A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from September 26, 2007
Pecos Bill (legendary superhuman cowboy)

“Pecos Bill” really did exist and was the nickname of William Rufus Shafter (1835-1906), a United States Army officer. The mythical cowboy “Pecos Bill” appeared in 1923, in the story “Saga of Pecos Bill” by Edward Synnott O’Reilly that appeared in Century magazine. This Pecos Bill dug the Rio Grande and created the Painted Desert, among other superhuman feats.
   
   
Wikipedia: Pecos Bill
Pecos Bill is a legendary American cowboy, immortalized in numerous tall tales of the Old West during the American westward expansion, considered to be an example of fakelore.
 
Like many tall tales, Pecos Bill stories involve combinations of superhuman feats of courage and prowess (such as riding a tornado like a bronco and using a rattlesnake for a whip) and explaining natural phenomena (such as why coyotes howl at the moon, digging the Rio Grande, and how the Painted Desert becamed so colorful.)
 
According to the legend, Pecos Bill was traveling in a covered wagon as an infant when he fell out unnoticed by the rest of his family near the Pecos River. He was taken in by a female coyote and raised with her other pups, thus explaining his exceptional skills.
 
He grew up to become a cowboy and has a horse, Widowmaker, and a love interest, Slue-Foot Sue, both are equally as idealised as Pecos Bill.
 
After a courtship with Slue-Foot Sue where, among other things, Pecos Bill shoots all the stars from the sky, except for one which becomes the Lone Star, he proposes to Sue who insisted on riding Widowmaker sometime before, during or after the wedding depending on variations in the story.
 
Widowmaker, jealous of no longer having Bill’s undivided attention, bounces Sue off, who lands on her bustle which begins bouncing her higher and higher, eventually hitting her head on the moon following a failed attempt to lasso her. After Slue-Foot Sue had been bouncing for days, Pecos-Bill realized that she would starve to death, so he put her out of her misery by shooting her as an act of mercy. Though it is said that Bill was married many times, he never did recover from the loss of Sue.
 
The stories were written by Edward O’Reilly in the Saga of Pecos Bill, published in 1923. He was a late addition to the “big man” idea of characters like Paul Bunyan or Iron John. A segment within the Disney animated feature, Melody Time in 1948 adapts the legend. It begins with Roy Rogers and his friends singing “Blue Shadows on the Trail”. Soon after the song, a coyote howls at the moon. Young Disney actors Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten ask why the coyotes howl at the moon. Roy Rogers explains it’s all because of Pecos Bill and is shocked when the children don’t know the tall tale of the great American legend. Through songs, Roy Rogers and his friends relate the story of Pecos Bill, Slue Foot Sue and Widowmaker. The Disney adaptation, omits Bill shooting Sue, who lands on the moon, rather than hitting her head on it. Devastated by the loss of Sue, Bill returns to live among the coyotes, and begins howling at the moon in grief over his loss. The other coyotes follow suit out of sympathy and continue the practice to this day.
 
Handbook of Texas Online
PECOS BILL. Pecos Bill, a mythical cowboy, grew out of the imagination of southwestern range hands who told tall tales to pass the time and to out-do each other in boasting. His originator is unknown. The story goes that Bill, the youngest of eighteen children of a Texas pioneer, was lost in crossing the Pecos River and was brought up by coyotes. He considered himself a coyote until a cowboy convinced him of his true identity, a human being and the cowboy’s brother. After returning to civilized territory, Pecos Bill became the cowhand who invented all the tricks of the ranching trade; in various tales he appears as a buffalo hunter, cattleman, railroad contractor, and oilfield worker. His activities include teaching gophers to dig postholes, killing snakes by feeding them mothballs filled with red pepper and nitroglycerin, and roping whole herds of cattle at a time. He rode everything in the West, including a mountain lion and a cyclone. He invented the branding iron to stop cattle rustling and the cowboy song to soothe the cattle. On their wedding day, Slue-Foot Sue, Pecos Bill’s girl friend, was determined to ride Bill’s famous horse, the Widow-Maker, but the animal pitched Sue so high that she almost hit the moon. Her steel-spring bustle continued to bounce her so high that Bill finally shot her to keep her from starving. Pecos Bill’s death is a matter of controversy. Some cowboys say that he died from drinking fishhooks with his whiskey and nitroglycerin; others insist that he died laughing at dudes who called themselves cowboys. Whatever the mode of his death, Pecos Bill exists in cowboy folklore as a hyperbole of the endurance, enterprise and other qualities required of cowboys.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mody C. Boatright, Tall Tales from Texas (Dallas: Southwest Press, 1934). Charles E. Brown, Cowboy Tales: Pecos Bill, Tall Yarns of the Mighty Hero of the American Cattle Trails and Ranches; Other Cowboy Stuff (Madison, Wisconsin, 1929). Ariane Dewey, Pecos Bill (New York: Greenwillow, 1983). Harold W. Felton, New Tall Tales of Pecos Bill (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1958). Edward Synnott O’Reilly, Pecos Bill (New York: Ridgway, 1935).
 
