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 peniteniary

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