Lyr Req/Add: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)

Subject: Lyr Req: Earl Duran
From: GUEST,Sam
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 06:55 AM

There was an obscure song I used to hear on Radio Unamable WBAI Bob Fass many years ago. It went something like this "Earl Duran Earl Duran he was born the mountain man. He was shot down in the TeeTons at the hands of a thirsty band???" Any idea on the title and artist of
this song?? Thanks

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Earl Duran
From: GUEST,Wa Ban Shou
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:45 PM

That song was from Charlie Brown, folkie and certified strange character who was in Berkeley in the early sixties. He made one album, the Berkeley library had it back then. I don't know much about him except he rode boxcars with his personal tipi. My wife's first husband used to hang with him. I'm sure that many mudcatters know more than me. Regards
                                     Wa BanZhou

Subject: Thanks for the info
From: GUEST,Sam
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:53 PM

Thank you, that is a help to search farther for info.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Earl Duran
From: Sorcha
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 01:00 PM

Info about the ballad and how to order the album can be found here. And, I found out it's the Ballad of Earl Durand

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Earl Duran
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 Feb 03 - 01:11 AM

"The Ballad of Earl Durand," performed by Charlie Brown (a.k.a. Charles Edward Artman), appears on the album "Best of Broadside 1962-1988." There's a sound sample at the Folkways site:

Just a simple mountain lad,
Huntin' meat for ma and dad,
He would go out in the mountains in depression days so sad.
With a bow and arrow straight,
He'd put meat upon the grate
Of the fireplace in the cabin where he learned to love, not hate.
Earl Durand, Earl Durand,
Born too late a mountain man,
He was shot down in the Tetons by the law's bloodthirsty band.

...lightly crag to crag,
Earl Durand hunt the stag.
Elk and moose meat too he brought just to fill his hungry bag.
Skinned a 'mount and used the hides
To keep warm his young...."

The lyrics sound kind of silly to me.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Earl Duran
From: GUEST,"Miki T"
Date: 09 May 09 - 07:09 PM

The ballad was recorded by Charlie Brown but written by Jack Langan. Yes, the lyrics are indeed kind of silly, but also way sad. The old West met the New West 70+ years ago, and is still meeting it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req:Ballad of Earl Durand
From: john f weldon
Date: 09 May 09 - 07:15 PM

I have the LP. The local FM station played this song 10 times a day back then. (Montreal)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req:Ballad of Earl Durand
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 May 09 - 07:32 PM

Smithsonian/Folkways used to have a very nice Web page on the Best of Broadside album, but it has been taken offline. You can access it at http://web.archive.org/web/20011027191936/http://staging.si.edu/broadside/htdocs/multimedia.htm. The entire album booklet (158 pages, 80-some megabytes) is supposed to be available for download here (click), but the download gives me only about half the booklet, and doesn't include this song. The song originally appeared on a Folkways album called Teton Tea Party With Charlie Brown - notes available at the link.
-Joe-

Subject: ADD: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 May 09 - 08:22 PM

Well, let's see what kind of job Mr. Scanner does on the CD booklet (pages 120-121, Best of Broadside, Smithsonian Folkways)

72.
THE BALLAD OF EARL DURAND
CHARLIE BROWN, VOCAL AND AUTOHARP
Words by Jack Langan
Music by Charlie Brown
From Teton Tea Party with Charlie Brown
Broadside 305/Folkways 05305 Recorded April 1966, New York

The story of Earl Durand is true. The song was written by Jack Langan, a Wyoming songwriter. Durand, a resident of Powell, Utah, was first arrested on 2 December 1937 for buying furs without a license. The second arrest, chronicled in this song, was on 13 March 1939 and resulted in a six-month prison sentence. Durand was on avid outdoorsman and crack shot. He killed himself in the Powell Bank rather than be captured after eluding the police. The story happened pretty much as the song reports. Langan, in a letter to Moses Asch at Folkways, informed him that he had actually written both the words and music, but the singer had changed the melody to fit his own needs. The story of Durand drew interest in the 1960s because public fascination with the image of a great Western outlaw still existed in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. A Hollywood movie was produced on Durand starring Peter Haskell, Martin Sheen, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens. This scenario repeated itself again in the 1980s with the Western outlaw Claude Dallas, who also became the subject of songs and inspired a motion picture. Dallas was eventually captured in a 7-11 in California, a fate Durand did not share.
Charles Edward Artman (a.k.a. Charlie Brown)(c. 1940—) was born in northern Iowa. He is a mystic, poet, tipi builder, and a prophet of New Age of Consciousness. Living a rather nomadic lifestyle, Charlie traveled and lived in a tipi. He ran the Temple of the Rainbow Path; based on letters to Moses Asch, the Temple seems to have been located in various places, including Utah, California, and Florida. At the time of the recording of this sang, Charlie was living on the Lower East Side of New York City, and the album was recorded in his apartment. He is reported to be living in Florida.


THE BALLAD OF EARL DURAND
Words by Jack Langan
Music by Charlie Brown



Just a simple mountain lad hunting meat for Maw and Dad,
He would go out in the mountains in depression days so sad.
With a bow and arrow straight he'd put meat upon the grate
Of the fireplace in the cabin where he learned to love, not hate.

CHORUS
Earl Durand, Earl Durand,
Born too late a mountain man;
He was shot down in the Tetons
By the law's bloodthirsty band.

