Location: San Francisco
Period: 1879-1886
Dramatis personae: Sally Ann Gray; patrons of brothel.
After Sally Ann and Spooner made it out to San Francisco, Spooner went back to Louisiana after a month or so, but Sally Ann stayed behind.
Initially she got work in a bar/brothel as a bartender, something she had been back home. The madam, Marie LaBlanc, another Louisiana transplant, took Sally under her wing, and eventually gave her more and more responsibilities until Sally Ann was essentially her second in command. While she did do some work as a prostitute, early on, over time she maneuvered herself more and more into management and took over upon Marie’s death, who had been killed by an obsessively jealous patron.
Sally spent seven years in San Francisco, and this song describes a typical night in which she verbally spars with a regular customer, who, while she fends of his advances, she acknowledges that he is certainly not the worst kind of man who visits the “house of love”.
L’MAISON D’AMOUR
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)
“Sally gal
Come over here
Sit in my lap
Whisper in my ear.
You know I love you,
Like a daughter;
Not like those other fellas,
Who don’t treat you like they oughta.”
“Harvey, get on,
You ol’ pervert;
You don’ smell good,
An ‘ need to change your shirt.
“Sally gal,
You used t’ be so prim ‘n’ proper;
You were as green,
As a grasshopper.”
“Didn’t take you long,
Before you learned th’ ropes;
Now you give us crusty buzzards,
Th’ straight dope;
Sally gal,
Come on ‘n’ sit in my lap.
Aw now, girl,
Don’t look at me like that.”
Next mornin’ now;
Outside a soft grey drizzle.
Sally is wonderin’,
How a dream can fizzle.
No time for that, no, no no;
No second or third thoughts.
Sally don’ waste time,
Dwellin’ on what she lost.
One by one,
Her girls come downstairs,
As usual, complainin’;
Sally silently swears.
She’s still young ‘n’ pretty,
But not a girl no more.
She’s th’ madam now:
L’maison d’amour.
Well, ol’ Harvey,
He ain’ so bad,
Better’n most of ’em;
He makes her laugh.
“Mary, ya’ll get started, and
Wash your coffee cups.
Get yourselves together, b’fore
They start showin’ up.”
CREDITS:
David Leone: guitar, vocal
Tammy Rogers: fiddle
Related songs in chronological order:
“Ballad of Black Jack Kelley and Spooner Magee”
“Sally Ann”
“A Day in the Life of Spooner Magee”
“L’Maison d’Amour”
“Aftermath”
© 2023 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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