Album: Time In A Bottle

You Don't Mess Around With Jim

Uptown got its hustler,
The bowery got its bums,
Forty-second street got big Jimmy Walker,
He's a pool shootin' son of a gun
Yeah. he's big and dumb as a man can come
But he's stronger than a country hoss,
And when the bad folks all get together at night
You know they all call big Jim Boss,
Just because

And they say, You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim.

Well outta south Alabama come a country boy
Say he's lookin' for a man named Jim
I am a pool-shootin' boy, my name is Willy McCoy
But down home they call me Slim
Yeah I'm lookin' for the King of 42nd Street
Driving a drop-top Cadillac
Last week he took all my money and it may sound funny
But I come to get my money back.

And everybody say, Jack, don't you know,
You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim.

Well a hush fell over the pool room
as Jimmy come boppin' in off the street
And when the cuttin' was done the only part that wasn't bloody
Was the soles of the big man's feet
Yeah he was cut in 'bout a hundred places,
And he was shot in a couple more
And you better believe they sung a different kind of story
When big Jim hit the floor.

You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Slim.

Yeah, big Jim got his hat
Find out where it's at
And it's not hustlin' people strange to you
Even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pool cue

Yeah you don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Slim