Ain't Nobody's Business

07. Ain’t Nobody’s Business
(traditional, arr. Guthrie/Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., BMI)

Track 7 – Ain’t Nobody’s Business (MASTER MA 42)
This must be the most defiant of, well, the polite phrase is “stick your nose in someplace else.” This song, ostensibly written in 1920 by one W.E. Skidmore-Walker and the great black vaudevillian Bert Williams, was recorded at least twenty-two times, in versions ranging from white country artist Riley Puckett in 1924 to the towering talent of Billie Holiday as “T’Aint Nobody’s Business If I Do” twenty-five years later.

Here Houston plays guitar, and Guthrie mandolin. “Bender, winder”? Guthrie was usually a lot more precise with his rhymes; obviously he was singing something learned originally from a record.