I was looking for variations on lyrics for "Poor Lazarus" and found this tidbit regarding the origins of the song from this link. Scroll down.. It is pretty much the same story as CarlZen mentions above, with a little more detail.

Another "bad man" was an Alabama turpentine worker named Lazarus. According to the legends he worked and lived in the piney wood mountains of northern Alabama working in the turpentine mills. Some dispute over pay caused Lazarus to tear up the place and "walk the table," a practice of jumping upon the dinner table at the factory and walking it's length placing one's foot in every plate. He then broke into the commissary and stole the payroll. This would, of course, cause a riot, and for this action the "High Sheriff" was called in the arrest "Poor Lazarus." The sheriff sent out his deputies and they cornered Lazarus "up between two mountains"15 where they gunned him down. They hauled his remains back to the commissary where they laid him out and sent for his family but he apparently died before they could get there.16

POOR LAZARUS17 (Laws 1, #12)
1. Oh well the High Sheriff, he told the deputy,
He said, "Go out and bring me Lazarus!" (2X)
"Bring him dead or alive! Oh! Lord! Bring him dead or alive!"
2. And the deputies began to wonder...
Where in the world they could find him? (2X)
A, well "I don't know! Oh! Lord! I just don't know!"
3. And they found poor Lazarus
Up between two mountains. (2X)
And they blowed him down! Oh! Lord!
They blowed him down!
4. And what they used,
What they used was a great big number (2)
Number .44! Oh! Lord! Colt .44!
FOOTNOTES:
1. Sparky Rucker, Heroes & Hard Times: Black American Ballads and Story Songs, (Originally published by Green Linnet, 1981), Tremont Productions, 1994. Hereafter cited as Heroes
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.; Part of this section was taken from my paper entitled "From the Middle Passage to the Titanic: the African-American Maritime Experience." This paper was first presented at Mystic Seaport
5. Solveig Paulson Russell, The Big Ditch Waterways: The Story of Canals (New York: Parents' Magazine Press, 1977), pp. 18-26, 27.
6. B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions and Folkways of the Mid-American River Country (New York: Bonanza Books, 1978, p. 251.
7. Paul Stamler to James "Sparky" Rucker [forwarded message Tom Freeland to Paul Stamler dated Tue. August 27, 1996] From an e-mail to the author dated 11/18/2000.
8. B. A. Botkin, ed., A Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People (New York: Crown Publishers, 1944), p.128.
9. Stamler to Rucker, 11/18/2000, St. Louis Globe Democrat, December 28, 1895.
10. Ibid.
11. This legend became immersed in the "Voodoo" culture of Louisiana blacks, and further legends of the use of gris-gris and "goofer dust" on Stagolee's hat began to surface. For more of the "hat" legend see Botkin, Treasury American, p.123.
12. Ibid., pp. 122-130; Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, eds., The Book of Negro Folklore (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958), pp. 359-363; Julius Lester, Black Folktales (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1969), pp. 113-135; Harold Courlander, Negro Folk Music, U. S. A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966, 1963), pp. 177-179. Recordings: "Mississippi John Hurt-1928 Sessions" (Newton: Yazoo Records Inc., 1990); "The Best of Mississippi John Hurt" (Santa Monica: Vanguard Records, 1987, 1970); Rucker, "Heroes."
13. Lester, Folktales, pp. 134-135; Hughes & Bontemps, Negro Folklore, pp. 361-363; Botkin, Treasury American, 122-123126-130.
14. Rucker, "Heroes."
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.