Joan Baez – Prison Trilogy

(Words and Music by Joan Baez)

Billy Rose was a low rider, Billy Rose was a night fighter

Billy Rose knew trouble like the sound of his own name

Busted on a drunken charge

Driving someone else’s car

The local midnight sheriff’s claim to fame

In an Arizona jail there are some who tell the tale how

Billy fought the sergeant for some milk that he demanded

Knowing they’d remain the boss

Knowing he would pay the cost

They saw he was severely reprimanded

In the blackest cell on “A” Block

He hanged himself at dawn

With a note stuck to the bunk head

Don’t mess with me, just take me home

Come and lay, help us lay

young Billy down

Luna was a Mexican the law called an alien

For coming across the border with a baby and a wife

Though the clothes upon his back were wet

Still he thought that he could get

Some money and things to start a life

It hadn’t been too very long when it seemed like everything went wrong

They didn’t even have the time to find themselves a home

This foreigner, a brown-skin male

Thrown into a Texas jail

It left the wife and baby quite alone

He eased the pain inside him

With a needle in his arm

But the dope just crucified him

He died to no one’s great alarm

Come and lay, help us lay

Young Luna down

And we’re gonna raze, raze the prisons

To the ground

Kilowatt was an aging con of 65 who stood a chance to stay alive

And leave the joint and walk the streets again

As the time he was to leave drew near

He suffered all the joy and fear

Of leaving 35 years in the pen

And on the day of his release he was approached by the police

Who took him to the warden walking slowly by his side

The warden said “You won’t remain here

But it seems a state retainer

Claims another 10 years of your life.”

He stepped out in the Texas sunlight

The cops all stood around

Old Kilowatt ran 50 yards

Then threw himself down on the ground

They might as well just have laid

The old man down

And we’re gonna raze, raze the prisons

To the ground

Help us raze, raze the prisons

To the ground

© 1971, 1972 Chandos Music (ASCAP)