Boundin' lightly crag to crag, Earl Durand would hunt the stag;
Elk and moose meat, too, he brought just to fill his hungry bag.
Skinned 'em out and used the hides to keep warm his young insides
With the buckskin clothes he wore on his lonely mountain rides.

CHORUS

One day with meat so raw, Earl was captured by the law,
Hauled away to Cody Jail, bedded down on a cot of straw.
Then he fled into the hills, leavin' behind the city's ills
When the lawmen came to get him, Earl, those greedy hunters, drills.

CHORUS

Spoken: 'Bout six-foot-two, 250 pounds, he was a crack shot. Throw a marble into the air, and he'd shatter it into a million fragments every time. He went to high school for a while, but he didn't dig that scene very much. And so he took off into the mountain wilderness there, the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Started livin' off the land; makin' his own clothes out of buckskin. Let his hair grow out, let his beard grow. Well, the folks back in town, they didn't dig his scene very much either, so one day they hauled him in for huntin' elk out of season, found him guilty, sentenced him to six months in jail.
Well, from where he was at, [through] his cell window, he could see the Wind River Mountains, the mountains that he loved. But then one day the DA come in, started talkin' to him about some rich rancher's cattle that had been shot, about pinnin' the whole thing on him. So Earl says to the DA, he says, "Well, if I'm found guilty of that, what's it gonna mean?" So the DA says to him, "Well, you'll have to spend two years in the state penitentiary at Rawlins."
Now two years is an awful long time, and from the Rawlins jail cell window he wouldn't be able to see those mountains that he loved. So one day when the guard come in with his breakfast, he conked him over the head with a milk bottle. When he come to, he told him to drive him out to his folks' place. He sent him back to town with a message then that he didn't want to kill nobody, he just wanted to live as free as he wanted to live, but that if they'd come after him, he'd shoot to kill. So, the sheriff and his deputy they come out after him; he shot 'em both and he took off into the hills.

In the wilderness he lay, changin' lair from day to day.
Come to town to get some shells, see his folks, then get away.

CHORUS

When Park County got too hot, Earl decided to change his spot,
Rambled down through Yellowstone, to the Tetons, at a trot.
Then the sheriff swore so hard, he called out the National Guard,
And with howitzers and mortars, they played down their last hole card.

CHORUS

Spoken: That's right, ladies and gentlemen, howitzers and mortars after one lone man sittin' up there on a ridge. And the National Guard, too. They sent two men up after him, hollered up, "Earl, you know we've got you, so why don't you give yourself up?"
Well, from about a thousand yards, he picked them both off with two shots. Come nightfall, he'd slip through their lines and go out and get himself some food, and then before dawn he'd slip through their lines again, get up on the ridge, and play their games with them. And pretty soon he was out of ammunition, so he cut off his beard and cut off his hair with a knife that he had up there. He come down to the line then, and he says to the man there, "Say, have they got that Earl Durand fellow yet?" The guy says, "Nope." So Earl Durand says, "Well I'm about out of ammunition." And the other guy says, "Well, I'm about out too." So Earl says to him, "Well, how about drivin' us both to town so we can get some more ammunition?" So the guy drove 'em both to town. Earl, he went into the bank where he had some money. The townsfolk heard he was in there, and they gathered outside. Earl, he come out with a bank teller in front of him at gunpoint. Some trigger-happy sixteen-year-old kid shot him from the crowd, and, by reflex action, he shot and killed the teller. And then he turned the gun on his own self and he shot himself. Someone later asked the kid how he felt about killin' that notorious outlaw fellow, Earl Durand. And the kid said, "Sick."

But Earl was free as air, and down from his mountain lair,
He'd slip through their lines at night, and at dawn he'd not be there.
'Till at last with food all gone, and his stomach pinched and drawn,
He faced them in the twilight, and their bullets cut him down.

CHORUS

Earl just wanted to live free, just the same as you and me,
But the game laws said, "Oh no!" So this free soul had to go.
And his flight was called a crime, although in an earlier time
He'd have been a mountain man instead of shot down in his prime.

Earl Durand, Earl Durand,
Born too late a mountain man.
Called the Tarzan of the Tetons,
Killed by civilization's hand.


apparently, this song is from Broadside #45

---

Well, it only took six years to answer this request. We've taken longer...

Subject: RE: req/ADD: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)
From: GUEST,Jerred Metz
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 02:15 PM

I ran across several posting about "The Ballad of Earl Durand." Happy to see that there is interest in the song. A am the author of "The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand" (2005, High Plains Press) which was inspired by the song. Without the song there would have been no book. Most of the "facts" the song presents are wrong. The book, being far more extensive than the song, is based on 15 interviews I conducted with people who had a first-hand involvement in the events and newspaper and magazine accounts that appeared at the time. As fine and stirring as the song is, the book portrays an even more complex character in Earl Durand, and a more complicated set of events. See more at jerredmetz.com or e-mail [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 May 12 - 09:36 PM

It is perhaps worth noting that the spoken narration on the record is itself inconsistent with the song, in particular about how Durand died.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Sep 13 - 05:27 PM

Thanks to all for this useful information. Does anyone know the song's chords?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Ballad of Earl Durand (Jack Langan)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Sep 13 - 01:58 AM

Wikipedia offers a different perspective on Earl Durand.