From: GUEST,Q - PM

"
Better give up, Robin. You would die of thirst if you looked for Tom Sherman's Barroom in Laredo. It was in Dodge City, Kansas.
"

Meep -- call me the Runner and mark me down as roadkill.

"
Date 1876 when Maynard wrote the song- see Dr. James F. Hoy, "F. H. Maynard, Author of the Cowboy's Lament," Mid-America Folklore, vol. 21#2, Fall, 1993, pp. 61-68. Maynard based the song on "The Dying Girl's Lament," which is the form in which the British Isles song was picked up by the cowboys.
The song got moved to Laredo- and other places- later.
"

I have to say that this strikes me as absolute total raving bullshit. But thanks anyway, as I hadn't come on the Maynard version before.

Not to go into details but the Maynard version isn't simply pastiche, it's beyond that. But I have to say that lifting a bit from Blind Willie McTell's "Dying Crap Shooter's Blues" shows chutspa beyond belief.

Actually, honest, I really owe you for this -- I suppose it's just possible that a version of Laredo written or sung in the late 19thC +could+ incorporate lines from the blues tradition, and derive from the girly version of the Rake before it crossed the Pond. But I beg to doubt this.

Did someone (James F. Hoy) actually get this rubbish past the external reader of a serious journal?

Christ!!!

Robin

[Oh god, I still simply can't believe this, it's so lovely. Masato, where are you now when I need you to share the joke?

R2.]