The theme of telephones or, more broadly, communications has come around again for Sing Lyric Sunday this week. Of course there is a huge catalogue of songs on this topic and I’ve already harvested some of the low-hanging fruit, such as Blondie’s ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘The Promised Land’, but it’s a big sea and there are still plenty of fish in it.
Including this nice little catch: a (relatively) obscure track from the Grateful Dead’s seminal 1970 album ‘American Beauty’, written and sung by the mighty Pigpen (if you know, you know)
Operator, can you help me
Help me if you please
Give me the right area code
And the number that I need
My rider left upon the midnight flyer
Singing like a summer breeze
I think she’s somewhere down South
Down about Baton Rouge
But I just can’t remember no number
A number I can use
Directory don’t have it, central done forgot it
I’ve gotta find a number to use
Trying to check out her number
Trying to run down her line
Operator said that’s privileged information
And it ain’t no business of mine
It’s flooding down in Texas, the poles are out in Utah
Got to find a private line
She could be hanging ’round the steel mill
Working in a house of blue lights
Riding a getaway bus out of Portland
Talking to the night
I don’t know where she’s going, I don’t care where she’s been
Long as she’s been doing it right
Written by Ron McKernan (aka Pigpen)
the only deadhead in the hameau 
Nice choice, always liked this one. Good to see them doing a short song for a change, too!
Love this Dead ditty!
Good tune!
It was really nice to hear this again. Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan asks the Operator for some assistance in this song, singing his heart out to try to get some help, so that he can locate a lover that has gone missing. She left him, she’s gone off the grid riding “the Midnight Flyer” (a bus out of Portland), and he thinks she is headed down south, perhaps to Baton Rouge. He can’t think of a number to use, and the technology is not cooperating, as it’s flooding in Texas, all the poles have gone down in Utah. The operator does not help him, and he is told that what he seeks is “privileged information”.
I was never a fan of Grateful Dead but this short track wasn’t bad