I’m suffering from a major case of Lyricitis Ad Nauseum: the inability to remove a snatch of lyrics from your brain, causing you to hear the same line(s) over and over and over and over again. So, please help me.
Who wrote, and what is the song that includes the rather mystifying refrain,
Why does he love the dirty water. WHAT dirty water? The Charles River? Who is this singer?
–grinding molars, dying to know–
Cartooniverse
“Dirty Water” by the Standells; and yes, the lyrics do mention the Charles.
Thanks ! Were they a one-hit wonder band?
Yeah, that was their only real biggie (it reached #11), but the follow-up, “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White,” almost cracked the Top 40, and they had a couple of other middling hits.
And the oblgitory “they weren’t from Boston, but were an LA band” trivia point.
And what was that line?
That line was “lovers, muggers & thieves.”
I checked a few lyrics sites and they say it’s “fuggers”.
I always thought they were saying “buggers”.
Was this the same group that released the song with different cities in that line, or was it a later group that latched onto this marketing scam? (Living in North Carolina, I heard “Charlotte you’re my home”)
The Wailers of “Louie Louie” fame did a Seattle version of Dirty Water. It mentions Puget Sound and Elliott Bay.
Downt downt dawnt
Downt daaaaaount
The late and much lamented Warren Zevon once performed “Werewolves of Bryn Mawr”. That’s a hoity-toity area of the Main Line outside of Philly. He was performing in a fundraiser for a famous small club called The Main Point. ( Bruce Springsteen played, lots of people played…and saved it for a few more years ). Now and then WMMR plays that version. Excellent rendition. 
First verse:
“Down by the river…
By the banks of the river Charles.
That’s where you’ll find me,
along with lovers, muggers, and thieves
(ah, but they’re cool people)
Well I love that dirty water…”
There’s actually not just a whole lot to that song. Including any rhyme scheme. I can’t really understand why it’s so catchy, but it is.
Damn, I’d love to get my hands on that, my wife being a Bryn Mawr graduate.
Dunno if you can get it from them, but try finding WMMR Philadelphia on the web, and search Werewolves of Bryn Mawr. 
The Zevon show can be legally downloaded at archive.org. No guarantees about the quality, however.
Moderators: Permission was found here.
Email me. I’m listening to it right now.
“Dirty Water,” of course, is also played at Fenway Park following every Red Sox win.
I’m thinking later on, not the Standells. I remember hearing a Pittsburgh specific version in the late '70s, but IIRC it didn’t sound like the original band, just pretty close.