Dolly Summers

Old76 Music-inspired Art 2013

The amazing story of a girl named Dolly Summers in "Shoulder Holster", a song from Elton John with lyrics of Bernie Taupin on the BLUE MOVES album from 1976.

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SHOULDER HOLSTER

Music & lyrics by Elton John & Bernie Taupin 1976

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Now it was just like Frankie and Johnny

And it was just like Stagger Lee

Dolly Summers was a simple girl

From a mid-west family

With a stucco home and her own Mustang

And a charge account at Sears

She had everything that a girl could want

To live happy for the rest of her years

 

But the thing that she wanted most of all

Was the thing that she had lost

To the arms of a downtown black jack hustler

By the name of Candyfloss

They'd skipped town on a late night train

Heading for the West

Dolly slipped behind the wheel of her Mustang

With a piece between her breast

 

She put a pistol in her shoulder holster

She took her car up from Santa Fe

Yesterday morning she was washing dishes

Now she's hunting down a runaway

Don't judge a man by a misdemeanor

You may be sorry when his light goes out

Don't put that pistol in your shoulder holster

You can never, never tell if the Law's about

 

If it seemed just like a movie

Or a night of bad TV

They should have had a picture of Dolly's face

As she drove across country

With daggers drawn for her fallen man

And venom in her heart

It was nearly dawn when she caught them up

Making out in a picnic park

 

But the thing that shook her rigid

As she fumbled for her gun

Was the state of the man that she'd married once

And thought of as the only one

And as she looked back on the chances

That she'd passed up at home

Well she quietly dumped her pistol in a ditch

And she headed home alone

Done