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Hobo Bill's Last Ride
By Merle Haggard
Written by Jimmie Rodgers
Album: Same Train, A Different Time (1969)
Tabbed by Larry Mofle
5/8/2016
Spoken:
The hobo is a reocurring subject in the Jimmie Rodgers songs
Hoboing was an accepted form of travel for the migrant worker
Or for the unemployed who simply wanted a change of weather
And during the period of Jimmie's greatest popularity
You could set your watch by the highbawl of any train
Hoboing was an inexpensive almost sure way of getting from one place to
another and during the peak of the depression it was not unusual to see
Oh half a hundred bo's jump from a train just as it came into the outskirts
of a city. They'd jump off a soon as they could so as to ditch the trainbulls
of the oncoming yard. But many quite respectable men find it convenient to
hop trains also and many of them died identified only as a railroad bum
And I would imagine that hobo Bill was one of them...
C F C
Riding on the eastbound freight train speeding through the night
F C D G
Hobo Bill the railroad bum was fighting for his life
C F C
And the sadness of his eyes revealed the torture of his soul
F C G C
He raised a weak and weary hand to brush away the coal
No warm lights flickered round him no blankets there to hold
Nothing but the howling wind the driving rain so cold
When he heard a whistle blowing in a dreamy kind of way
The hobo seemed contented for he smile there where he lay
C G C
Hey hobo Bill
Outside the rain was falling on the lonely boxcar door
But the little form of Hobo Bill lay dead upon the floor
While the train sped through the darkness with the raging storm outside
No one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride
Hey hobo Bill...
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