The Ballad Of Theda Nell

James Michael Taylor

HE BALLAD OF THEDA NELL Capo 3 Am

          Am                                                    G

On the shoulder of an eagle where the sparrow builds her nest
Dm Am
Texas town of Palo Pinto, there’s a court house in the west
Where the clerks all talk in whispers as they tell their tattle tale
The rich man pays his money and the poor man goes to jail

            F                              C                       G                             Am

And her name was Theda Nell. She was buried there today
Am G Am
Now a child with class and beauty sleeps beneath a rose array

I was working down at Tony’s, just a singing for my pay
I sang BAD MOON ON THE RISE. I should listen what I say.
They tell me she’s a lady and I know ‘cause I can see
The way she reached out with her eyes sends chills all over me.

Her husband was a rich man. He could buy a racing horse
And he did and it could win a race of course

I sit here and I wonder how could I have gone so wrong
But I could not deny her. I could never be that strong
Oh, I remember nothing in my life to touch her art
The sadness in her smile. The way she took me to her heart

And her husband could not give her what she wanted most in life
A child that she could fondle, like he never did his wife.

He told them that I killed her and he wept to prove his pain
I said, “Oh, no, I only loved her,” but of course it was in vain.
If I heal and if I live I know I never will be free
For I am poor and I am lost and have no family

He told me he could buy another. That she was one of eight
And her father and her mother fear his shadow on their gate.

On the shoulder of an eagle where the sparrow builds her nest
Texas town of Palo Pinto, there’s a court house in the west
Where the guards all talk in whispers as they tell their tattle tale
The rich man pays his money and the poor man goes to jail

And her name was Theda Nell, and they buried her there today…

…….

This song gives me chills.
I wrote it over thirty years ago
and have never sung it in public.
I wrote it after I spent a night in jail in
Palo Pinto county when I got caught driving with a suspended driver’s license. And there was this
girl that used to come watch our band.
One of the few that ever showed me
her tits while I was playing. Let me
rephrase that: The only girl that ever…
So, there was an emotional tie-in.
She told me once that she envied me
all my children. That she had none and
no prospect for having any. Just in case
you didn’t notice, her name, respelled, is
Death Nell.

( 2021 -One night back in the 80s, when Peggy and Barbara and I were playing at Tony’s. Tony’s is a biker bar in that town just west of Weatherford, Mineral Wells. This kid comes in, sits down with his beer and is listening to the music. Another guy comes up behind him and smashes his forehead on his mug so hard it breaks it. Turns out, at an earlier date that kid had killed a girl in town and he was now an outcast. To indicate how rough this place was, the owner, Tony, came up to the stage and did a big hairy moon for the girls and me that night.

To Scotty,
Scotty, Thank you for your comment at Alonetone. You and I run deep… Her name really was Theda Nell (Death nell) She WAS barren. She did show me her tits one night when Texas Water was singing at The White Elephant. I did spend the night in the Palo Pinto jail and there was a sparrow nesting on the concrete shoulder of the eagle above the door at the court house. Peggy and Barbara and I were singing one night at the Tony’s and as we left town I got pulled over and sent directly to jail for driving without a valid license. Tony’s was a pretty rough biker bar. Tony mooned the girls that night.