Belle Starr - The Bandit Queen

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/belle-starr-murdered-in-oklahoma

Much has been written about Belle and several songs celebrate her life. Here is a Homespun compilation of two such songs, one by Pete Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and the other recorded by Michael Martin Murphey.

Seeger and Elliot

Belle Starr, Belle Starr, tell me where you have gone
Since old Oklahoma's sandhills you did roam?
Is it Heaven's wide streets that you're tying your reins
Or single-footing somewhere below?

Eight lovers they say combed your waving black hair
Eight men knew the feel of your dark velvet waist
Eight men heard the sounds of your tan leather skirt
Eight men -heard the bark of -the guns that you wore.

Michael Marin Murphey

As she rode into Dallas on a dashing black stallion

A silver-trimmed bridle caught the rays of the sun

She had a plume in the band of her spotless white Stetson

A long velvet gown and two matching six-guns

 

Sometimes she wore a fringe on her bright-beaded buckskins

Raised hell with her pistols and smoked a cigar

She had a rattlesnake necklace and she loved desperados

This petticoat wildcat, the outlaw Belle Starr

 

Born Myra Belle Shirley in southwest Missouri

She spoke Greek and Latin and Hebrew quite well

She's fierce as a wildcat, deadly aim with a pistol

She played the piano like a sweet Southern Belle

 

 

Seeger and Elliot
Cole Younger was your first and the father of your girl
And the name that you picked for your daughter was Pearl
Cole robbed a bank and he drawd the life line
But I heard he was pardoned after Twenty Years time.

Your Cherokee lover, Blue Duck was his name
He loved you in the sand hills before your great fame
I heard he stopped a bullet in Eighteen Eighty-Five
And your Blue Duck's no longer alive.

You took Jim Reed to your warm wedding bed
And from out of your love was born the boy, Ed
A pal killed Jim Reed by the dark of the moon
And your son Ed was blowed down in a drunken saloon.

Then there was Bob Younger you loved him so well
He rode with the James boys out down the long trail
Well they caught him in Minnesota along with the gang
And he died down in jail - - in the cell or the chain.

You loved Mister William Clarke Quantrill
And his Civil War guerrillas in the Missouri hills
He hit Lawrence Kansas and fought them still
And when he rode out Two Hundred lay killed.

They say could have they whisper you might
Have loved Frank James on a couple of nights …
He fought the Midland Railroad almost to death
Then in Nineteen Fifteen Frank drawed his last breath.

They say it could be, they say it maybe so,
That you loved Jesse James that desperado,
Jesse got married, had a wife and a son ----
Was shot down at home by the Ford brother’s guns.

Belle Starr, Belle Starr, your time's getting late,
But how is Jim Younger, did you hear his fate?

He was jailed and then pardoned for all he had done,
And he blowed his own brains out in Nineteen and One.

Eight men they say combed that black waving hair
Eight men knew the feel of your dark velvet waist
Eight men heard the sounds of your tan leather skirt
Eight men heard the bark of the guns that you wore.

Belle Starr Belle Starr tell me where have you gone

Michael Martin Murphey

One day when her daughter Pearl went out a-ridin'

She saw Belle's horse galloping and she'd not gone far

When she found Belle face down, fatally wounded

A shotgun ambush killed the outlaw Belle Starr

 

The Cherokees came to the Bandit Queen's funeral

They dropped crumbs of cornbread in the casket and cried

And the New York Times front page soon noted her passing

She was buried in riding clothes - a gun by her side

Voice Over

 

On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, Americas most famous female outlaw, Belle Starr was ambushed and killed while riding home from a neighbor's house. After she fell off her horse, she was shot again to make sure she was dead. Her reputation as an outlaw, the novelty of being a woman outlaw, and her violent, mysterious death led to her being called “The Bandit Queen.”

Seeger and Elliot

Eight men they say combed that black waving hair
Eight men knew the feel of your dark velvet waist
Eight men heard the sounds of your tan leather skirt
Eight men heard the bark of the guns that you wore.

Belle Starr, Belle Starr, tell me where have you gone
Since old Oklahoma's sand hills you did roam?
Is it Heaven's wide streets that you're tying your reins
Or single-footing somewhere below?