"Then swing your rope slowly and rattle your spurs lowly, And give a wild whoop as you carry me along; And in the grave throw me and roll the sod o'er me.
[4][5] The lyrics appear to be primarily descended from an Irish folk song of the late 18th century called "The Unfortunate Rake",[6] which also evolved (with a time signature change and completely different melody) into the New Orleans standard "St. James Infirmary Blues".
Recordings of the song have been made by Cisco Houston,Vernon Dalhart, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Johnny Western, Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Jim Reeves, Roy Rogers, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins, Arlo Guthrie, The Norman Luboff Choir, Rex Allen, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and many country and western singers, as well as avant garde rocker John Cale, the British pop group Prefab Sprout, Snakefarm, Mercury Rev, Jane Siberry, Suzanne Vega, Paul Westerberg, Buck Ramsey (singer & poet), and The Stone Coyotes.
White Noise by Don DeLillo features protagonist Jack Gladney’s son Heinrich "moodily" singing the song in one of the last chapters.
The lyric "For I Am a Cowboy and Know I've Done Wrong" is cited as the title of one of the songs sung "every Saturday night" on the prairie in Nebraska in the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather.
Marty Robbins' 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs features his hit "El Paso", similar in form and content to "Streets of Laredo".
"[8] A portion of "Streets of Laredo" was sung by a group of cowboys in Season 2, Episode 5: "Estralita" on the TV show Wanted Dead or Alive which first aired on 10/3/1959.
The song presages the American Civil Rights Movement and recounts the refusal of Northwestern University's Psi Upsilon fraternity to accept Sherman Wu because of his Chinese heritage.
The words of the labor song "The Ballad of Bloody Thursday" – inspired by a deadly clash between strikers and police during the 1934 San Francisco longshoremen's strike – also follow the "Streets of Laredo" pattern and tune.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your dearth march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your death march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your dearth march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
I arrived in Galveston in old Texas Drinking and gambling I went to give o'er But, I met with a Greaser and my life he has finished Home and relations I ne'er shall see more.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your dearth march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your dearth march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
Beat your drums lightly, play your fifes merrily Sing your dearth march as you bear me along Take me to the grave yard, lay the sod o'er me I'm a young cow-boy and know I've done wrong.
They will beat the drums softly and play the pipes slowly When Dengar and I gun the Corellian down For nobody lives long when they cross a Mandalorian Let's capture that pirate and get out of this town Billy Bragg has cited[14] this ballad as the musical inspiration for his version of Woody Guthrie's "The Unwelcome Guest".
"No Man's Land" (sometimes known as "Green Fields of France"), written in 1976 by Eric Bogle, makes use of a similar melody and contains the refrain "did they beat the drums slowly, did they play the fifes lowly".
The composer Samuel Barber adapted a variation on the "Streets of Laredo" tune as the principal theme in the "Allegretto" movement of Excursions, op.
"When I Was a Young Girl", a female version of the same theme, was popular on the folk music circuits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and was recorded by Barbara Dane and Odetta before being revived by Nina Simone, Leslie Feist, and Marlon Williams.
In 1995, Judy Collins used the tune of "Streets of Laredo" for the song "Bard of my Heart", about her late son Clark, on her album, Shameless.
"Streets of Laredo" is used as the theme music at the beginning of the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018); in its last segment, Brendan Gleeson sings "The Unfortunate Rake".