All across the country folks are celebrating the Woody Guthrie centennial year. Guthrie, born July 14, 1912, wrote over a thousand songs in his lifetime. "And those," Will Geer once said, "would be counting only the ones he took the time to write down."
Guitar pickers will enjoy working out MD's drop D tuning arragement of Guthrie's classic Pretty Boy Floyd.
Download the tab for free here.
Check out other guitar and banjo materials at the Acoustic Roots Workshop here.
Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie
If you gather round me children a story I will tell
of Pretty Boy Floyd the outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well.
It was in the town of Shawnee on a Saturday afternoon
his wife beside him in the wagon and into town they rode.
There a deputy Sheriff approached him in a manner rather rude
using vulgar words of language, and his wife she over heard.
Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain, the deputy grabbed his gun
and in the fight that followed, he laid that deputy down.
Then he took to the trees and the timbers to live a life of shame
every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name.
But many a starving farmer, the same old story told,
how the outlaw paid their mortgage and saved their little home.
Others tell you about a stranger who came to beg a meal
and underneath a napkin left a thousand dollar bill.
It was in Oklahoma City, it was on a Christmas Day
there was a whole car load of groceries come with a note to say
Well you say that I'm an outlaw, you say that I'm a thief
here's a Christmas dinner for the families on relief.
Yes as through this world I've rambled, I've seen lots of funny men
some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel, yes as through your life you roam
you won't ever see an outlaw drive a family from their home.