Well, I quit my job down at the car wash   And left my mama a goodbye note   By sundown, I'd left Kingston   With my guitar up under my coat      I hitchhiked all the way down to Memphis   Got a room at the YMCA   For the next three weeks   I went a hauntin' them nightclubs   Lookin' for a place to play      Well, I thought my pickin'   Would set 'em on fire   But nobody wanted to hire   A guitar man      Well, I nearly 'bout starved to death down in Memphis   I run out of money and luck   So I bummed me a ride down to Macon, Georgia   On a overloaded poultry truck      I thumbed on down to Panama City   Started checkin' out some of them all night bars   Hopin' I can make myself a dollar   Makin' music on my guitar      Got the same old story   At them all night piers   "There ain't no room around here for a guitar man   We don't need a guitar man, son"      So I slept in the hobo jungles   I bummed a thousand miles of track   Till I found myself in Mobile, Alabama   In a club they call Big Jack's      A little four piece band was jammin'   So I took my guitar and I sat in   I showed 'em what a band would sound like   With a swingin' little guitar man, show 'em, son      Yeah      So if you ever take a trip down to the ocean   Find yourself down 'round Mobile   Well, make it on out to the club called Jack's   Till you got a little time to kill      Just follow that crowd of people   You'll wind up out on his dance floor   Diggin' the finest little five piece group   Up and down the Gulf of Mexico      And guess who's leadin'   That five piece band   Why, wouldn't you know   It's that swingin' little guitar man, yeah