STREETS OF LAREDO 121511 - SONGS FOR DADDY and COWTOWN

James Michael Taylor

I learned this song from a Burl Ives record when I was a child. It’s always been very deep and sad to me.

STREETS OF LAREDO

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a poor cowboy all wrapped in white linen
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay

“I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”
These words he did say as I boldly walked by
“Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story.
Shot in the breast and I know I must die.”

It. was once, in the saddle, I used to go dashing
Once n the saddle, I used to go gay.
First to the card house and then down to Rosies.
Shot in the breast and I’m dying today.”

Get six jolly gamblers to carry my coffin
Six pretty maidens to sing me a song
Bunches of roses all over my coffin
Roses, to deaden the clods as they fall

Then, beat the drums slowly. Play the fife lowly
Play the death march as they carry me along
Take me to the green valley and lay the sod over me
I’m a young cowboy and know I’ve done wrong

Go write a letter to my gray-haired mother
Tell her her cowboy that she loved its gone
Please, not a word of the man that has killed me
Don’t mention his name and his name will pass on

And, thus he had spoken, the hot sun was setting
T he streets of Laredo grew cold as the clay
We took that young cowboy down to the green Vally
There stands his marker we made, to this day

We beat the drum slowly. Played the fife lowly
Played the death march as we carried him along
Down in the green Vally we laid the sod ‘ore him
He was a young cowboy and said he’d done wrong