Handbook of Texas Online
SHAFTER, WILLIAM RUFUS (1835-1906). William R. (Pecos Bill) Shafter, United States Army officer, son of Hugh Morris and Eliza (Sumner) Shafter, was born on October 16, 1835, near Galesburg, Michigan. He had two brothers and one sister. After completing an elementary school education, Shafter worked on his father’s farm and taught school at Galesburg, Mendon, and Athens, Michigan. In 1861 he enrolled in Prairie Seminary, but when the Civil War broke out he left school to join a local volunteer regiment. During the war he took part in several campaigns, including the battle of Ball’s Bluff and the Peninsular campaign. He was captured at Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, in March 1863 and spent several months in a Confederate prison. After his release he was transferred to the regular army and served as an officer in the Seventeenth United States Colored Infantry, a regiment of black troops, in the battle of Nashville in December 1864. Shafter was commissioned a lieutenant colonel after the war and went to Louisiana briefly before a transfer in 1867 took him to Texas. He served as lieutenant colonel of the all-black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry along the Rio Grande until 1868, when he moved to Fort Clark in West Texas. After 1870 Shafter served primarily as a field commander. He executed his assignments with vigor despite his physical bulk, which would have slowed most men. Working under Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, Shafter commanded scouting expeditions and campaigns against hostile Indians. He led several excursions into the Llano Estacado and Big Bend areas, thus proving these regions accessible to the military despite their barrenness. His expeditions also deprived hostile forces of the psychological and military advantage of safe refuge.

Shafter’s most renowned feat in West Texas was the Llano Estacado campaign of 1875. Combining two companies of his Twenty-fourth Infantry with parts of the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry and Tenth United States Cavalryqv and a company of Seminole Indian scouts, Shafter drove his men more than 2,500 miles from June to December. Often exhausted and short of water, the troops made three crossings of the Llano Estacado and swept the plains clear of Indians. Shafter’s campaign also proved the plains habitable and paved the way for white settlement of the region. Between 1876 and the end of 1878 Shafter led three separate campaigns into Mexico against Indians. He became colonel of the First Infantry in 1879 and the following year participated in the war against Victorio, the great Apache leader. After leaving Texas, Shafter served in Arizona before a transfer in 1886 took him to California. In 1890-91 he was in South Dakota helping to return Indians to Pine Ridge after the Wounded Knee massacre. He was promoted in 1897 to brigadier general and in 1898 led American troops to Cuba during the Spanish-American War, in which he commanded the largest force of United States troops that had left American soil up to that time. Shafter was a Republican and a Protestant. He married Harriet Grimes in 1862, and they had one child, Mary. In 1895 Shafter received the Medal of Honor for meritorious service in the Civil War. Shortly after his promotion to major general in 1901, he retired to his sixty-acre farm adjoining his daughter’s ranch near Bakersfield, California. On November 12, 1906, Shafter, terribly overweight, died at his daughter’s home from an intestinal obstruction complicated by pneumonia. He was buried next to his wife at the presidio in San Francisco, California.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul H. Carlson, “William R. Shafter Commanding Black Troops in West Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 50 (1974). Paul H. Carlson, William R. Shafter, Military Commander in the American West (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1973). M. L. Crimmins, “Shafter’s Explorations in Western Texas, 1875,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 9 (1933). William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967). Robert M. Utley, “`Pecos Bill’ on the Texas Frontier,” American West, January 1969.

