Step up, buddies, and listen to my song
I’ll sing it to you right, but you may sing it wrong,
All about a man named Otto Wood,
I can’t tell you all, but I wish I could.

He walked in a pawn shop a rainy day,
And with the clerk he had a quarrel, they say.
Pulled out his pistol and he struck him a blow,
And this is the way the story goes.

They spread the news as fast as they could,
The sheriff served a warrant on Otto Wood.
The jury said murder in the second degree,
And the judge passed the sentence to the penitentiary.

[Chorus]
Otto, why didn’t you run?
Otto’s done dead and gone.
Otto Wood, why didn’t you run
When the sheriff pulled out his 44 gun?

They put him in the pen, but it done no good,
It wouldn’t hold the man they call Otto Wood.
It wasn’t very long till he slipped outside,
Drawed a gun on the guard, said, “Take me for a ride.”

Second time they caught him was away out west,
In the holdup game, he got shot through the breast.
They brought him back and when he got well,
They locked him down in a dungeon cell.

He was a man they could not run,
He always carried a 44 gun.
He loved the women and he hated the law,
And he just wouldn’t take nobody’s jaw.

He rambled out west and he rambled all around,
He met the sheriff in a southern town.
And the sheriff says, “Otto, step this way,
‘Cause I’ve been expecting you every day.”

He pulled out his gun and then he said,
“If you make a crooked move, you both fall dead.
Crank up your car and take me out of town,”
And a few minutes later, he was graveyard bound.