Ain't It Crazy [The Rub] - Grateful Dead

Mama got the rub board, sister got the tub

They’re going round doing the rub-de-rub

Ain’t it crazy, ain’t it crazy

Ain’t it crazy one day, to keep on rubbin' that thing

Two old maids, they was layin' in a bed

One turned over and this is what she said

Ain’t it crazy, ain’t it crazy

Ain’t it crazy one day, to keep on rubbin' that thing

Yeah mama killed a chicken, thought it was a duck

Put him on the table with his feet sticking up

(Alternative: … with his feet turned up)

Ain’t it crazy, ain’t it crazy

Ain’t it crazy one day, to keep on rubbin' that thing

There was two old maids, layin' in the sand

Each one wonderin' if the other was a man

(Alternative: Each one wishing that the other was a man)

Ain’t it crazy, ain’t it crazy

Ain’t it crazy one day, to keep on rubbin' at that thing

Notes:

This was played by the Dead a dozen times in 1970 and 1971, and before that in

1964 by Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions before the Dead proper were formed.

It seems clear that the Dead knew this song as «The Rub».

In July 1964,

for example, Weir introduces it by saying that Mr Pigpen McKernan is going to

sing a Lightnin' Hopkins song — The Rub.

But Lightnin' Hopkins recordings have

it under the title «Ain't It Crazy», «Mighty Crazy» or «The Crazy Song.»