Stay A Little Longer

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"Stay A Little Longer" "(Stay All Night)"
Written by	Bob Wills/Tommy Duncan
Language	English
Form	Western swing
Original artist	Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
Recorded by	(many, many other artists)

"Stay A Little Longer" is a Western swing dance tune written by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan. The title comes from a refrain in the chorus:

Stay all night, stay a little longer,

Dance all night, dance a little longer,

Pull off your coat, throw it in the corner,

Don't see why you can't stay a little longer.

The song consists of a number of unrelated verses, one of which (verse three) comes from an old folk song—"Shinbone Alley":

You ought to see my Blue Eyed Sally,

She lives way down on Shinbone Alley.

Number on the gate, the number on the door,

The next house over is the grocery store.^[1]

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded it in 1945 and it reached #3 in 1946.^[2] Willie Nelson (#22, 1973) and Mel Tillis (#17, 1982) also charted Top 40 hits. The song has been recorded numerous times.

[edit] References

^ Cohen, Folk Music, p. 290-210: "A version of 'Shinbone Alley' was published in 1833, though its origins may be still older.

"Old Miss Tuck and my aunt Sallie

"Both lived down in shinbone alley.

"No sign on the gate, no number on the door;

"Folks around here are gittin might poor."
^ Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits, p. 493

[edit] Bibliography

Cohen, Norm. Folk Music: A Regional Exploration. Greenwood Press, 2005. ISBN 0-313-32872-2
Whitburn, Joel. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits. Billboard Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8230-8291-1