Reflections

(album: Sings The Ballads Of The True West - 1965)

Never in this world before or nevermore hereafter
Could a land know such a people as the pioneer the cowboy
His clothes his conversation his unique brand of lingo
All his devil deeds of daring his hat his bandana the dirty boots and ragged chaps
But mainly that sixgun dangling so's his hand could get it quickly
But draw your own conclusions lean to your own understandings
Your beliefs and your convictions
Disprove any fact recorded in these sounds and songs and legends
But I ask you if you do be sure you've walked in many mocassins
Over many many pathways and that you have listened carefully
Really listened to the west wind and to everything it whispers
And then go back and listen listen to this once more to these legends and traditions
They're only one reflection of a tick of time of that time
Just ponder on the things that happened
As we gaze so very deeply in the time and place and persons
Seeing now and then the West as it really was
And to tell you of a little that we saw there
And looking backward through a century
There was the True West there was the Real True West
Not demanding an argument but rather hoping you looked with us
And saw it as we saw it
And heard that west wind screaming shouting almost speaking
Always whispering of these things we sang and spoke of
And you'll hear perhaps the things the we said in the stories
And the legends and traditions
Through the wind that breeze these tales of the ones who never made it
Yet fighting heat and mountains plains and valleys snow and hunger
They went westward westward westward