East Texas Red Lyrics

East Texas Red lyrics

(Woddy Guthrie)



Down in the scrub oak country 

to the southeast Texas Gulf

There used to ride a brakeman, 

a brakeman double tough.

He worked the town of Kilgore, 

and Longview twelve miles down,

And the travellers all said 

little East Texas Red 

he was the meanest bull around.



If you rode by night or the broad daylight 

in the wintery wind or the sun,

You would always see little East Texas Red 

just a sportin' his smooth-runnin gun.

And the tale got switched down the stems and mains, 

and everybody said

That the meanest bull 

on them shiney irons 

was that little East Texas Red.



It was on a cold and a windy morn' 

it was along towards nine or ten,

A couple of boys on the hunt of a job 

they stood that blizzardy wind.

Hungry and cold they knocked on the doors 

of the workin' people around

For a piece of meat 

and a carrot or spud just a boil of stew around.



East Texas Red come down the line 

and he swung off that old number two.

He kicked their bucket over a bush 

and he dumped out all of their stew.

The travellers said, "Little East Texas Red, 

you better get your business straight

Cause you're gonna ride 

your little black train just one year from today."



Well Red he laughed and he climbed the bank 

and he swung on the side of a wheeler,

The boys caught a tanker to Seminole 

then west to Amarillo.

They caught them a job of oil-field work 

and followed a pipeline down.

It took them lots of places 

before that year 

had rolled around.



Then on a cold and windy day 

they caught them a Gulf-bound train.

They shivered and shook with the dough in their clothes 

to the scrub oak flats again,

With their warm suits of clothes and overcoats 

they walked into a store.

They paid that man 

for some meat and stuff 

just a boil of stew once more.



The ties they tracked down that cinder dump 

and they come to the same old spot

Where East Texas Red just a year ago

had dumped their last stew pot.

Well, the smoke of their fire went higher and higher 

and Red come down the line.

With his head tucked low in the wintery wind

he waved old number nine.

He walked on down through the jungle yard 

and he came to the same old spot

And there was the same two men again 

around that same stew pot.



Red went to his kness and he hollered 

"Please, don't pull your trigger on me.

I did not get my business straight." 

But he did not get his say.

A gun wheeled out of an overcoat 

and it played that old one two,

And Red was dead when the other two men 

sat down to eat their stew.