Whoa Mule! Can't Get The Saddle On
Mike Seeger - Topic
Sep 5, 2019
Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group
Whoa Mule! Can't Get The Saddle On · Mike Seeger
Animal Folk Songs For Children
℗ 1992 Rounder Records, a division of Concord Music Group, Inc.
Latest Update -August15, 2026
This is Part I of a four part pancocojams series about the 19th century African American originated dance song "Whoa Mule. Can't Get The Saddle On)".
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/03/whoa-mule-cant-get-saddle-on-lyrics_17.html for Part II of this series. Part II continues the presentation of information about the history and early examples of the songs "Whoa Mule" and the African American song "Peep Squirrel".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/07/sound-file-lyrics-auto-generated.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. Part III showcases a 1950 sound file of Celina Lewis singing "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On"). That post also includes the lyrics for that rendition and Celina Lewis' comments about that song. In addition, that post includes my re-wording into standard English of Celina Lewis' comments.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/08/sam-chatmons-versions-of-whoa-mule-cant.html for Part IV of this pancocojams series. That post showcases a YouTube video of Sam Chatmon singing "Can't Get The Saddle On The Old Gray Mule". That post also presents information about Sam Chatmon and two of his versions of that song.
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The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, socio-cultural, and recreational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the unknown composers of this song. Thanks to Celina Lewis, Bessie Jones, Sam Chatmon, and others whose renditions and comments about this song are documented offline and online. Thanks also to the folklorists who collected & recorded this song. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube..
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It's important to note that the song "Whoa Mule, Can't Get The Saddle On" isn't the same song as "Whoa Mule" (also given as 'Whoa Mule Whoa".) "Whoa Mule" is largely performed in the 21st century as fiddle tune without any lyrics.
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INFORMATION ABOUT "WHOA MULE (Can't Get The Saddle On)"
"Whoa Mule. Can't Get The Saddle On" is an up-tempo late (?) 19th century dance song that online sources credit to African Americans from the United States south.
"Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On)" is a song with a short varying line & a repeated refrain, a format which lends itself to it being sung using a call & response pattern.
Floating verses from "Whoa Mule.Can't Get The Saddle On" versions are found in some versions of "Chicken In The Bread Pan", "Lil Liza Jane" and "Peep Squirrel".
All of these songs originated in the 19th century among African Americans from the United States South.
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AN ONLINE SUMMARY ABOUT 'WHOA MULE"
From "https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Whoa_Mule_(1)
"WHOA MULE (WHOA) [1]. AKA and see "Kicking Mule."
American; Song and Breakdown (2/4 time). USA; Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia,
southwestern Va., western North Carolina. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle).
AABB. "Whoa Mule" or "Whoa Mule Whoa" is a widespread song
and tune played throughout the south, midwest and southwest in a variety of
styles and genres, by both black and white musicians, as a song, instrumental
and a combination. There is much varaition between versions, especially in
tempo, and song lyrics are often imported from other songs or are
"floaters" in the tradition.’…
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The song "Whoa Mule. Can't The Saddle On" (also given as "Can't Get The Saddle On The Old Gray Mule") is a variant form of the song "Whoa Mule".
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The song "Simon Slick" that is found in Thomas W. Talley's 1922 book Negro Folk Songs: Wise & Otherwise is also a variant form of the song "Whoa Mule".
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AN EXAMPLE OF 'WHOA MULE. CAN'T GET THE SADDLE ON" LYRICS IN THE SONG "CHICKEN IN THE BREAD PAN".
“Chicken in the bread pan, pickin up dough
[How he got there.] I didn’t know.
Can’t get the saddle on
Hold that mule.
Can’t get the saddle on
Hold that mule.
Whoa mule!
Whoa, mule!
Can’t get the saddle on.
Whoa, mule!
Hold that mule.
Whoa mule
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zswLahjLb7 "Sam Chatman "Can't Get The Saddle On The Old Gay Mule", published by Lomax Film Collection, 1978
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This is my transcription of those lyrics. I'm not sure about my transcription of the words that are given in italics.
