What is the most famous recording of Streets of Larado? I hadn’t heard this version, but I know it isn’t the one I’m familiar with.
I’m not sure what other versions there are. I’d have to look up on YT.
Looks like Tex Ritter sang it, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uBGYxgsMTA
Also, from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Laredo_%28song%29
“Streets of Laredo” (Laws B01, Roud 23650), also known as the “Cowboy’s Lament”, is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
Derived from the English folk song “The Unfortunate Rake”, the song has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted numerous times, with many variations. The title refers to the city of Laredo, Texas.
The old-time cowboy Frank H. Maynard (1853–1926) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, claimed authorship of the revised Cowboy’s Lament, and his story was widely reported in 1924 by the journalism professor Elmo Scott Watson, then on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
And this from Wiki:
Recordings of the song have been made by Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Jim Reeves, Roy Rogers, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins, Arlo Guthrie, 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 and Paul Westerberg. There is also a version on RCA’s How The West Was Won double album, Bing Crosby – 1960. Harry James recorded a version on his 1966 album Harry James & His Western Friends (Dot DLP 3735 and DLP 25735).