Traditional - The Yellow Rose Of Texas

First performance: 08/11/1980


Coverinfo

Bruce used the song 2 times as a snippet:
 
Always used in Texas.
 
 
1980-11-09 Special Events Center, Austin, TX
Show again features instrumental "The Yellow Rose Of Texas", this time briefly played as an lead-in to "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)".
  
 
1980-11-08 Reunion Arena, Dallas, TX
Features "The Yellow Rose of Texas" played as an instrumental intro to "Cadillac Ranch".
 
 

Songinfo

"The Yellow Rose of Texas" is a traditional American folk song dating back to at least the 1850s. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. The earliest known version is found in Christy's Plantation Melodies. No. 2, a songbook published under the authority of Edwin Pearce Christy in Philadelphia in 1853. Christy was the founder of the blackface minstrel show known as the Christy's Minstrels. Like most minstrel songs, the lyrics are written in a cross between the dialect historically spoken by African-Americans and standard American English. The song is written in the first person from the perspective of an African-American singer who refers to himself as a "darkey," longing to return to "a yellow girl" (that is, a light-skinned, or bi-racial woman born of African/African-American and European-American progenitors).
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

Lyrics

There's a yellow rose in Texas
I'm goin' back to see
No other cowboy loves her
Half as much as me

She cried so when I left her
It almost broke my heart
And if we ever meet again
We'll never drift apart

She's the sweetest rose of color
That Texas ever knew
Her eyes are like the diamonds
They sparkle like the dew
You can talk about your Clementine
And dream of Rosalie
But the Yellow Rose of Texas
Is the only girl for me