The Grand Hotel

Nice session tonight, everybody. Thank you.
...the rest of this entire post is ripped off of Jon Bartlett's entry on Mudcat. You can get the midi entry (tune) from that link, too.

THE GRAND HOTEL

There's a place in Vancouver you all know so well,
It's a place where they keep rot-gut whisky to sell,
They also keep boarders, they keep them like hell,
And the name of that place is the Grand Hotel.

In the Grand Hotel when the loggers come in,
It's amusing to see the proprietor grin,
He knows they've got money, he'll soon have it all,
"Come on, boys, have a drink!", you will hear Tommy call.

Oh, the bartender laughs as the money rolls in
They drink beer and whisky, champagne, rum and gin
Till they all get so boozy they can't drink no more,
And the loggers lay scattered all over the floor.

In the morning the loggers wake up from their bed,
Their money's all gone and Oh lord! what a head,
They rush to the bar and they call for a drink,
And Tommy gets busy a-slinging the ink.

"Four bits for your bed, though you slept on the floor,
And the breakfast you've missed will be four bits more,
And a four dollar meal ticket, good at the bar,
And a pass back to camp on the old Cassiar."

Repeat verse 1.

note: coll. from Bennett King Lesley, Shaughnessy Hospital by Phil Thomas and in his Songs of the Pacific Northwest. Another version collected by Ed McCurdy is in Fowke. The building still stands. The song predates 1923, when Tommy Roberts, the proprietor, was shot and killed while gambling. With no banks for "stakey" loggers just arrived in town to use, they were prime targets for robbers of every sort, so Roberts would put their rolls in the hotel safe, and "run a slate" for them, first making sure he'd taken out enough money to pay for their trip back up to the remote logging camps on the coast steamer "Cassiar". JB