Pushcart Annie

The song “Push Cart Annie” concerns an old woman who lived in my home town down in the Ohio River Valley back in the 1960s. She was what people here in Chicago call a scavenger, someone who looks through the alleys for stuff they can sell.  Unlike scavengers up here, though, she didn’t cruise the alleys in a pickup; she plodded along with a pushcart.

me, circa 1972

I won’t claim that the song’s factually accurate, but I hope it tells the truth, and the description of her is as I remember it. I wrote the song in 1972 when I was in my early twenties, using “the ice cream chords,” a progression so notoriously cliched that it has its own Wikipedia entry. (Think “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” or “Last Kiss.”)

Twenty some years later, I set the lyrics  to a less hackneyed chord progression and melody, and…