Paul H. Carlson  
 
Wikipedia: James Cloyd Bowman
James Cloyd Bowman (January 18, 1880—September 27, 1961) was an American teacher and author primarily of children’s books, college text books and journals. Born in Leipsic, Ohio. Bowman grew up in Ohio and attended Ohio Northern University (B.S. 1905) with graduate studies at Harvard University (A.M. 1910). He taught English at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University of Science and Technology), and then at Northern State Teachers College (now Northern Michigan University) at Marquette, MI, where he was chair of the English department from 1921-39.

Bowman received a Newbery Honor in 1938 for Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time.
Works
(...)
Juvenile
Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time, Whitman 1937, reprinted 1972, reprinted 2007 (ISBN 1-59017-224-8)
 
2 May 1897, Fort Worth (TX) Register, pg. 5:
“PECOS BILL’S” PROMOTION.
The Senior Colonel Becomes the Junior
General of the Army.
William R. Shafter, who was recently promoted to the rank of brigadier general, has served for the past 18 years as a colonel. During that time he has many times been passed by when promotions were being made, and he has long been the senior colonel. Now he becomes the junior general. If you had been in the barrack room of one of our forts when the news was sent out, you would have heard some old soldier remark, “Well, Pecos Bill’s a general at last.”
Brigadier General Shafter won this picturesqu sobriquet by hard work and gallant service. After the war he was sent as lieutenant colonel in charge of the Twenty-fourth infantry into the Pecos district of Texas. The locality was swarming with horse thieves, desperadoes and bad men. He swept them out of his jurisdiction, restored the peace and gave civilization a chance. Since then he has been Pecos Bill to every man in the regular service.
 
General Shafter began his military career in 1861, entering the volunteer service as a first lieutenant in a Michigan regiment, that being his native state. (...) He is nearly 62 years of age and consequently will have but about two years more of active service before he is retired.

(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: The saga of Pecos Bill /
Author(s): O’Reilly, Edward.
Hader, Elmer,; 1889- 
Publication: [New York : Century magazine,
Year: 1923
Description: p. 827-833, 1 leaf of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.
Language: English
SUBJECT(S) 
Descriptor: Pecos Bill (Legendary character) 
Note(s): Detached from Century magazine, v. 106, 1923, no. 6./ Caption title.
Class Descriptors: LC: PS461.P4
Responsibility: by Edward O’Reilly ; drawings by Elmer Hader.
   
30 November 1924, Dallas (TX) Morning News, Stories, part VII, pg. 6:
*PECOS BILL
A Texas Legend
Pecos Bill was a powerful, good cowboy. He had a bucking broncho called Widowmaker. Pecos Bill was the only cowboy that could ride Widowmaker because all the rest were thrown off by him. Pecos Bill had a lasso as long as the equator, though some people said it was two feet shorter.
One day a friend of Pecos Bill’s tried to ride Widowmaker. Widowmaker kicked him to the top of Pike’s Peak. Pecos Bill got out his lasso and calmly lassoed his friend by the neck and drew him safely to the valley 20,000 feet below. One day a cyclone came. A friend bet Pecos Bill that he wouldn’t ride it without a saddle. Pecos Bill jumped on the cyclone as it took a dip. He rode down from Oklahoma to Texas, through Texas to New Mexico, and then on to Arizona. He cut out the Grand Canyon. He staked out New Mexico and used Arizona for his calf pasture.
At last he went down a streak of lightning to light his cigarette. He landed in Death Valley, California, and if you go there today you would see the marks where he dug a hole with his hip pockets upon landing.
DOROTHY LANE
200 West Twenty-Fourth street.
Austin,Texas
*Pronounced Pay-kus. 
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Giants of the southwest /
Author(s): Dobie, J. Frank 1888-1964.  (James Frank),
Duer, Douglas. 
Publication: [Philadelphia : Curtis,
Year: 1926
Description: p. 11, 71-72 : ill. ; 36 cm.
Language: English
SUBJECT(S) 
Descriptor: Bunyan, Paul (Legendary character)
Pecos Bill (Legendary character) 
Named Person: Buckner, Strap. 
Note(s): Detached from the Country gentleman, August, 1926./ Caption title.
 
