by
If there's anything that she could do

Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Good luck had just stung me
To the race track I did go
She bet on one horse to win
And I bet on another to show
The odds were in my favor
I had 'em five to one
When that nag to win came around the track
Sure enough we had won

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings
And I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and threw it in my face
Just for a laugh
Now there's one thing in the whole wide world
I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine
Dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Now me and my mate were back at the shack
We had Spike Jones on the box
She said, "I can't take the way he sings
But I love to hear him talk"
Now that just gave my heart a throb
To the bottom of my feet
And I swore as I took another pull
My Bessie can't be beat

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

As there's a flood out in California
And up North it's freezing cold
And this living on the road
Is getting pretty old
So I guess, I'll call up my big mama
Tell her I'll be rolling in
But you know, deep down
I'm kind of tempted
To go and see my Bessie again

Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don't have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one