Billy Bob Arnold – "I Ain't Got You" (1955)

I got a charge account at Goldblatt’s

But I ain’t got you

Goldblatt’s was a department store chain that operated as many as 47 stores in the Chicago area. 

Founded in 1914 by two Polish immigrants, Goldblatt’s survived the Great Depression because it specialized in low-priced merchandise.  

A downtown Goldblatt’s 

But by the sixties, national discount retailers like Kmart, Woolco, and Zayre began to take business away from Goldblatt’s, which ended up declaring bankruptcy in 1981.

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Calvin Carter, who wrote “I Ain’t Got You,” was born in Gary, Indiana – which was home to a Goldblatt’s – in 1925.

Carter had some success as a songwriter, but he was better known as a record producer and A&R man for Vee-Jay Records, a black-owned record label that specialized in R&B, blues, and jazz records.  (“A&R” stands for “artists and repertoire,” which is the term given to the division of a record label that’s responsible for finding and developing new musical talent.)

But Vee-Jay was also responsible for Introducing the Beatles, the first Fab Four album released in the United States:

“I Ain’t Got You,” which is Carter’s most famous composition, was originally recorded in 1955 by Billy Bob Arnold.  The Yardbirds and Animals later covered it, but the last time I checked those groups consisted entirely of white guys from the UK – not black guys who grew up in or near Chicago during the Depression (like Carter and Arnold).

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The singer of “I Ain’t Got You” is a man whose material success would have been the envy of most of the residents of Gary, Indiana back in the day.

For one thing, he drives an “Eldorado Cadillac” – by which he means a Cadillac Eldorado, of course.  (The Eldorado was the most expensive Cadillac model for sale when this song was written.)  He’s also the proud possessor of “a closet full of clothes.”

He can afford his Eldorado and his extensive wardrobe because he’s a successful businessman – “I got a tavern, [and] a package store” (i.e., a liquor store) – and also because he just hit his number, which was 444.

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State-administered lotteries have pretty much killed off the illegal numbers game, which was a major source of income for organized crime.  

Those who played the numbers game would pick a three-digit number and buy a ticket for that number from a neighborhood bookie.  Because there are a thousand different three-digit numbers (including 000), the odds of hitting the winning number on any given day are 1000-to-1.  

Winning tickets generally paid off at 600-to-1 – if you bet a dollar, you’d win $600 – so the crime organizations that administered the numbers game took home an average of 40% of the amount that was wagered.  (Obviously, not the same amount was bet on every three-digit number each day, which meant that the game’s sponsors would pay out more than 60% of their take on some days and less than 60% on other days.)

A 60% payout may not sound like very good odds for the players, but keep in mind that we’re talking about an illegal game with cash payouts – meaning no taxes.  (Also, your wife didn’t have to know when you had won.)

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Given that the singer of “I Ain’t Got You” drives a Cadillac and owns a couple of businesses, you might expect that he would shop at a more upscale store than a lowly Goldblatt’s – for example, Marshall Field’s (whose flagship store in downtown Chicago had 73 acres of floor space, making it the largest store in the world at one time). 

A 1955 Eldorado Cadillac

Most shoppers didn’t have department-store charge accounts back in the fifties, and I’m sure it would have been difficult – perhaps impossible – for a black liquor store owner to qualify for a charge account at store like Marshall Field’s, which catered to affluent white shoppers.

In any event, the singer believes that it’s worthy of note that he’s “got a charge account at Goldblatt’s” despite the fact that Goldblatt’s catered to poorer consumers.

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Given his fancy car and his closet full of clothes and his profitable businesses and the cash he’s carrying around because his number just hit, it’s no surprise that the singer of “I Ain’t Got You” isn’t wanting for female company:

I got women to the left of me

I got women to the right of me

I got women all around me

 

(He probably doesn’t have to worry about the women to his left and to his right, or the women in front of him.  But he best keep a close watch on the women behind him – who are likely trying to slip his wallet out of his back pocket without him noticing.)

That’s cold comfort to the hero of our song, because none of those women are the one he wants – “I ain’t got you” is his lament.

To paraphrase Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, yet fail to get the babe he really wants?”

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