Streets of Laredo (song)

"The Cowboy's Lament" redirects here. For other uses, see Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.
"The Streets of Mos Espa" redirects here. For The Book of Boba Fett episode, see Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa.

"Streets of Laredo" (Laws B01, Roud 23650),[1] also known as "The Dying Cowboy", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying ranger tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.[2]

Derived from the traditional folk song "The Unfortunate Rake", the song has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted numerous times, with many variations. The title refers to the city of Laredo, Texas.

The old-time cowboy Frank H. Maynard (1853–1926) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, claimed authorship of his self-published song in 1911 "The Dying Cowboy". Cowboys up and down the trail revised The Cowboy's Lament, and in his memoir, Maynard alleged that cowboys from Texas changed the title to "The Streets of Laredo" after he claimed authorship of the song in a 1924 interview with journalism professor Elmo Scott Watson, then on the faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.[3]

  1. ^ Library, EFDSS, archived from the original on 2013-10-24, retrieved 2013-06-02.
  2. ^ Western Writers of America (2010). "The Top 100 Western Songs". American Cowboy. Archived from the original on 19 October 2010.
  3. ^ Maynard, Frank H (2010), Cowboy's Lament: A Life on the Open Range (edited by Jim Hoy), Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, pp. 134–35, ISBN 978-0-89672-705-2.