PBA Galleries

Jesse James [sheet music] (Will Rossiter, Chicago, 1911) Words by Roger Lewis, Music by F. Henri Klickman. 10 x 14”, 4pp. Pictorial cover of a night train under steam.

Published 30 years after the death of the legendary bank and train robber, but a decade before the first recording of a Jesse James folk song – and long before Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, the Kingston Trio and Cher sang their own versions about the outlaw-folk hero. None of these used the words of prolific lyricist Roger Lewis, whose four verses build up to a rendition of James’ death, when he stood on a chair to straighten a picture of his wife and fellow outlaw Robert Ford “aimed his forty four at Jesse;s head / And news spread round the country Jesse James was dead” – proving that “If you want to be a bandit, stay a single man”. Rare. There is a copy in the Levy Collection, but no institutional holding recorded by WoldCat.