Red Cotton

I'm cutting up her pure white dress That I dyed red That I dyed red I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets What time erases and memory mocks I'll send them over the ocean foam Right into those gentle European homes The slave ship "Blessing" slipped from Liverpool Over the waves the Royal Navy rules To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin Where certain history ends and shame begins Dahomey traders paid in powder and shot Line up their prisoners and they sell them in lots They packed them tight inside those coffin ships And took them to the brand new world of auction blocks and whips I'm cutting up her pure white dress That I dyed red That I dyed red I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets What time erases and memory mocks I'll send them over the ocean foam Right into those gentle European homes White is the sheet on your fine linen bed The blood stained red on each cotton thread Merchants will gather at St. George's Hall To unveil the kneeling slave who is carved upon the wall So picture the scene on the Old Salt House docks Where they loaded the iron shackles and locks Between a sandstone crocodile, a barrel and a bale You will see the nameless faces they were offering for sale So, I sing the praises of God's glory As a blue cetacean floats in the basement An elephant on the second storey They queue all day to see him In my American Museum But the Lord will judge us with fire and thunder As man continues in all his blunders It's only money It's only numbers Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders But man is feeble Man is puny And if it should divide the Union There is no man that should own another When he can't even recognise his sister and his brother

Red Cotton Written by Elvis Costello Performed by Elvis Costello Produced by T Bone Burnett Musicians Elvis Costello - vocal, Gibson J-50 acoustic guitar Dennis Crouch - double bass Stuart Duncan - banjo, fiddle Jeff Taylor - accordion Mike Compton - mandolin Jim Lauderdale - harmony vocal Recorded March 31-April 2, 2008, Sound Emporium Studio, Nashville Released June 2, 2009 Albums Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, 2009 Collections Unfaithful Music & Soundtrack Album, 2015 Background:  Written for Elvis' unfinished chamber opera The Secret Songs. First known performance:  October 8, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark Last known performance:  2024      (30 known performances) “'Red Cotton' imagines [P.T. Barnum] reading an Abolitionist pamphlet while sewing red-dyed scraps of Lind's garment, even as he confronts the burden of guilt attached to its very threads.” — elviscostello.com, March 23, 2009.

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