The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68888   Message #2785073
Posted By: GUEST,Belle
09-Dec-09 - 09:31 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Capture of Albert Johnson (Wilf Carter)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: the mad trapper of rat river
I grew up on a song about Albert Johnson but I've never heard the version posted above. The parts that I remember are:

Rat River trapper, rat river man
crazy Albert Johnson, hard to understand

Built himself a cabin a long way from home
all he ever wanted was to be left alone
paid him a visit in the shivering cold
check out the stories that the Indians told

smoke from a wood stove someone's inside
but a man won't answer when he's tryin to hide

back to aklavik what shall we do
with a man in the cabin that nobody knew

they returned to the cabin with a band of loushew?
the weather was bad as the cold wind blew

.....along a creek bed he jumped up from nowhere and shot a mountie dead


covered his tracks by a herd of caribou
you could see this man wasn't anybody's fool
on February 17th 1932 lying on the ice someone nobody knew
in the cold of the land of the mid day sun
he died from the bullets of mounties gun.

I'm sure there is more and i butchered the spelling of a lot of words but that's the song I used to sing from a wonderful crackling record.