By George, I think I’ve got it!
Pick a Bale of Cotton wasn’t in the Blues Brothers, but it was in The Jerk. It’s the song the whole family is singing at the very beginning and very end of the movie.
Could it be “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”?
Yeah, heel, toe, docie do
Come on baby, let’s go boot scootin’
Oh cadillac, blackjack, baby meet me out back
We’re gonna boogie
Oh, get down, turn around, go to town
Boot scootin’ boogie
It was featured in the movie “Kevin of the North” (didn’t see it - thank you Google)
Oh! Oh! That was it! Oh wow! That’s what’s been going through my head for 3 days. Thank you!
Man, what a minor thing to get so bugged about. But now my brain can relax.
Dangermom, I’m glad that you found your song. The song that I was thinking you were after is not by Traffic, but by another 1960s English group called Jethro Tull. the song is The Teacher. the lyric is:
“Jump up, look around, have yourself some fun.
No use sitting there and hating everyone.
No man’s an island, a castle isn’t home.
The nest is full of nothing when the bird has flown.”
Isn’t it interesting that so many different kinds of songs have such a similar lyric in them?
No problem. Anything for a fellow librarian. 
Although it’s not the one you’re after, Atlanta rapper Ludacris uses this refrain in the bridge to his track “The Potion.” It’s a radio track, maybe even a single from his latest album.
Quite catchy.
Bwuh? It’s the same as the Leadbelly song, isn’t it? Maybe not the same recording, but the same song…
Harry Belafonte sang the song during his Concert in Carnegie Hall in 1961.
My mother has the album, and played it constantly when I was a wee Shodan. I can still sing all the songs, verbatim, except for The Click Song, sung (in !Xhosa) by Miriam Makeba. It has a bunch of glottal clicks.
[pointless anecdote]We had a missionary from South Africa stay with us for about a week when I was young. He spoke !Xhosa, and my dear mother played the song for him and asked for a translation.
If you ever wanted to see a black man turn white, that was the moment. The lyrics are apparently not at all what a genteel missionary would care to say to the sheltered, middle class, white, clueless suburban housewife who is his hostess. He said it was a “traditional wedding song”, and offered up descriptions to the bride of what she should expect. He declined further explanations, and my mother did not press the issue.
[/pa]
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry Ogre, I guess it’s the same song, but since I could only remember the general tone of the song, not much of the words, it was the recording I was after. So, you were right too.
The funniest version is the New Christy Minstrels who sang it on an album my father had.
These people were the inspiration for the New Main Street Singers in Mighty Wind and they were whiter than Osmonds. Hearing them perkily singing a slave song would have made Booker T. Washington join the Black Muslims. Strangely, on the same album (a composition album of patriotic songs), there was a cut of Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd, another famous slave song (and atlas), sung by Polish/Israeli/American folk-singer and actor Theodore Bikel (perhaps best known for originating the role of Baron von Trapp in Sound of Music) that was one of the best renditions I’ve ever heard (though I’d give the final edge to Richie Havens version on The Civil War miniseries soundtrack).
It predates Lead belly. By decades.
Regard this link on history and lore of Cotton and Cotton Picking. About half way down the page.
Slaves sang this song. My wife, a music teacher in a thoroughly integrated district, chose this song last year for her grades 3-5 chorus to sing at the end of the year. The African-American parents were overwhelmingly supportive of the choice. ( I wondered if there would be a negative backlash to a slave song being sung by the kids ).
Cartooniverse
Yep. I pointed that out in my very first post.