11 September 1927, New York Times, book review, pg. BR10:
Frank Shay, Provincetown, Mass., is preparing a volume to be known as “American Legendary Heroes” and is seeking stories, anecdotes, ballads and information concerning the following legendary heroes: Strap Buckner, Kemp Morgan, Paul Bunyan, Tony Beaver, Old Stormalong, Kwasind and Pecos Bill. Full credit will be given for all material received and used. 
   
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: The legends of Pecos Bill /
Author(s): Remington, Owen J. 
Publication: [New York : Plain talk,
Year: 1929
Description: p. 276-281 : ill. ; 24 cm.
Language: English
SUBJECT(S) 
Descriptor: Pecos Bill (Legendary character) 
Note(s): Detached from Plain talk, v. 4, 1929, no. 3./ Caption title.
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record) 
Title: Cowboy tales :
Pecos Bill, tall yarns of the mighty hero of the American cattle trails and ranches : other cowboy stuff /
Author(s): Brown, Charles E. 1872-1946.  (Charles Edward),
Publication: Madison, Wis. : C.E. Brown,
Edition: 1st ed.
Year: 1929
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Here’s audacity!
American legendary heroes,
Author(s): Shay, Frank, 1888-1954. 
Publication: New York, The Macaulay company,
Year: 1930
Description: 5 p. l., 7-256 p. front., plates 22 cm.
Language: English
Contents: Old Stormalong, the deep-water sailorman.—Kwasind, Hercules of the American Indians.—The white steed, the phantom of the prairies.—Casey Jones, the railroad engineer.—Kemp Morgan, the Texas oil driller.—Strap Buckner, the man who fought the devil.—Pecos Bill, the cowboy.—Paul Bunyan, mightiest of loggers.—Tony Beaver, of Eel River, West Virginia.—John Henry, the steel driving man.
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Tall tales from Texas cow camps /
Uniform Title: Tall tales from Texas
Author(s): Boatright, Mody Coggin, 1896-1970. 
Publication: Dallas : SMU Press,
Year: 1982, 1934
Description: xxxiv, 105 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.
Language: English
Contents: Pizenous Windies / Speed / Birds and beasts / Wind and weather / By the breadth of a hair / The genesis of Pecos Bill / Adventures of Pecos Bill / The exodus of Pecos Bill / Cuttin’ horses.
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: “The king of the cowboys”
Author(s): Rogers, Roy, 1911- 
Publication: London :; ASV,
Year: 1998, 1936
Description: 1 sound disc :; digital, mono. ;; 4 3/4 in.
Language: English
Series: Living era
Music Type: Country music
Standard No: Publisher: CD AJA 5297; ASV; Other: 743625529722
Contents: Tumbling tumbleweeds (3:14)—Devil’s great-grandson (2:58)—When the golden train comes down (2:42)—Hold that critter down (2:37)—Hi-yo, Sivler! (2:27)—Round that couple, go through and swing (3:05)—Anlong the Navajo Trail (2:56)—Rock me to sleep in my saddle (3:03)—Little white cross on the hill (2:59)—I can’t go on this way (2:46)—I’m restless (2:34)—My heart went that-a-way (2:57)—My chickashay gal (2:22)—Dangerous ground (2:52)—Make-believe cowboy (2:25)—On the old Spanish trail (2:43)—San Fernando Valley (2:36)—Roll on, Texas moon (2:31)—Don’t fence me in (2:49)—Yellow rose of Texas (2:34)—Hawaiian cowboy (2:21)—Blue shadows on the trail (2:50)—Pecos Bill (3:02)—Betsy (2:42)—Home on the range (2:37)
SUBJECT(S) 
Descriptor: Old-time music.
Country music—1941-1950. 
Note(s): Liner notes by Peter Dempsey laid in container./ Tracks originally released 1936-1947./ Participants: Roy Rogers ; in part with Sons of the Pioneers ; Spade Cooley & his Buckle Busters.
   