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AN EXAMPLE OF 'WHOA MULE. CAN'T GET THE SADDLE ON" IN A VERSION OF "LIL LIZA JANE"
From Margaret McKee Beale and Fred Chisenhall's book Black & Blue: Life and Music on Black America's Main Street, p. 189, published October 1,1981 [Louisiana State University Press]
[In this excerpt an African American Bluesman talks about the way that enslaved Black people used songs during slavery to express feelings that the couldn't openly express, and to make coded comments about their treatment by White people & about their oppressive living conditions.]
“I’ll tell you why the blues come about. It’s an expression that a person have –he want to tell you something, and he can’t tell you in his words, he’ll sing it to you. See back in-well, I’ll just bring it right out plain where anybody can see it, in olden days, if a white man do a colored man wrong, he couldn’t tell him he was wrong. He’d go off on a mule or something, and sing back to that man, the blues, like, singing it to him. That’s the way a plenty of them songs come up.
Take my daddy. When he playing his fiddle in the slavery time, he wouldn’t want to play, but he had to play. So he’d go along and make things up and holler it out in the fields where the old boss man could hear him, just singing away. Now that’s what he meant – he’s tired of playing nearly every night and then working in the daytime.
[Asked for an example, he sang]
“Hey Liza, little Liza Jane.
Oh Liza, little Liza Jane,
Can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule
Can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule.
Whoa, whoa, mule, can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule.
He’s saying that the white man done worked him so ‘til he can’t even put a saddle on the ole gray mule.* That’s what he’s talkin about.
Chicken in the bread pan
Pickin at the dough
When he gets through picking
He stratch for more.
That’s what they be singing to the white folks what wasn’t giving ‘em enough to eat. Yeah, in slavery time. All them things come out of slavery time. All that happened in them days."
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*I think that some words are implied in this sentence. For instance, the above sentence would read “the white man done worked him so hard ‘til he can’t [even] get the saddle on the ole gray mule."
"Get the saddle on" means "to put the saddle on" (the mule).
On another page of this book the man speaking indicates that his father carried his fiddle to the fields. I believe that the implication is that his father was required to play the fiddle during the night for the White master’s entertainment, and then also required to play the fiddle during the day to help pace the work of other field hands.
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From AI Overview (result retrieved on August 15, 2026)
"Early recordings of "Little Liza Jane" frequently incorporated
floating verses from "Whoa Mule," demonstrating a shared 19th-century
folk tradition. These interchangeable lyrics are well-documented in collections
like Ira Ford’s and performances by artists such as Mike Seeger."
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NOTE ABOUT 'WHOA MULE. CAN'T GET THE SADDLE ON" IN SOME VERSIONS OF "PEEP SQUIRELL" SONGS
"Peep Squirrel" is largely described by researchers as a "play-party motion song; a game for chasing".
It seems likely that "Whoa Mule:Saddle" was also sometimes performed as a
motion/chasing song. However, there are allusions to the performance of
"Whoa Mule:Saddle" being risque.
One hint of that is found in
prefacing comments that the singer Celina Lewis made in 1950 before she sang a
version of "Whoa Mule:Saddle" that is included in folklorist Harold
Courlander's Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Vol. 6: Ring Game Songs and Others
Various Artists FW04474. Another hint of the risque nature of "Whoa
Mule:Saddle"'s performance is found in another online quote which is found
in Part II of this post.
Also, Georgia Sea Isles folk singer Bessie Jones recorded a
version of "Peep Squirrel" that includes lines from "Whoa Mule:
Saddle".
Read more about the song "Whoa Mule. Can't Get The Saddle On" and "Peep Squirrel" in in Part II of this pancocojams series.
