Pecos Bill

**Pecos Bill** is a song composed by Eliot Daniel and Johnny Lange, first performed by Roy Rogers and The Sons of The Pioneers in the 1948 Disney film *Melody Time*. The first Riders In The Sky performance of the song was released on *Kerrville Folk Festival Live* in 1981, but the first studio recording was part of their 1983 album *Weeds And Water*.

## Lyrics

*Pecos Bill was quite a cowboy down in Texas*

*The western Superman to say the least*

*He was the roughest, toughest critter*

*Never known to be a quitter*

*'Cause he never had no fear of man nor beast*

*So yippie-yi-yay-yi-yay yippie-yi-yo*

*He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo*

*Pecos roped a raging cyclone out of nowhere*

*He saddled it and straddled it with ease*

*And while that cyclone bucked and flit it*

*Pecos rolled a smoke and lit it*

*And he tamed that ornery wind down to a breeze*

*So yippie-yi-yay-yi-yay yippie-yi-yo*

*He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo*

*Pecos lost his way while traveling on the desert*

*(Water! Water! Water!)*

*It was ninety miles across the burning sand*

*(Water! Water! Water!)*

*He'd knew he'd never reach the boarder if he didn't get some water*

*(Water...)*

*So he got a stick and dug the Rio Grande*

*(Yodeling)*

*While a tribe of painted Indians did a war dance*

*Pecos started shooting up their little game*

*He gave those redskins such a shake-up*

*That they jumped out of their make-up*

*That's how the Painted Desert got it's name*

*While reclining on a cloud high over Texas*

*(High over Texas!)*

*With his gun he made the stars evaporate*

*As he watched them all declining*

*He left one brightly shining*

*As the emblem of the Lone Star Texas state*

*So yippie-yi-yay-yi-yay yippie-yi-yo*

*As the emblem of the Lone Star Texas state!*

## *Harmony Ranch* Variation

A minor alteration to the lyrics were done to the second verse for the recording used on the 1991 album *Harmony Ranch*:

*Pecos roped a raging cyclone out of nowhere*

*He saddled it and straddled it with ease*

*And while that cyclone bucked and tossed 'em*

*Pecos brushed his teeth and flossed 'em*

*And he tamed that ornery wind down to a breeze*

This "censored" version of the verse was also used in performances of the Roy Rogers Tribute Medley, but has since been retired in favor of using the original "uncensored" version.

## 2015 Verse Addition

For the 2015 recording featured on *Riders In The Sky Salute Roy Rogers: King of The Cowboys*, Joey performs a verse from the original song which had been omitted from previous Riders recordings:

*Now once a band of rustlers stole a herd of cattle*

*But they didn't know the herd they stole was Bill's*

*And when he caught them crooked villains*

*Pecos knocked out all their fillings*

*That's the reason why there's gold them thar hills*

## Riders Recordings

* *Kerrville Folk Festival Live* (1981) (live performance)
	+ This performance was later included on Disk 10 of the *Kerrville Folk Festival: The Early Years* (1972-1981) collection released in 1998.
* *Austin City Limits* (Season 6, Episode 7 (1981) (live performance)
* *Weeds And Water* (1983) (first studio recording)
* *Best of The West Rides Again* (1987) (reuses *Weeds And Water* recording)
* *Hee Haw* (1987) (live performance)
* *Riders Radio Theater* (series)
	+ *Singing Six Guns* Chapter Three (1988) (live performance)
	+ *Return of The Phantom* Chapter One (1990) (live performance)
	+ *War of The Worlds* Chapter One (1999) (live performance) (included as part of Roy Rogers Tribute Medley)
* *Harmony Ranch* (1991) (new recording)
* *The Grand Ole Opry Live* (July 11th, 1998) (live performance) (included as part of Roy Rogers Tribute Medley)
* *Live At The Sarsaparilla Saloon* (1999) (live performance)
* *Riders In The Sky Salute Roy Rogers: King of The Cowboys* (2015) (new recording)