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The Hanging of Black Jack Ketchum

from Crazy Horse Never Died by Roxy Gordon

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    + Deluxe LP edition features 140g virgin vinyl; a gatefold jacket with restored, new, and alternate art and photos; and a 48pp. chapbook (PoB-069) with lyrics, essays, photographs, and First Coyote Boy’s extraordinary drawings for each song. (The chapbook is included in the LP edition only and also available for purchase separately.)

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crazy Horse Never Died via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $27 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    + Deluxe CD edition features a gatefold jacket with restored, new, and alternate art and photos, and insert (CD edition does not include the chapbook).

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crazy Horse Never Died via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $14 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    + Bundle the CD and chapbook for a discounted price.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crazy Horse Never Died via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $20 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    + Bundle the LP (with chapbook) and CD for a discounted price.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crazy Horse Never Died via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $37 USD or more 

     

  • Book/Magazine

    + 48pp. chapbook with lyrics, essays, photographs, and First Coyote Boy’s extraordinary drawings for each song. (The chapbook is included in the LP edition only and also available for purchase separately.)
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9 USD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

lyrics

It's an early cool morning; springtime in Texas, in the
year nineteen hundred and one.
Birds start in the trees.
A big black horse by the fence gently grazes.

The woman in the house is by her bed on her knees
and her eyes are dry.
Neighbors bring dishes; the fire makes ashes.
Women bake biscuits while men on the front porch
talk quietly and glance at the black horse grazing.
And the woman by her bed
on her knees,
keeps praying.

Her eyes are dry like her mama's eyes
twenty years ago when they brought her uncle
in from the river naked and scalped by Comanches.
She prays by her bed like her mama prayed.
And her eyes are dry.

Her face is brown and wrinkled like cowhide;
she's lived by the cows and helped calves borning.
She's ridden all day in the West Texas sunshine;
the dust and wind has brought tears to her eyes.
But now with death,
her eyes are dry.

Out in New Mexico,
the door is opening on a bright cool morning.
The man with one arm takes a deep breath
five-hundred miles from the house in Texas,
where his sister prays by her bed
and his black horse grazes.
One arm's gone, shot off, the other is bound.
His scaffold is stark against Clayton, New Mexico's sky.
The Texas train robber is about to die,
while his sister back in Texas prays.

Her uncles and kinfolk prayed every Sunday,
sang hymns at church, Baptist and unsmiling,
prayed over meals and buried their people,
buried their dead and murdered the killers,
and hardly ever cried.

Her religion's not for crying;
her religion's for living and praying
not for the dead but to get through the dying
one more death, so she prays all day.
She prays all day.

credits

from Crazy Horse Never Died, released May 12, 2023

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about

Roxy Gordon image

Roxy Gordon Dallas, Texas

Roxy Gordon (First Coyote Boy, or Tu Gah Juk Juk Ka Na Hok Sheena) (1945–2000) was a Choctaw, Assiniboine, and Texan poet, journalist, artist, activist, and musician.

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