Introduction (spoken):
It was 1910 in Okemah, Oklahoma, when Deputy Sherriff George Loney went to a poor farm outside of town to arrest a black man named Nelson for stealing a sheep. Nelson's 13-year-old son thought he saw the deputy go for his gun,
and he pulled out a rifle and shot Loney in the leg. And the deputy bled to death in the yard. A posse was organized and the entire Nelson family was arrested. They were brought to Okemah, where the husband was placed in one cell and
the wife, the son, and the nursing infant in another. A mob burst into the jail and dragged [Mrs.] Nelson, her son, and her baby to a bridge over the Canadian River where they were lynched. A photo of the lynching was later reprinted and sold as a postcard. The story always haunted Woody and many years later he wrote down this song:
As I walked down that old dark town,
In the town where I was born,
I heard the saddest lonesome moan,
I ever heard before.
My hair it trembled at the roots,
Cold chills run down my spine.
As I drew near that ol' jail house,
I heard this deathly cry:
Chorus:
O, don't kill my baby and my son,
O, don't kill my baby and my son,
You can stretch my neck on* that old river bridge,
But don't kill my baby and my son.
Now, I've heard the cries of a panther,
Now, I've hear the coyotes yell,
But that long, lonesome cry shook the whole wide world,
And it come from the cell of the jail.
Yes, I've heard the screech owls screeching,
And the hoot owls that hoot in the night,
But the graveyard itself is happy compared,
To the voice in the jail house that night.
(Chorus)
Then I saw a picture on a postcard,
It showed the Canadian River Bridge,
Three bodies hanging to swing in the wind,
A mother and two sons they'd lynched.
There's a wild wind blows down the river,
There's a wild wind blows through the trees,
There's a wild wind that blows 'round this whole wide world,
And here's what the wild winds say:
(Chorus)
Notes:
* on could also have been sung from by other artists (and I seem to recall it's having been published as such in at least one out-of-print edition which I have not seen for more than 30 years. In the interim, I have sung the song as I learned and 'remember' it. Your guess is as good as mine as to how reliable that recollection might that be.)