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TWO TEXT (WORD ONLY) EXAMPLES OF "WHOA MULE (CAN'T GET THE
SADDLE ON)"
Example #1: 1:15 minute sound file
"Whoa Mule! Can't Get the Saddle On"
From the album Animal Folk Songs for Children by Mike,
Peggy, Barbara & Penny Seeger
© 1992 Rounder
http://www.amazon.com/Whoa-Mule-Cant-Get-Saddle/dp/B0010XJ700
Can't get the saddle on [repeat both lines 2x]
[using that same pattern]
Catch that mule
Ride that mule
Run mule
Can't get the saddle on [repeat both lines 4x]"
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My description: This is an uptempo, call & response
song.
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Example #2
[Note that the YouTube sound file for this rendition of "Whoa Mule. Can't Get The Saddle On" is showcased in Part III of this 2026 pancocojams series.]
From
http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=11578
FW04474_201
Session with Celina Lewis, (a)Catch That Squirrel,
(b)Sangaree, (c) Whoa Mule, Can't Get the Saddle On, from Harold Courlander's
Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Vol. 6: Ring Game Songs and Others Various Artists
FW04474 1955
“The singer was an old woman when these songs were recorded.
She had a reputation of having been a fine and spirited singer when she was
young."
[Text of "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On)- Celina Lewis; Alabama, 1950]
All you church folks looking right at me, and they calI on me
to praise ... get up there!
Whoa, mule, I can't get the saddle on, (2)
Stop that mule, I can 't get the saddle on, (2)
Whoa mule, I can't get the saddle on, (2)
Run mule, I can't get the saddle on, (2)
Can't you catch that mule, can't get the saddle on,
Catch that mule, can't get the saddle on, (4)
Yon go that mule, can't get the saddle on
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Pancocojams Editor's Notes
I believe that the word "yon" that is given in these lyrics is a shortened form of the
word "yonder" (meaning "seen from a distance"). In more
standard American English, that line would be given as "Yonder goes that
mule" (I can see the mule in the distance.)
The "Go that mule" version of that line is the one used by Bessie Jones in the 1972 Step It Down (authors Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes). "Go that mule" is also the line for that song that was given by "an elderly informant" in Harold Courlander's 1963 book Negro Folk Music U.S.A and most websites that I've come across use that wording in their lyrics for that song. However, I believe that "Go that mule" is an example of folk etymology and "Go that mule wasn't the earliest version of those lyrics. The "yon" word may have been dropped from that line because that wasn't the way that Bessie Jones and others learned it. Another possibility is that the word "yon" may have been dropped because that word's meaning was no longer understood. Yet, "go that mule" doesn't make any sense in Standard American English or in the versions of African American Vernacular English that were used when this song was published and afterwards. However, that hasn't stopped people from singing or, at least, from quoting that version of that line.
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REPRINTED VISITOR COMMENTS AND MY REPLY (from pancocojams' now deleted Part II "Whoa Mule, Can't Get The Saddle On" that was published in 2013:
A fascinating version of this tune was played by the African American fiddler Teodar Jackson (1903-1966) from Austin Texas:
https://fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com/track/whoa-mule-4
African American fiddler Elijah Cox (1842-1941) was recorded playing the tune in 1935 in San Angelo, Texas.
White fiddler Bill Chitwood was recorded playing the tune in the 1920s with the Georgia Yellow Hammers, a white string band from North Georgia that had a close association with African American fiddler Andrew Baxter.
The tune also shows up in the Texas Style fiddle tradition with great renditions by Major Franklin, Terry Morris, Matt Wyatt, Garland Gainer, Wes Westmorland, Gary Lee Moore and others.
Reply
Thanks Dan Foster for sharing that great example of "Whoa Mule Can't Get The Saddle On"
My sincerest apologies to you for the long time it has taken me to respond to your comment.. I've just revisited this pancocojams post almost five years after your comments and am just reading it on July 24, 2026.
Here's the link to that online sound file of African American fiddler Teodar Jackson (1903-1966) from Austin Texas:
https://fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com/track/whoa-mule-4
Best wishes!
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This concludes Part i of this pancocojams series.
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