I always wanted to write a cowboy paen, and I always liked Johnny Ringo for all that others had to say about him. Earp and Holiday both hated him cause they thought he was in with Curly Brocius at the OK Corral, which he wasn’t. Then it was thought that he shot Virgil Earp at one time and Morgan Earp at another. Plainly, he had qualities that other gunmen of the time did not like. Much is not clear, but since I am pretty read up on him, I can draw my own conclusions. Some had the nerve to call him a backshooter, but the story about killing 19 banditos in an ambush is real.
Lyrics=
It’s said Johnny Ringo was the fastest gun alive
It’s said he was even faster after he had died
Some recall a joke he told, I can’t remember when
He’d ask them, holding still, “wanna see me draw again?”
He robbed a bank or few, that’s how the story goes
But how he died under that tree, they say nobody knows
Might have been Doc Holiday, or maybe someone else
Did Frank Leslie shoot him or... did he shoot himself?
Johnny Ringo......
Gracious with the ladies and kind to the whores
Johnny Ringo......
If you were going in, he would get the door
Johnny Ringo.......
He drank like God was thirsty, or so I heard
Johnny Ringo......
He was a trustful man who never broke his word
One day, he got ambushed in that canyon east of here
and killed nineteen banditos. The evidence is clear
One sixteen-year-old boy escaped, who lived to tell the tale
They said he’s hard to catch and hard to keep in jail
He was in the Mason County War and then a lawman, too
Of all that others said of him, most said that he was true
He had a fearsome temper from a trouble deep inside
He drank, he said, because he had no other place to hide
Johnny Ringo......
Gracious with the ladies and kind to the whores
Johnny Ringo......
If you were going in, he would get the door
Johnny Ringo.......
He drank like God was thirsty, or so I heard
Johnny Ringo......
He was a trustful man who never broke his word
He lived in times of hard to tell the good men from the bad
But comes to trust and honor, he’s the best the old west had
He couldn’t face his demons; there was no one he could trust
Johnny’s legend stayed alive long after he was dust
Life began to get him down when he was thirty-two
He wondered what it meant and if his run was through
He sat down by that big oak tree, a single shot was heard.
Was it him or someone else? Till now, there’s been no word
Johnny Ringo......
Gracious with the ladies and kind to the whores
Johnny Ringo......
If you were going in, he would get the door
Johnny Ringo.......
He drank like God was thirsty, or so I heard
Johnny Ringo......
He was a trustful man who never broke his word
He drank like God was thirsty. This is what I heard:
He was a trustful man who never broke his word
Johnny Ringo......
Johnny Ringo.......
