The River City Band’s recent celebrity benefit produced plenty of political talk, including one act which features Mayor John Delaney and three of his predecessors. But the biggest laughs of the evening were for a song by City Council member Jim Overton, who “saluted” recent mayors to the tune of “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie”, the Gordon Lightfoot classic of the early 1970s.
Here’s Overton’s version:
A long long time ago
When Lou Ritter was the mayor,
The black hats held the white hats down
The river stank and the people drank
At topless bars all over town.
It was plain to see corruption abound.
But Lou crusaded like a zealot
In every precinct, every pulpit
To consolidate our City.
But it got a little rocky
Some politicians to jail they went
But Tanzler’s who the voters sent
To City Hall, it made no sense.
No good deed goes unpunished.
So bye bye, Mr. Mayor, goodbye
Glad to see ya, wouldn’t be ya
If the voters said aye.
And those good old days of your office gone by
Are a piece of our historical pie
Yea, a piece of our historical pie.
When Tanzler left to run for gov
Jake Godbold jumped into the tub
And Jax was not the same again.
Cause Godbold built a new downtown
And showed the NFL around
And we had all the money we could spend.
Well, I know old Jake was called a hick
But the bigwigs found him pretty slick
And Jake stayed all eight years
And he left to people’s cheers.
I was a lonely, teenage brocki’n buck
With a Godbold sticker on my pickup truck
When some of Jake’s friends got him in some muck
No good deed goes unpunished.
So. bye bye Mr. Mayor goodbye/
Glad to see ya, wouldn’t be ya
And I don’t want to try.
Cause those good old days of your tenure gone by
Are a piece of our historical pie.
Yea, a piece of our historical pie.
Then for four years Tom Hazouri ruled
But the fat cats to young Tommy cooled
And so he didn’t get to stay.
But Tom Hazouri wants his way,
He’s politikin every day,
He’s always got something else to say.
And Tommy’s years were worth a lot
The tolls are gone and the money’s not
The smokestacks still are tinking
But most of them aren’t stinking.
So Hazoui raised the fat cat’s backs
And then he passed a garbage tax
And the voters gave young Tom the axe
No good deed goes unpunished.
So, bye bye Mr. Mayor goodbye.
Nice to see ya, wouldn’t be ya
And I won’t tell a lie.
Cause those good old days of your kingdom gone by
Are a piece of our historical pie
Yea a piece of our historical pie.
Then for four years Edward Austin stood
Like a big proud state attorney should
But like Tommy H. he didn’t stay.
Cause popularity is fleeting
His numbers took an awful beating
The reasons are most difficult to say.
Austins’s term was sometimes zany
Until he gave us John Delaney
And John got a new car
When he signed the old Jaguars.
When Austin built the stadium
Marv Edwards had lots to say to him.
He claimed the seats were uranium
No good deed goes unpunished.
So, bye bye Mr. Mayor goodbye.
Nice to see ya, wouldn’t be ya
I’m not about to be shy.
Those good old days of your tenure gone by
Are a piece of our historical pie
Yeh a piece of our historical pie.
Now lawyer Johnny the prosecutor
He won his election by a whisker
No mandate seems he got that day
But JohnBoy surely came to play.
He had a new idea each and every day
Some see him as a superman today.
But even Johnny has had his trouble spots
Some uncashed checks, Andy Johnson’s shots
But he’s got more gas than Exxon
Some say he’s made of Teflon.
But one project that he held so dear
He sent Rick Mullaney out to cheer
But they were sure dissed on that old amplithere
No good deed goes unpunished.
So, bye bye Mr. Mayor goodbye
Nice to see ya, wouldn’t be ya
And you wanna know why?
Don’t want to be there when comparisons fly
Cause you’re a piece of our historical pie.