| Step up, buddies, and listen to my song
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| I’ll sing it to you right, but you may sing it wrong
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| All about a man named Otto Wood
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| I can’t tell you all, but I wish I could
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| He walked in a pawn shop a rainy day
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| And with the clerk he had a quarrel, they say
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| Pulled out his pistol and he struck him a blow
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| And this is the way the story goes
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| They spread the news as fast as they could
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| The sheriff served a warrant on Otto Wood
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| The jury said murder in the second degree
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| And the judge passed the sentence to the peniteniary
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| Otto, why didn’t you run?
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| Otto’s done dead and gone
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| Otto Wood, why didn’t you run
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| When the sheriff pulled out his 44 gun?
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| They put him in the pen, but it done no good
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| It wouldn’t hold the man they call Otto Wood
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| It wasn’t very long till he slipped outside
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| Drawed a gun on the guard, said, «Take me for a ride.»
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| Second time they caught him was away out west
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| In the holdup game, he got shot through the breast
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| They brought him back and when he got well
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| They locked him down in a dungeon cell
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| He was a man they could not run
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| He always carried a 44 gun
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| He loved the women and he hated the law
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| And he just wouldn’t take nobody’s jaw
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| He rambled out west and he rambled all around
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| He met the sheriff in a southern town
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| And the sheriff says, «Otto, step this way
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| 'Cause I’ve been expecting you every day.»
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| He pulled out his gun and then he said
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| «If you make a crooked move, you both fall dead
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| Crank up your car and take me out of town.»
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| And a few minutes later, he was graveyard bound |