Pretty Boy Floyd

DESCRIPTION: "Come gather 'round me children, a story I will tell, About Pretty Boy Floyd, the outlaw; Oklahoma knew him well." The singer tells how Floyd turned outlaw when a deputy attacked his wife, and describes Floyd's many charities
AUTHOR: Woody Guthrie
EARLIEST DATE: 1940 (recording, Woody Guthrie)
KEYWORDS: outlaw police robbery help
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 227, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenway-AmericanFolksongsOfProtest, pp. 296-297, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 325, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (1 text, 1 tune)
MidwestFolklore, Tristram P. Coffin, "The Folk Ballad and the Literary Ballad: An Essay in Classification," Volume 9, Number 1 (Spring 1959) pp. 7-8, "(Pretty Boy Floyd)" (2 excerpts)
DT, BOYFLOYD*
Roud #11504
RECORDINGS:
Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (on Struggle2)
Pete Seeger, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (on PeteSeeger19) (on PeteSeeger41)
NOTES [105 words]: Although still sometimes sung and recorded, the accuracy of this song is thoroughly limited. Tristam Coffin goes so far as to offer this as his archetype for a "Ballad of No Literary Merit," noting that Floyd was a "degenerate sadist dressed up by use of the 'Robin Hood' formula." Coffin admits that he was "colorful," but points out that he never left $1000 bills to help needy families. He concludes that Guthrie's ballad is "one long, sentimentalized cliché" and points out that the best lines "Some will rob you with a six-gun And some with a fountain pen" echoes Oscar Wilde (though I wouldn't bet on Woody knowing that). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: LoF227

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