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Pecos Bill,
the greatest cowboy of all time,
Author(s): Bowman, James Cloyd, 1880-1961. 
Publication: Chicago, A. Whitman & Co.,
Year: 1937
Description: 296 p. illus. 23 cm.
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Pecos Bill and Lightning,
Author(s): Peck, Leigh.
Wiese, Kurt,; 1887-1974, ; (Illustrator)
Publication: Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
Year: 1940
Description: 1 p. l., 68 p. col. illus. 25 x 19 cm.
Language: English
Standard No: LCCN: 40-33529
Abstract: Relates the lore of Pecos Bill from his childhood with coyotes to the loss of his almost-bride, Lightfoot Sue.
     
9 December 1946, San Antonio (TX) Light, pg. 9A, col. 4:
Colorful Life of
Tex O’Reilly Ends
Edward S. “Tex” O’Reilly, 66, famous soldier of fortune and author, and former managing editor of The Light, died in Veterans’ hospital at Topper Lake, New York, Sunday. 
 
Internet Movie Database
Plot summary for
Pecos Bill (1948)
Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers tell the story of Pecos Bill, an infant who fell out of a covered wagon and was discovered and raised by a family of wolves. His relationship with the wolves teaches him survival and, as a result, grows up to become a he-man of the American Desert earning the friendship of a horse named Widowmaker after rescuing him from a flock of buzzards. However, the relationship between man and horse is threatened when Pecos falls in love with a dame named Slue Foot Sue. They plan to wed but the marriage is threatened when Pecos offers Sue a ride on Widowmaker. Written by Matt Yorston {george.y@ns.sympatico.ca} 
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: Pecos Bill, Texas cowpuncher /
Author(s): Felton, Harold W., 1902-1991.
Watson, Aldren Auld,; 1917- ; (Illustrator)
Publication: New York : Knopf,
Year: 1949
Description: 177 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 22 cm.
Language: English
Series: Borzoi book for young people; 
 
28 September 1961, New York Times, pg. 41:
James C. Bowman Dies at 81;
Author of Books for Children
 
CHAPEL HILL, N. C., Sept. 27—James Cloyd Bowman, author of children’s books and a retired English professor, died here today after a heart attack at the Carolina Inn, where he had lived for the last two years. He was 81 years old.
 
Mr. Bowman wrote “Adventures of Paul Bunyan” and “Pecos Bill, the Greatest Cowboy of All Time,” and a dozen other books of stories for young readers.
 
(OCLC WorldCat library record)
Title: “Pecos Bill”, a military biography of William R. Shafter /
Author(s): Carlson, Paul Howard. 
Publication: College Station : Texas A & M University Press,
Edition: 1st ed.
Year: 1989
   
2719 Hyperion
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Peco Bill on the WDW Radio Show
 
In this week’s segment, we take a look at one of Walt Disney World’s most popular counter service restaurants, the Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe. To tie in to this, I’ve decided to reprint and expand my previous What a Character! post that detailed the background and history of one of Disney’s lesser known, but still very notable characters.
 
Pecos Bill was featured in the final segment of the 1948 “package film” Melody Time. His story was told in both narrative and song by movie cowboy Roy Rogers, accompanied by the Sons of the Pioneers. Disney child actors Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten were on hand around the campfire to hear the tale.
 
Reaction over the years has been mixed about both Melody Time and specifically the Pecos Bill sequence. Leonard Maltin called it a “felicitous collaboration,” and was especially complimentary of how animators brought to life the “marvelous exaggerations” of the Pecos Bill legend. Author John Grant however called it a “somewhat lackluster short,” in his Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters. Personally, I feel Melody Time is one of the studio’s most underrated productions, and Pecos Bill in particular is a high-energy and very entertaining piece of work. The supporting characters of Widowmaker and Slue Foot Sue are especially memorable and well-realized.
 
