> Folk Music > Songs > The Streets of Laredo

The Streets of Laredo / The Dying Cowboy / Tom Sherman’s Barroom

[ Roud 23650 ; Laws B1 ; Henry H680 ; Ballad Index LB01 ; The Unfortunate Rake at Fire Draw Near ; Folkinfo 209 , 642 ; DT LAREDST , LAREDS15 ; Mudcat 14919 ; trad.]

Gale Huntington, Lani Herrmann, John Moulden: Sam Henry’s Songs of the People Elizabeth Stewart, Alison McMorland: Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen

This song is one in the The Unfortunate Rake family of many related songs. In 1960, Kenneth S. Goldstein published an album on the prestigious Folkways label with 20 variants, The Unfortunate Rake: A Study in the Evolution of a Ballad, amongst them Bruce Buckley singing a version of The Cowboy’s Lament that was collected by Vance Randolph from Jim Fitzhugh of Sylamore, Arkansas, in 1919, and Harry Jackson singing The Streets of Laredo on the 1959 Folkways album The Cowboy: His Songs, Ballads and Brag Talk. Goldstein’s liner notes, available as a PDF scan at Smithsonian Global Sound, are an essential reading.

Dick Devall recorded Tom Sherman’s Barroom in Dallas, Texas on 13 October 1929 that was released in 1931 on the Shellac record Timely Tunes C-1563. This recording was included in 2018 on the Musical Traditions anthology of Anglo-American songs and tunes from Texas to Maine, A Distant Land to Roam. Mike Yates or Rod Stradling noted:

This version of the American song The Streets of Laredo began life either in Ireland or else in England (probably the former). Often called The Unfortunate Rake or The Young Sailor Cut Down in His Prime, the earliest known broadside text, from the 1790s, was titled The Buck’s Elegy. Highly popular with both sailors and soldiers, versions of the song have turned up throughout the English-speaking world. In America it is perhaps best known as St James Infirmary, why; because the young man is dying from a venereal disease obtained from one of the ‘flash girls of the city’. A writer, who uses the alias ‘Stewie’ on the Mudcat Café website, has added the following, “I have a note [but can’t recall the source] that ‘Tom Sherman’ may be a corruption of ’Tom Sheran’ who took over the Bull’s Head Saloon in Abilene, Kansas, during July 1871.”

Vern Smelser sang Tom Sherman’s Barroom in a recording made by Pat Dunford and Lee Haggerty in 1963; it was included in 2000 on the Folk-Legacy anthology Ballads and Songs of Tradition.

Hedy West sang Lee Tharin’s Bar Room (The Cowboy’s Lament) in 1966 on her Topic album of Appalachian ballads, Pretty Saro, reissued in 2011 as part of her Fellside anthology Ballads & Songs From the Appalachians. She noted:

This was widely sung from New England south to Mississippi, throughout the West and Northwest. Its most popularised version is The Streets of Laredo. It is derived from an Anglo-Irish broadside, The Unfortunate Rake current around 1790. I’ve combined the two variants that Grandma sings (Tam Sherman’s Bar Room and Jones’ Saloon) with Horace Mulkey’s Lee Tharin’s Bar Room.

Hobert Stallard of Waterloo, Ohio, sang The Dying Cowboy to Mark Wilson and Annadeene Fraley on 29 August 1973. This recording was included in 2007 on the Musical Traditions anthology of folk songs of the Upper South Meeting’s a Pleasure Volume 4. Mark Wilson noted:

Hobert provides a typical traditional text of this Americanisation of The Young Sailor Cut Down in His Prime, good versions of which can be found on MT 301 and 309. Through complicated developmental processes that I don’t wholly understand, a quite specific adaptation, The Streets of Laredo, became canonised in the 1930s, along with Home on The Range and the Paul Bunyan stories (the product of an advertising campaign, actually), as comprising a canonical set of ‘America’s folk songs and legends’, apparently in an attempt to forge a core stock of national music and myth. As a child, I vividly remember the pages of Life Magazine being filled with bright cartoons of these hypothetical heroes—indeed, my interests in traditional music began there. In contrast, younger Americans today are usually unfamiliar with most lore of this ilk, a condition clearly tied to their obliviousness with respect to America’s historical past in general. In any case, Hobert’s version is clearly prior to these canonisation efforts.

Almeda Riddle of Heber Springs, Arkansas, sang Tom Sherman’s Barroom on her 1977 Minstrel anthology Granny Riddle’s Songs & Ballads. This track was also included in 1999 on the EFDSS anthology Root & Branch 1: A New World.

Snakefarm sang both Laredo and St. James on their 1999 album Songs From My Funeral. Anna Domino noted:

Laredo and St. James both go back to a 16^th century British street ballad (The Unfortunate Rake) about the dues of hard living. One ends up dying in the street, the other laid out in the morgue. Both songs feature a funeral.

Martin Simpson sang Tom Sherman’s Barroom on his 2024 Topic album Skydancers. (He also sang St. James’s Hospital earlier, in 2017 on his Topic album Trails & Tribulations.) He noted:

I first heard Tom Sherman’s Barroom, sung by Tracy Schwarz of New Lost City Ramblers. Dick Devall, who recorded it in the late 1920’s, was the source.

I am strangely drawn to versions of The Unfortunate Rake, a song which originally depicted a young man dying of syphilis. In the U.S., songs that refer to STDs are few and far between. Gunshot wounds are far more acceptable.

Lyrics

Dick Devall sings Tom Sherman’s Barroom

As I rode down to Tom Sherman’s barroom
Tom Sherman’s barroom one morning in May
’Twas there I spied a gay, handsome cowboy
All dressed in white linen as cold as the clay

I knew by your outfit that you were a cowboy
That’s what they all said as you go riding along
Come gather around me, (you) said the jolly cowboy
And listen to me, comrades, said he
It’s each and all may learn and take warning
And quit your wild roving before it’s too late

It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing
It’s once in the saddle I used to be gay
First taking to drinking and then the card playing
Got shot through the breast and now I must die

O bear the news gently to my grey-headed mother
And whisper then lowly to my sister so dear
And don’t forget the words that I’ve told you
For I’m a gay cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong

So beat your drum loudly and play your fife slowly
And play your dead marches as you carry me along
O take me to the graveyard and roll the sod o’er me
For I’m a gay cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong

Six jolly cowboys to balance my coffin
Six pretty girls to sing me a song
O take me to the graveyard and roll the sod o’er me
For I’m a gay cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong

O bring unto me a glass of cold water
A glass of cold water, that poor boy cried
And when I returned, the spirit had left him
And, gone to the Giver, the poor boy had died

Hobert Stallard sings The Dying Cowboy

’Tis early one morning I rode over to Charleston
It was early one morning I rode over there.
I met a young cowboy all dressed in white linen
With sparkling blue eyes and curly brown hair.

“Once in my saddle I used to go dashing
Once in my saddle I used to ride gay.
I first took to drinking and then to card playing
I’m shot in the heart and dying today.

“Don’t write to my mommy, please do not inform her
Of the wretched condition that’s called me in.
For I know it would grieve her, the loss of her darling
O could I return to my childhood again.

“Go beat the drum slowly and play the fife sadly
And play the dead march as they carry me along
Go carry me to the graveyard and throw the sod over me
For I’m a poor cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.”

Links

For much more information see the Wikipedia entry for Streets od Laredo.