Streets of Laredo (song)

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"Streets of Laredo" (Roud 2), also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy dispenses his advice to a living one.

Recordings of the song have been made by Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Roy Rogers, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins, Arlo Guthrie, Rex Allen and many country and western singers, as well as avante garde rocker John Cale, the British pop group Prefab Sprout and Mercury Rev.

The song plays a prominent role in the book and film Bang the Drum Slowly, in which the song is sung. The words from the title replace the words "beat the drum lightly" from the lyrics below. This in turn is the phrase used in the song "Bang the Drum Slowly" on the album Red Dirt Girl by Emmylou Harris.

An Irish band, The Chieftains, made an interesting link between this song and the traditional Irish song "The Bard of Armagh" on their CD "Long Journey Home", as both songs are sung on the same tune.

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[edit] Origin

The song is universally credited to Traditional, and the origins are not entirely clear; but it seems to be primarily descended from an Irish/British folk song of the late 18th century called "The Unfortunate Rake", which has also evolved (with a time signature change and completely different melody) into the New Orleans standard "St. James Infirmary Blues". The Bodleian Library, Oxford, has a copy of a nineteenth century broadside entitled "The Unfortunate Lad", which is a version of the British ballad.[1] Some of elements of the song closely parallel those in the "Streets of Laredo":

Get six jolly fellows to carry my coffin,
And six pretty maidens to bear up my pall,
And give to each of them bunches of roses,
That they may not smell me as they go along.
Muffle your drums, play your pipes merrily,
Play the death march as you go along.
And fire your guns right over my coffin,
There goes an unfortunate lad to his home.

However, the cause of the Unfortunate Lad's demise is not a bullet wound but a sexually transmitted disease, as is clear from the verse:

Had she but told me when she disordered me,
Had she but told me of it at the time,
I might have got salts and pills of white mercury,
But now I'm cut down in the height of my prime.

[edit] Other versions

The Smothers Brothers performed this comedy version:

As I walked out on the streets of Laredo.
As I walked out on Laredo one day,
I spied a young cowboy all dressed in white linen,
Dressed in white linen as cold as the clay.
"I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy."
"I see by your outfit you are a cowboy too."
"We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys.
If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy too."

Allan Sherman also performed a parody of the song; his version was titled "Streets of Miami" and was about vacationing Manhattan lawyers. Garrison Keillor's album Songs of the Cat has a feline-themed parody, "As I Walked Out".

Marty Robbins' "El Paso" (1960), inspired by traditional versions of Laredo, is a tragic ballad with multiple verses about a lonesome cowboy, a lovely dancehall maiden, sudden violence and mourning, and it also features approximately the same number of syllables per verse.

And as for The Cowboy's Lament/Streets of Laredo itself, Austin E. and Alta S. Fife in Songs of the Cowboys (1966) say,

"There are hundreds of texts, with variants so numerous that scholars will ever assemble and analyze them all"

--and note that versions that found their way into print, such Lomax's 1910 version, have been Bowdlerized from, for example, subtle mention of drunkenness and one of the Fifes' sources "exaggerating somewhat, says that there were originally seventy stanzas, sixty-nine of which had to be whistled." [1]

An intermediately bowdlerized version of The Cowboy's Lament:

'Twas once in my saddle I used to be happy
'Twas once in my saddle I used to be gay
But I first took to drinking, then to gambling
A shot from a six-shooter took my life away.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-
My curse let it rest, rest on the fair one
Who drove me from friends that I loved and from home
Who told me she loved me, just to deceive me
My curse rest upon her, wherever she roam.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-
Oh she was fair, Oh she was lovely
The belle of the Viliage the fairest of all
But her heart was as cold as the snow on the mountains
She gave me up for the glitter of gold.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-
I arrived in Galveston in old Texas
Drinking and gambling I went to give o'er
But, I met with a Greaser and my life he has finished
Home and relations I ne'er shall see more.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-
Send for my Father. O send for my Mother
Send for the surgeon to look at my wounds
But I fear it is useless I feel I am dying
I'm a young cow-boy cut down in my bloom.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-
Farewell my friends, farewell my relations
My earthly career has cost me sore
The cow-boy ceased talking, they knew he was dying
His trials on earth, forever were o'er.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily
Sing your dearth march as you bear me along
Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me
I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
-

-- From Songs of the Cowboys, an 1908 version of "Cowboy's Lament," typographical errors unchanged

[edit] Derivative Musical Works

"No Man's Land" (sometimes known as "Green Fields of France"), written in 1976 by Eric Bogle, makes use of a similar melody and contains the refrain "did they beat the drums slowly, did they play the fifes lowly".

The song, "Streets of the East Village" by "The Dan Emery Mystery Band, shows a definite influence from this song as well.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. Ballads Catalogue: Harding B 15(341a)

[edit] External links