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Pretty Boy Floyd: His Songs
The mythology of Pretty Boy Floyd has survived the years with much credit belonging to the songs that sing his praise and cry his defeat. Nowhere can more one-sided versions of Pretty Boy Floyd's exploits be found. Examine these two examples for better illustration. If anyone can encode a version of "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" or has any more information regarding either of these two songs, please email me.
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| Pretty Boy Floyd | The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd | |
Pretty Boy Floyd(Woody Guthrie) | |
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Lyrics Written by dust bowl balladeer Woody Guthrie and covered by many more, this song clearly illustrates the poor farmer's opinion on the dastardly Pretty Boy Floyd. And it's a great song, to boot. Click here to download and listen to Woody Guthrie discuss outlaw, bankers, and Floyd himself before performing "Pretty Boy Floyd". This clip comes from Woody Guthrie's Library of Congress recordings Here's what Joe Klein has to say about it, taken from Woody Guthrie: A Life But the most famous of his outlaw ballads, and one of his finest pieces of work, was "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd," which he wrote in March of 1939. It was a song that was calculated to outrage "proper" people and to entertain the Okies in the migrant camps: Woody's Pretty Boy was a heroic figure, a victim of circumstance who killed a deputy sheriff (in a fair fight) for insulting his wife, and then had to flee to the backwoods and live as an outcast as "Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name." But if the police considered Pretty Boy a criminal, he was a hero to the poor farmers who gave him food and shelter and, in return for their hospitality, often found that their mortgag had been paid off or a thousand-dollar bill left at the dinner table. As the song progressed, Woody's claims for his hero became more extravagant: Pretty Boy even sent a truckload of groceries to provide Christmas dinner for all the families on relief in Oklahoma City. And if the point still wasn't quite clear, Woody hammered it home with two beautifully simple last verses...
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The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd(Wayne Kamp/Mark Vickery) | |
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Lyrics Another song written about Pretty Boy Floyd, although this one appears to have been written much later after history had spilled some of its secrets. I have not had the good fortune to hear this version and I am not sure who originally performed this song.
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