Not counting cameos on the recent House of Mouse television program, Pecos Bill was never animated again beyond his initial Melody Time appearance. He did receive exposure over the next few decades on the Disney anthology television show. Like Johnny Appleseed, his Melody Time segment was an easy cut-and-paste into episodes with American folklore themes.
 
Unlike many of his lower-tier contemporaries, Pecos Bill managed to make his presence felt at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The character of Slue Foot Sue, played originally by actress Betty Taylor, was the proprietress of the original Golden Horseshoe Revue at Disneyland when the park opened in 1955. That particular show went on to play for over 30 years and 39,000 performances.
 
A Pecos Bill restaurant has been a mainstay at Walt Disney World since the Magic Kingdom’s opening in 1971. The long-popular counter service venue was originally called the Pecos Bill Cafe. It was remodeled and expanded in 1998 and then became known as the Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe. Known for its burgers and extensive “fixin’s bar,” it straddles a corner between Frontierland and Adventureland, just opposite Splash Mountain.
 
A sign at the entrance identifies the establishment as having “The Tastiest Eats and Treats this side of the Rio Grande.” An excerpt from the text on the sign provides the cafe’s backstory:
 
“In 1878, with the encouragement of his friends, Pecos Bill decided to open his own watering hole, a restaurant whose motto very much reflects its one-of-a-kind owner, “The tastiest eats and treats this side of the Rio Grande.” Pecos Bill called it the Tall Tale Inn and Café and it quickly became a popular hangout for some of his legendary friends. As time went by it became a tradition when each friend paid a visit they would leave something behind for Pecos Bill to remember them by. As you can see from the articles and artifacts that don the walls, many of which carry inscriptions, Pecos Bill had some mighty impressive friends. It seems that every trail eventually led to the Tall Tale Inn and Café.”
 
Among those articles and artifacts:
 
Slue Foot Sue’s gloves, bearing the inscription “To Billy All My Love Slue Foot Sue.”
Davy Crockett’s bag and powder horn. Disney’s version of Crockett from the 1950s became a pop culture phenomenon. Fess Parker played Davy. Crockett’s best friend Georgie Russell is also featured. Russell’s artifacts include trail gear and a letter that details a shooting match between Crockett and Big Foot Mason. Russell was played by Buddy Ebsen.
Johnny Appleseed’s tin pot hat—John Chapman’s story was also a featured segment in the film Melody Time.
Paul Bunyan’s ax. His story was told in a Disney cartoon from 1958. The ax bears the inscription, “To Pecos—from one giant to another. Best wishes Paul Bunyan.”
John Henry’s hammer and spikes. The famous steel-driving man was featured in an animated short produced by Disney in 2000, a couple of years after the restaurant’s refurbishment.
Casey Jones’ coal bucket and oil cans. Casey Jones featured in the 1950 Disney cartoon The Brave Engineer. He was based on real life engineer John Luther Jones. Jones died in a locomotive crash in 1900 where he sacrificed his life to save the lives of the passengers on the train. Not surprisingly, in the Disney version he survives for a somewhat happier ending.
Other artifacts include objects donated by Jim Bowie, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody.
 
Pecos found himself reinvented by Disney in 1995, this time as real flesh and blood, in the live action feature Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill. The film starred Patrick Swayze as Bill, and also featured other characters such as Paul Bunyan, John Henry and Calamity Jane.
(...)
Pecos Bill has remained alive and well, and most especially in song. His theme song, originally performed by Roy Rogers in 1948, has been recorded by numerous other artists over the years, including cowboy band and Woody’s Roundup performers Riders in the Sky. The opening lines from that song happily sum up Bill’s unique personality and character:
 
Pecos Bill was quite a cowboy down in Texas,
And a western superman to say the least.
He was the roughest toughest critter,
Never know to be a quitter,
Cause he never had no fear of man nor beast!

 
Posted by Jeff Pepper at 6:23 PM  

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Wednesday, September 26, 2007 • Permalink


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